Yr3 Weekly Update – 02/9/16

Central Idea:

Relationships are affected by the way people communicate.

This week have begun our Who We Are by taking part in the Marshmallow Challenge provocation. http://www.tomwujec.com/design-projects/marshmallow-challenge/

The outcome of the tower was not the most important thing, we were more interested in how the children worked in a group, who were active or passive team members and how they communicated with each other. We asked the children to reflect on the experience, especially how it linked with our central idea.

Maths

This week we have been exploring place value by modeling and representing numbers using base 10 blocks, writing the number in words and exploring how we trade between place values. The tricky bit for children has been explaining why the place value system is important. We have also been beginning to rename numbers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KExmlTm-Nvs

This helps the children develop their understanding of the place system and the relationship between units, tens and hundreds, and onwards from that thousands.

Literacy

This week we have been doing small pieces of writing that focus on developing ideas. This is the heart of writing and without ideas, our writing has no substance. Once the children have developed ideas we have they using vocabulary to make it interesting to read. Some of this writing has been about conflicts that they have encountered this week to link our writing to our central idea.

Home learning to share with the children

What numbers can you see in your local environment? What is the biggest number you find? Can you say it correctly? What is the smallest number you can find? What makes that number so small? If you would like to take some photos of numbers in your environment to explore further in class, that would be wonderful.