Mayfield Primary SchoolYEAR THREE: SUMMER TERM
OUR YEAR THREE DURING SUMMER TERM
OUR CORE INTENTION IN ACTION
SUMMER TERM 'WHEN I GROW UP...' THEME: SUPERB STRUCTURES*
*Year 3 & 4 work on a two year thematic rolling programme. We are currently on the 1st cycle studying Valley of The Kings. This page reflects the 2nd cycle to give you a flavour of that.
A 'When I Grow Up' Summer Summary
A Geography and DT driven 'When I Grow Up...' Superb Structures theme was the exciting focus for our learning during the summer months. The children were met by top CBS TV Executive: Tex Wannabee in our ABC Theatre. The Texan TV Producer had journeyed over to announce his latest project was to tell the story of Britain's tallest structures and he was starting on the Fylde Coast! The children were tasked with gathering as much knowledge as possible about Blackpool Tower, the rollercoasters of the Pleasure Beach and the four piers on the coastline as part of their History studies before meeting Tex once more to hand over their new found knowledge.
The children started by looking at the Geography of the area. Asking: What is special about a coastline landscape and how this differs from inland areas of their features. We undertook an early field trip to nearby Blackpool to look at these structures first hand. We then moved into a contrasting study of San Francisco, another place with famous and unique structures. It was great for the children to study the differences between the two environments - particularly when considering earthquakes, storms and floods. The children then considered how these structures were created in much more detail and created their own miniature versions (during Towertastic) which had to consider strength as a key factor. This formed their Design & Technology work.
As a next step, the children looked into some of the major Historical events to have hit the structures they were studying. The looked at natural disasters such as storms and more human made errors such as fire and vandalism. From here, the children moved their focus upon more ornate structures built in a previous time. This provided a major contrast in their studies as the steel framework dominated structures were compared with tiled columns and brickwork of the Tower's main building and the nearby Victorian theatres (which the children will delve in greater detail upon during Victorians-on-Sea in Year 5). The children re-created some of the ornate tiles as their Artwork for this term as part of the Great Mayfield Pottery Throwdown event.
Tex Wannabee had asked the children to create a locally inspired theme tune for the special documentary and to prepare this alongside their other work for his July return. The children listened to a range of different existing 'intro' songs and locally inspired seaside songs before evaluation their effectiveness and impact then finally composing their own short credit sequence. This formed the children's Music studies.
Science was fabulous. Light and shadows formed the basis of the children's work this term but in the real context of how light is used on our local superb structures and how shadows are created in relation to their structures. The children then moved their studies into how knowledge of light, dark and shadows can be used for entertainment purposes - as learned through our initial structures work. This culminated in the children taking part in a huge Ultra-Violet Spectacular Show where they used their new found knowledge to design and create puppets for their own theatre show which they performed. It was stunning! We then moved on to look at the differing parts of flowering plants and the vital role they plant in their life cycle.
The children used their Computing skills and knowledge to create a database of the key information for the local structures they studied. Information including height, weight, age, visitor numbers and cost were included in this.
During their PSHE & Relationships studies, the children focused upon keeping healthy and habits that can link to these and as we made additional links to our structures work we also looked at the link between 'unhealthy' food promotion and how this often runs alongside these popular local structures - indeed forms a prominent aspect of them. It was interesting to see the children's knowledge develop around the link between 'popular, prominently advertised - yet unhealthy foods' in such environments.
During Physical Education, the children built upon their current athletics work with a particular focus upon throwing and jumping skills during track and field. We then looked at tennis skills as part of our games studies this term. Our Religious Education studies focused upon Hinduism and their belief that one God has many different aspects and then considered the importance of pilgrimage to the Hindu faith. The children focused upon 'Je Peux/I Can' when speaking in French to describe every day activities and begin to look at language for forms of transport.
It has been a busy term in Mathematics. Fractions kept us very busy for the first part of the Summer Term. We then moved onto measurements related to time, mass and capacity before finishing by studying shapes and their properties. We created reports and explanations linked to our Superb Structures theme during our English work and created a 'Theme Park Mystery' in our narrative writing. We then created a special playscript that linked with our Tex Wannabee TV special.
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