In 2021-2022, our Y3 class is led by Miss Tooms.  Please see a range of learning adventures below that the children in Y3 have experienced this year.

Below is our class timetable so that you can see the learning that we do each day! 

Here are our Curriculum Overviews. These explain what we will be covering throughout each term in Woodpeckers Class!

Autumn 1

Welcome back everybody!! Over the summer holidays, the children were given 30 activities to have a go at at home. One our first day in Woodpeckers Class, it was lovely to catch up and look through each others scrap books and talk about what we did over the summer!

To ignite an interest in our theme: 'Prehistoric Life on Dartmoor' we turned into Cave Men and did some Cave Art!! We talked about the key topics that cave men would've included in their drawings: hunting, animals, fires etc. We turned our tables into the walls and ceilings of caves and used chalks and crayons to create our pictures. 

This term we have really enjoyed reading the book 'Blue John' by Berlie Doherty. We took the structure of this story and used it to write our own! To celebrate our fantastic story writing, we read them out loud to our friends. 

Here are a couple of our stories: 

"Imagine a place. A dark, scary, enchanted forest. All of the leaves falling off the trees all on the floor. The floor is made of soft bushes and dirty mud is everywhere. That's where the King of Darkness lives. They're wearing a dark cape and have a dark, red eye. The Kind of Darkness falls and snatches the brown of the tree and the green of the leaves to make Brown John who falls to sleep. 

      Brown John woke up, looked around, crawled weakly and got up. He climbed the waterfall and jumped onto the vast trees. Then he tumbled and landed on the hard floor. 

      A Reindeer comes into the trees and plays Who Can Jump The Highest. Brown John says "this was fun!" but the King of Darkness said "Brown John you can't leave the trees of you will fly away forever.

     Brown John leaves the trees. Brown John is happy and runs to meet the Reindeer. The Kind of Darkness was furious and Blue John get blown away." 

"Imagine the gleaming black of the Dragon Crystals of the Crystal Caven. Imagine vast tunnels that make you feel like they go on forever with the tremendous, shallow pools leading the way out. Imagine the long, skinny stalactites. 

    That's where the Crystal Golem of Darkness lives. She was created with crystals and she gleams in the glowing crystal light. Her feet stamp loudly when she walks. She snatched the grey of the stone and the black of the Dragon Crystal and made Black Dragon. 

    Black Dragon woke up. "Where am I?" se shouted cautiously. She swung from the stalactite to stalactite. She climbed down and swam in the pools. She rolled head over heels happily on the rocky ground. 

    An Axolotl came and they had a race in the water. The Axolotl was twisting and turning in the water. "What shall we play now?" said the Axolotl. 
"Let's play hide and seek!" said Black Dragon.
"Ok!" shouted the Axolotl. 

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10!" shouted the Axolotl.

"Don't leave the Crystal Cavern or you'll be turned into a Dragon Crystal!" shouted the Crystal Golem of Darkness fiercely. 

     The Crystal Golem shouted "Go now!" The Axolotl left the cavern. When the Crystal Golem of Darkness left, Black Dragon sprinted outside. She met with the Axolotl. The Crystal Golem of Darkness shouted "Come home!". 

     Black Dragon felt her limbs start to feel heavy and she turned into a Dragon Crystal! Her spirit was left. The Axolotl came and took the black and grey pebble home."

Some children were super brave and read their stories to the whole class!

Autumn 2

This term we have started learning about Okehampton Railway, ready for the re-opening at the end of November! 

We were so excited to receive a visit from GWR Manager, David in Woodpeckers Class yesterday. He was able to answer many of our questions about Okehampton Railway and even brought in things to show us! He told us about different roles on the railway and the uniforms they wore, what we could find in a Guard's bag and he even taught us how to drive a train!! It was an excellent addition to our English Unit and we are looking forward to writing about it next week!

Spring 1

In our science this term, we have been enjoying learning more about sound. To help us to understand about how sound travels and the different pitch and frequencies that can be created, we made our own musical instruments. 

We had an exciting afternoon with OCRA (our local sports company) today! In teams of 4, we were challenged to see who could run 1 mile the fastest. This meant each person had to run 4 laps of our MUGA!

We earned 2 golden nuggets for co-operation and perseverance. Here are our 2 winning teams! (You may have spotted that our second-place team only had 2 children, meaning they ran 8 laps of our MUGA each!) Huge well done to all!

Children's Mental Health Week: 

This week we have been lots of activity to provide the children with strategies to help them control and be aware of their mental health. We completed a bubble activity to help our focus and perspective, 'Get Back on Track' to help our balance and grounding, rainbow breaths to control and focus on breathing. On Friday we read the story 'The Day the Sea Went Out and Never Came Back'. This helped us to understand what we can do when feel sad, empty or lost. We learnt that when we face a difficult change, talking about it and sharing memories is the best way to help! 

Spring 2

On Friday 4th March we had the pleasure of joining Fairtrade Devon for their annual conference. We enjoyed learning about where coffee comes from and what it needs to grow. We also learnt more about climate change and what our community could do to help! It was great to meet some students from Okehampton Primary School too! 

We had a fantastic DT Day today! We were using our maths knowledge of 3D shapes and problem solving to plan and make our own castles! It took a lot of resilience to stick the 3D Nets together too! It was great to see our classroom filled with collaboration and determination! 

We had the most amazing end of term treat this afternoon! The children were tasked the project of creating their own volcanoes at home which we erupted at school! It was great to get messy, think about some chemistry and embed our learning of how volcanoes are formed and how they work! 

Summer 1 

In science this term, we have enjoyed building on our knowledge about plants! We have learnt all about parts of the plant, seed dispersion and plant lifecycles. To embed and consolidate this learning, we went for a school trip to RHS Rosemoor. We had such a lovely time recapping the things we had learnt in lessons and seeing evidence of different processes (pollination, seed dispersal) in real life!

Here is a snapshot of our day:

Summer 2

It was excellent to celebrate Rainbow Day again this year. We had a lovely time celebrating our differences through poetry, problem solving and PSHE. One of our favourite activities was understanding what was different about ourselves and then seeing what other children thought of us too! 

It was lovely to share in the DMAT Festival of Hope with other KS2 children across our Trust. We joined in a Rounders Tournament and had a great time taking part! 

Woodpeckers enjoyed taking part in the FOSJ car wash! The weather was glorious and it was lovely to share some kindness in order to raise money for our school! 

We had a fantastic opportunity to support Devon police with raising awareness of Road Safety and Speeding around our school. The children were able to ask questions to people who had been caught travelling above 30mph. We also got to speak to the police officers and PCSO's involved (and got to hold their speed guns!)