Please find attached a copy of our November Newsletter. I hope that you all have a lovely weekend.
Mrs Gurner
Click on the link to open a copy of our monthly newsletter. If you would prefer a printed copy then please inform the school office.
Thank you,
Mrs Gurner
Today in collective worship, we will be gathering to remember Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. All of our teachers are prepared to answer children’s questions, in an age appropriate way.
In collective worship, there will be a twin emphasis both on sadness at the death of the Queen and also thankfulness for her long life and reign. Marking 70 years of reign this year she became the longest serving monarch. We will mention that the Queen had a really important job earlier this week, as it is the monarch who asks a party leader to be their Prime Minister, and the Queen made a point of doing this final duty.
Any such event will possibly engender conversations in the classroom. Here are some pointers that have been shared with staff but I thought maybe useful for parents too.
Children will want to talk – and they can be asked both to share what they know about the Queen and also any talk about the day of her death and how they heard the news. We will bear in mind there may have been sadness in homes at this time they will want to relate.
We use the terms ‘death’ and ‘died’ and avoid euphemisms.
We are mindful of those particularly affected, allow children to say what they want and need to say and listen carefully.
Staff should feel totally free from any pressure to offer any answers to questions around ‘death’ and ‘dying’, it is ok to not have the answers.
We will make it clear that being sad is natural, as is not knowing what to feel or say.
Here is a prayer that will be offered for children:
God of love,
We thank you for the life of The Queen,
for her service to our nation,
and for her faith in you.
Be close to all of us who mourn,
that we may we find comfort and hope in your love,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
An online Book of Condolence has been started – we will be explaining that this is a way in which the Church has arranged for everyone to write a note of sadness or thoughts for King Charles.
https://www.churchofengland.org/remembering-her-majesty-queen
At school, we have lots of books that explore death in an age appropriate way. If you wish to borrow one of these books, then please let me know.
Mrs Gurner
Year 3 have been learning the scientific names for the female and male parts of a flower. Our key vocabulary for this lesson included: stamen, anther, filament, carpel, stigma, style, ovary, sepal and petals. Some tricky stuff! To do this, we dissected a range of different types of flowers to see if we could identify the stamen(male reproductive part) and the carpel (female reproductive part.) This then led on to learning about the pollination process for plants and how each part of the flower has an important role in this process.
In science, Year 3 have been learning all about our skeletons and why we have them. We know that the skeleton has 3 main jobs:
- Support- the skeleton keeps our body upright and supports our weight
- Protect- the skeleton protects our internal organs
- Movement- the bones form joints and act as levers, allowing muscles to pull on them to produce movement.
We have also been learning the scientific names for some of the most important bones in the skeleton including: skulll; spine; rib cage; humerus; pelvis; femur; patella; tibia and fibula. To check our knowledge we labelled the skeleton of one of our students outside before transferring this information to our own informative posters!
Last week, children in Year 3 were lucky enough to visit the beautiful Sheffield Cathedral. The cathedral was a perfect place for children to experience “awe” and “wonder.” Whilst at the cathedral, Y3 explored the different features of a cathedral in a guided tour. They had opportunity to learn about the cathedral’s rich and colourful history. Furthermore, the children were given opportunities to reflect on the importance of symbols in Christianity. We all had a fantastic day and Y3 represented our school brilliantly!
Congratulations to everyone who took part in St Alban’s Sports Day today. We all tried to do the best we could to help our team.
Thank you to the Parents and Carers who came as spectators.
This year, Jordan were the winners of the whole competition.
This is the warm up.
Thank you to all the helpers and to Mrs. Jepson who organised the event.
Every Friday, Year 3 have been going in small groups to our school garden to help with deweeding, planting and general garden maintenance. There hard work has helped to make our school garden look more beautiful and ready for Summer! We have also been linking our gardening trips to our plants topic in science. Children have been considering what plants need to grow healthily and recalling the parts of plant while in the garden.
Year three ended our geography volcanoes topic with a BANG! We concluded our learning about volcanoes in geography by creating our own chemical reactions to mimic the eruption process. The children acted like real scientists, taking accurate measurements using syringes and measuring cups and they even had safety goggles to protect themselves! The children had lots of fun during this activity but also we tried to link this to what happens in a real eruption.
We know that sudden movement at the tectonic plates causes pressure to build under ground until the magma erupts through a crack in the earth’s crust in an eruption. The lava then cools solidifies into molten rock in cone-shaped layers. After each eruption, there is a new layer of solidified rock, forming a volcano.
