Class 2 - Year 3 and 4
Welcome
We are delighted to welcome you to our class page. We will be using this to update you on all the exciting things we are getting up to in Class 2 - Year 3 and 4
Our Teacher is Miss Watkin, and we are so lucky to have Mrs Plant as our Teaching Assistant. On an afternoon, we also have Mrs Holland. During PPA time, Mrs Paxton teaches us all sorts of things - music, French, art and RE!
We are doing some brilliant work and enjoying lots of exciting learning opportunities together! Please do have a look at our page to see some of the wonderful things we are getting up to this year...
Note to parents: (Updated February 2024)
PE takes place on a Monday in school with Sporting Influence. This half term, we will be outside playig handball. Please ensure children have correct PE kit for this.
Please ensure your child comes to school with a water bottle and appropriate clothing for the weather - it has been very wet at the moment, so a waterproof coat is always good to have on hand.
Homework will be sent home on a Wednesday to be completed and is to be returned by Tuesday - this includes weekly spelling practice, comprehension and maths.
Please read with your child at least 3 times per week, encouraging them to read independently additionally to this. Where possible, discuss the text with them including the events, motives and actions happening to build comprehension and fluency in word reading. Please record this in their reading record (they can take increasing independence of this, writing in the session themselves) and please ensure these are both brought into school each day to allow teaching staff to read with children regularly.
If you have any questions or queries throughout the year, please do approach Miss Watkin or Mrs Plant either at the gate or via email - ewatkin@birstwith.n-yorks.sch.uk.
Useful Website Links (you can use these to supplement and revise learning with your child):
Useful Documents:
Year 3-4 Vocabulary Exploration (This document supports the acquisition, comprehension and spelling of Y3/4 statutory spellings).
2023/4 text maps
These text maps will tell you all about the books we will be reading in class each term. Some of them are stories, others are linked to our wider curriculum subjects like science and history!
2023/24 Timetable
This is our timetable for the half term in Class 2.
Welcome to Year 3!
We love being in Year 3! It is full of so many fun, exciting and inspiring learning activities to enjoy with our friends. Enjoy our gallery of learning and opportunities below.
Summer Term 2023
Andy Goldsworthy Land Art Project
During our Year 6's SATS week, we took our learning outdoors to give them some peace and quiet. We used this amazing opportunity to make the most of nature and explore a truly inspiring artist. We studied a fact file about Andy Goldsworthy which led to our independent challenges that developed our skills in creating 'land art' which encompassed using natural materials to make spirals, arches, towers and more. We used these skills to then work as a team to develop our own 'land art' which we planned, sourced the materials and then created. We had a brilliant time and hope you enjoy looking at some of our artwork!
Spring Term 2023
Stump Cross Caverns Trip
In support of our new science topic, rocks and soils, we adventured deep into the Yorkshire Dales to Stump Cross Caverns to explore and discover what lies below! We were greeted by the staff who were so knowledgeable and shared facts about fossils, stalactites and stalagmites and the process of the cavern creation over 350 million years ago! We ventured down into the cave (helmets on of course!) and explored the 4 miles of wonder. We all had a finger torch to shine and spot fossils, calcite and hidden features including the fairy door quiz where we learnt lots of interesting facts about the caverns. We saw the staggering formations including the wedding cake, the organ and the sleeping cat which were naturally formed dating back 230,000 years. Once we had eaten lunch, we got to dig and choose a little bag full of gems and fossils to take home and explore futher - what a treat! The children adored their experience and cannot thank Stump Cross Caverns enough for being so welcoming and sharing their fascinating natural science with us.
World Book Day 2023
Wow! What a fantastic World Book Day 2023 we had in Class 2. We dressed as hybrid animals to fit with our book theme ' The Barnabus Project' written by the Fan Brothers and loved listening to the story, thinking about the hidden meaning and how this applies to our lives. The children designed their own hybrid animal 'failed projects' and wrote about their special features, made a magnet maze for their character to escape from and enjoyed a boogie to some fitting music that shared similar messaging about accepting yourself. As part of the competition, some children designed a bedroom for their favourite character and the entries were incredible with real creativity shown! We also had opportunity to read for pleasure throughout the day which is always a well adored activity.
Gymnastics
We adore PE in Class 2 and our most recent topic, Gymnastics, was a collective favourite! We have lots of children who take part in this as an extra-curricular activity but still challenged themselves each and every session! The children, taught by Miss Erwin and Mr Whitford from Sporting Influence, worked to practise and perform balances and jumps incorporating interesting travelling into their routines. As a fun finale to our learning, we used the bars to extend and challenge our gymnastic skills by balancing on the equipment. We hope you enjoy seeing some of our super talented class!
Magnificent Magnets
As part of our science topic, Forces and Magnets, the children had an incredibly fun time exploring magnets! They set up little tests and experiments in their groups and explored some of the following concepts:
Do magnets work even when not touching? How far does a magnet have to be to attract or repel an object? Which objects/materials are magnetic and why? What forces can we observe when magnets work?
The children extended on these tests through their homework projects which were super creative. Well done Class 2!
Super Sewing!
During PPA time, Mrs Paxton and Mrs Olive have been working with Class 2 to learn how to sew and cross stitch! The children adored using their fine motor skills to accurately sew in a straight line and create a cross stitch. It was a beautifully calm atmosphere and lots of smiley faces when the children saw their beautiful creations!
Autumn Term 2022
Indian Experience
We had a wonderful time with Sunita from the Indian Experience who spent the day at Birstwith sharing lots of beautiful things from her culture and religion. We enjoyed a very interactive assembly teaching us all about Holi through storytelling, dancing to some funky music and understanding the Hindu prayer. In the afternoon, we had a go at creating some Rangoli patterns using oil pastels and stencils to make symmetrical patterns, blending colours together and unveiling our creations once they were finished! What a wonderful day, thank you once again to Sunita for visiting Birstwith.
Woolly Mammoth Sculptures
As part of our Art topic 'The First Artists', we created our own sculptures of Woolly Mammoths using recycled milk bottles, collaged materials including sugar/tissue paper and wool. We used our prior planning to ensure accuracy against the images of the creatures and our techniques we had practised previously. We have included a photo gallery so you can see a selection of our 'herd'!
Skipton Castle Trip
On Wednesday 28th September 2022, we ventured out with Class 1 to Skipton Castle to support our DT project. We travelled on a lovely coach and walked along the outskirts of the castle, and eventually caught sight of the magnificent castle in front of us! We met our tour guide, Chris, who was great fun and made lots of jokes. We learnt that Skipton in Old English would be 'Sheep Town' as skip = sheep and town = ton. He told us lots of information about the Normans and Vikings then learnt why the castle was built there, and what sort of castle it was (Motte-and-Bailey) as it was built on a hill. After that, we learnt about the architechture of the castle including the names for different parts e.g. drum tower, curtain wall, skirts and drawbridge. Touring the castle was fascinating, exploring the dungeon, kitchen, banqueting hall and more, learning all about the activities of the Clifford family who lived there. After our tour we made observational sketches of the castle, enjoying the beauty of the grounds.
Thank you to the team at Skipton Castle for being so welcoming and sharing the stories of the past with us!
Academic Year 2021/2022 - Year 2
2021/22 Curriculum Overviews
Please explore our Curriculum Overviews to see what exciting things we are learning each half term.
2021/22 Homework Projects
Here are the interesting options for the homework projects we enjoy creating each half term.
Summer Term 2022
Using our new chromebooks to be scientists!
We have been so excited to use our new chromebooks as we love computing in Class 2! Our science topic this term has been 'plants' and our working scientifically skills have been showcased in lots of ways so far, including planting our own beans, observing the growth of plants, comparing and sorting leaves from deciduous and evergreen trees alongside creating some super homework projects. We decided to use the internet as a secondary source to independently investigate more about plants and follow our own interests using a website packed full of information. We recorded this in our science books in different ways, including creating Top Trumps cards, doing some superb observational drawings and labelling the plants with facts we have collected to record our findings. This was a super investigation session, well done Class 2!
Sacred Books
In RE we have been investigating our key question: 'What can we learn from sacred books?' and having lots of respectful and thoughtful discussion about what we can learn from different religions. We were learning all about the Sefer Torah and Yad, discussing how Jewish people treat their sacred book with respect. We enjoyed watching a video of a child who told us all about how the Torah is stored in the Synagogue, including the direction they store the book which holds importance to their religion. We were amazed by the dedication of the scribes who write on the Torah scroll, as it is handwritten and can take over a year whilst making no mistakes! We thought about what this represents for their sacred book, and why they wouldn't want to make any mistakes. To give some real life context, we created our own scrolls and took care over them when writing to ensure we did not make any mistakes and used our neatest handwriting. We enjoyed making the paper look aged through tea staining, and writing a special message to 'Love Everybody' to send a message. We have added some of our work below, we hope you enjoy looking at it!
Platinum Jubilee
To celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee marking 70 years on the throne, we celebrated in true royal style by dressing up in red, white and blue and wearing our own specially designed crowns! We had a wonderful afternoon of fun with parents and carers joining for the celebrations. We started with a procession around the field to showcase our beautiful crowns and doing our best royal wave, partook in some country dancing, enjoyed a yummy cupcake, had a cake decorating competition and auction then sang some special songs including 'A Life Lived with Grace', 'Platinum Jubilee' and the National Anthem. We also took part in a treasure hunt around the field to find facts about the Queen, displayed our own bunting and pictures of the Queen we had designed! Happy Platinum Jubilee
End of SATs Party!
Miss Erwin and Mrs Plant were SO proud of us completing our KS1 SATs with determination, enthusiasm and bundles of positivity! To celebrate, we were surprised with an end of SATs party in the playground complete with ice lollies, sweets and dancing. We were each awarded a trophy for being a 'SATs Superstar' as we had worked so hard, and celebrated each others successes.
Our walk around Birstwith
We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful village in the Yorkshire Dales, so one sunny afternoon we all adventured out to explore our surroundings. We thought about the local community, visited the award-winning village shop, admired the stunning scenery, talked about the history of the village and even met some local furry residents who joined us on our walk! It was very special to enjoy the outdoors and celebrate our beautiful village.
Spring Term 2022
Our trip to Harrogate Theatre!
As a finale to our Tudor’s topic and focus on William Shakespeare, we were so lucky to visit Harrogate Theatre for a behind the scenes tour and Shakespeare workshop!
Shakespeare workshop:
We looked at who Shakespeare was, what he did and his impact as a significant person from the Tudor era. We discussed the 3 styles of play that he created (tragedies, comedies, histories) and focused on A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth. We acted out some Shakespearean insults, dressed up in costumes as fairies and creatures from A Midsummer Night’s Dream then learnt the scene from Macbeth ‘Double, double, toil and trouble’. We also learnt about the Globe Theatre and how Tudor’s would have attended the theatre, including the differences in audience etiquette, rich and poor experiences along with the impact it has had on entertainment today.
Behind the scenes tour:
We were VIP’s and got a behind the scenes look at Harrogate Theatre including learning about set design, stage management, band pit, costumes, audience seating, dressing rooms and the rake of the stage (how it is tilted forwards – very clever!).
Materials Egg-speriment!
We conducted a very fun (and messy!) science experiment to test our knowledge of properties of materials. We were testing the protective properties of some materials by observing how well they protected an egg when it was dropped from a height. We used a variety of materials including:
- Plastic pot
- Felt
- Cotton
- Woven cotton
- Cardboard tube
- Paper towel (1 and 2 layers)
- Paper
We made sure it was a fair test by only changing 1 variable each time (the material) and keeping other things the same (height, using an egg, force of drop). We observed the effect of the drop closely and used descriptive language to describe what had happened (smashed, shattered, splattered, broken in half). Before dropping each egg with a different material, we predicted what would happen using our current knowledge on the properties of materials (thick, stiff, thin, flexible, hard). We then noted down what happened based on each material, and compared materials based on their properties and how well we thought they protected the egg and why. We had so much fun getting messy and experimenting like the fabulous scientists we are!
World Book Day 2022
We adore reading in Class 2 and love our daily story sessions, reading for pleasure and guided reading to build our comprehension skills. Having a whole day to celebrate reading was a joy for us and we loved exploring the poetry book 'Emotional Menagerie'. Each class at Birstwith focused on an emotion from the book, so in Class 2 Miss Erwin decided to focus on 'Kindness' as this is something we are fantastic at feeling and showing to all! We dressed up as bees and flowers to represent bees spreading pollen to grow flowers like we spread kindness to help others grow For our celebration, we created some poems using similes to compare emotions to different animals and situations, identified how we can physically feel some emotions like embarrassment along with some drama scenes all about how we can be kind to people in different scenarios.
Indian Experience
We had a brilliant day with Sunita from the Indian Experience who immersed us in an inspirational day celebrating the Indian culture! We started the day by joining Sunita in the hall to perform some basic Indian dance moves to music then listen to the story of Rama and Sita. We joined in with the story by acting through hand movements and repeating phrases to act as the characters in the story which was lots of fun and so engaging! We then joined Class 1 in the hall and Sunita showed us traditional Indian clothing, including dressing Miss Erwin up in a Sari! We each got to wear a traditional Indian dress and waistcoats along with getting a Bindi sticker to wear on our heads, which we discussed was the appropriate option. Once we were dressed in the intricate, beautiful clothing we participated in some dancing and the styles included Dandiya, Bollywood and Bhangra. We enjoyed this experience so much and were so grateful for Sunita for coming into school!
Outdoor Learning - Literacy Setting Descriptions
As part of our Literacy topic focused on the book 'The Bear and The Piano' by David Litchfield, we wanted to write some setting descriptions to help us when we wrote our own version narrative. We decided to go outside to immerse ourselves in a setting to inspire our descriptions using similes, expanded noun phrases and adverbs. We worked in groups to use all our senses (apart from taste!) to describe the setting, then wrote these down and presented them to our class using our clear and confident voices!
Autumn Term 2021
The Polar Express
Last week we found a mysterious letter delivered to our classroom with Jingle the Elf...what could it be? We opened it and discovered golden tickets to the Polar Express! Then we heard magical bells and went to explore downstairs in the hall and found the Polar Express! We enjoyed watching a POV of a polar train ride and then listened to the wonderful story 'The Polar Express' by Chris Van Allsburg whilst enjoying a delicious hot chocolate. After that, we spotted a stocking on the tree and wondered what could be inside? It was filled with magical silver sleigh bells just like in the story and we each got given one to show we believe!
It was a magical experience, and we have enjoyed doing a 'talk 4 writing' rehearsal of a recount using time conjunctions.
Remembrance Day Poppies
To mark our respect for Remembrance Day in school we decided to contribute to a whole school display where each class created a piece of beautiful art. As our topic has been painting, we decided to paint some poppies to add to the display. However, we have been focusing on sustainability and conservation in our literacy so we decided to make them using recycled bottles! We loved making these and thinking about the significance of the poppy.
Victorian Artefacts
We had a very special visitor come into our class and allow us to investigate some Victorian artefacts of their own which have been passed down through their family! We cleaned the brass and wrote labels for the artefacts using the information we learnt, and enjoyed doing observational drawing of the different objects to decorate their labels.
Zoolab Visit!
We had a very exciting visit from Zoolab linked to our science topic studying living things and their habitats. The visitor brought in some incredible animals and told us some fascinating facts about the animal, the features and their habitats! It was such a brilliant experience and we enjoyed holding or touching the animals carefully and safely.