Welcome to Woodpeckers Class

Please look on here often in order to find out what we got up to, examples of excellent work, as well as for homework, letters and topic webs.

Current Woodpeckers Stars

Star of the Week: Hugh for always getting on with his work in a focussed manner.

Super Speller: Bertie for trying hard with his spellings.

We walked around the village mapping the roads and key features to make a map of our local area. Our maps were very interesting. Even though we went in a loop, some versions had us just go in a straight line, whereas others had our roads going in different directions! We realised how hard it was to make accurate maps originally, and how modern technology makes it much easier.

Well done everyone. We had some lovely red, blue, yellow and white costumes for the Malaysian flag colours. There were also some spectacular costumes and homemade t-shirts. Wonderful.

Terima kasih.

We tasted different fruit associated with Malaysia: dragon fruit, pomegranate, passion fruit, mango and papaya. We all agreed that the dragon fruit was our favourite, and the others had mixed reviews with some loves and some no thank yous. The children all tried each type, so well done for being brave. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a durian fruit to try as the children were not brave enough to get past the famous smell.

We have also learnt about landmarks, geography, the multicultural diversity, money, games and clothes. One of favourites was the rafflesia, possibly because again it has a very powerful smell! We even made a life size model.

We looked at writing poetry in the form of the subject, with some good results. Here is my favourite by Vienna.

We had a great day out on our Education Excursion to Canterbury Cathedral to learn more about the Anglo-Saxon links and establishment of the St Augustine's Abbey. The children were brilliantly behaved as usual, and were praised by everybody we worked with. They enjoyed the Bus Game so much, they played this on their own - being quiet for as long as possible!

Once it came to answering questions though, the children were very active. They took a tour of the building, hearing tales and looking at images to learn the same way as the majority of the Anglo-Saxon folk would have learnt. The activities involved: writing with a quill; making our own Canterbury Crosses; building the arches within the building; chipping our signs into the rock; stained glass window images; and building models of the cathedral.

We looked at food chains, so investigating the wildlife in the pond area. We saw birds (pigeons and common gulls), bugs (earthworms, woodlice), water bugs (still investigating exactly what these were) and newts. There was also evidence of life: snail shells that had been eaten; spider's web; chestnut with a peck mark out of it; and chewed logs.

We were able to make different food chains, by working out what had eaten what.

We tested the catapults we made in DT during the Romans Topic with some interesting results. Two groups flew backwards and destroyed their own legionnaires! One group snapped their cantilever by trying too hard. However, we ended up with a very clear longest shot by the purple team: Savanna, Elodie, Olive, Isaac, Lomhara and Sienna.

Well done, everyone for your efforts.

We investigated different size elastic bands and differently scrunched balls of paper to see which worked best. We will now use this information to design our own Roman catapult ready to build.

Year 3 Forest School Photos

Please click the link below to see the Year 3s in Forest School action.

We had a wonderful trip to Kent Life for our Stone Age topic finale, but unfortunately Mr Peall forgot the iPad. However, the children were great, showing how much they had remembered and learning new facts from the experts we meet.

We found materials that were naturally in our environment to make paint just like the Stone Age artists. We crushed some, rubbed some and mixed some with water. It was great fun and we did not get messy!