Bike Doctor

We had a visit from the Bike Doctor yesterday. He came to do some free safety checks on our bikes in preparation for The Big Pedal.

Big Pedal - May the Forth Be With You

Our 'Big Pedal' this year fell on Star Wars day, so we wanted to see how many 'pilots' we could enlist to help destroy the mysterious 'Death-Star' that has appeared in our school.

Over 100 children responded to our call for help, prepared with their helmets. It has been a big success and we hope some children will continue to use this fun and healthy form of travel in the coming months!   

Speed Limit Checkers

This week, the two classes responsible for improving school travel investigated the speed of cars around our school (4NM and Willow). We measured them on Sandpiper Road and Woburn Road to check whether they kept to the speed limit.

4NM found that while most cars kept to the speed limit on Sandpiper Road, Woburn Road was much more dangerous to cross because some cars travelled above 30 mph. It is very important to keep looking both ways when crossing the road.

Year 3 Local Walk

In the final week of last half-term, Year Three carried out a detailed survey of the local area. We compared different areas by counting the housing, traffic and wild-life considering what artificial changes we thought were positive and negative.

We also posted our letters to the elected Prime Minister (to be opened on the 10th June) in which we explained what we liked about our country and our ideas for an improved future!      

Year 3 Fairthorne Residential

We had smashing weather and great fun for two days at Fairthorne Manor. Fears were conquered, friends were made and challenges were overcome! We are really proud of the good behaviour and cooperation demonstrated by the whole group.

Big Pedal

Congratulations to everyone who took part in the Big Pedal this year. We had nearly 20% of our school travel by bike or scooter, in addition to the huge number that walk every day. Nationally, we came 601st out of nearly 2000 schools and we look forward to doing even better next year!  

Y3 Trip to Local Library

Last week, both classes walked to the Lordshill Library and were able to borrow three books to get them started on a lifetime of access to free books. How exciting!

Dr. Bike

We would like to say a big thank-you to our Bike It Officer Stuart Williams for single-handedly repairing dozens of bikes ready for the Big Pedal. Participation is already high and we want to keep encouraging children to ride to school during the Big Pedal and beyond.

Bike Security

On Thursday, local PCSO Jacob Curran visited the school to remind everyone of what they can do to prevent bike theft and help recovery.

1. Keep your bike locked and inside when possible.
2. Record the serial number located on the bike near the pedals.
3. Register your bike with immobilise.com
4. Take a photo of your bike, clearly showing anything that makes it stand out.

Green Cross Code

Here are the children from the Oakwood "Travel Team" Committee, reciting the Green Cross Code. We did it so that all children in school can learn it too!

On Friday Year 3 walked to Down To Earth Farm, to find out how our learning about Healthy Humans corresponds to the biology of animals. We learned about animals diet, physiology and behaviour by interacting with farm animals and exotic animals from around the world!

Year 3 Curriclum Bulletin: Healthy Humans

Topic

Our topic this term is 'Healthy Humans' which combines our understanding of the parts of the body with helpful routines and behaviour.  It is an important and fun science-based topic which fuels our English, PE, Maths and DT lessons. It is taught in Year 3 because we hope children can get into good habits early on, and in order to give families the opportunity to share their own advice for good health.

The main outcome for this topic will be a pop-up information book about the body and how to look after it.






Reading

This half-term, children will be continuing their journey towards becoming more fluent and enthusiastic readers. We will be guiding them through higher-level texts, building their enjoyment and giving them confidence to access novels.

We will be building on our Retrieval Skills (locating answers), Inference Skills (working out answers) and Choice Skills (explaining the authors decision making process) by using quick R.I.C. activity starters at the beginning of lessons.

Reading lessons have been restructured into two taught lessons a week, focusing on developing specific reading skills. These will alternate between fiction and non-fiction texts and involve the whole class.  We will still have 'fun reading' sessions once a week, and the opportunity to select books in the class library.

Reading logs are still at the forefront of sharing successes and challenges between school and home. Children benefit from encouragement, questioning and sharing the pleasure of reading together at home, so we welcome notes from parents. We also encourage children to reflect on their reading by using the question prompts on the back of their log to write a comment each time. Time is given in school for the children to record their class reading. Reading logs are checked once a week by the class teacher and we ask that they make 4 entries a week.

Our Class Novels this half term are: 'Waiting for Anya' by Michael Morpurgo and Usborne's 'Understanding Your Body' by Rebecca Treays.



We base our English work around our 'Healthy Humans' theme. We will continue to embed grammar, handwriting and spelling (including spelling conventions and topic vocabulary) skills. We will use the storytelling technique of memorising a similar text, to write a discussion text exploring whether or not packed lunches should be banned from school. We will also combine our Design skills to make an information pop-up book about how to look after the body.


Maths

This term we will extend our knowledge of key number facts, and consolidate our written calculation methods - applying them to various contexts including measures and money. We have already introduced the properties of 2D and 3D shape, and we will be investigating real life statistics from our own exercise achievements.

We try to make sure that, as well as making brains ache, maths is fun and engaging. Central to this is the use of maths games, songs and ICT. Children will often access specific online resources via our Google Classroom which they can access from home.

Logs

Logs are an integral part of Year 3 homework and we ask that children work on a different log for no less than 10 to 15 mins at least x3 a week. We also ensure that children have opportunity within school time to work on their logs. The logs system not only supports key English and Maths skills but allows children to achieve them through a series of small steps which installs confidence and a sense of pride when they achieve the different badges. The Year 3 teaching team do our very best to test children's logs daily, in dedicated curriculum time but often in breaks and lunchtimes. We are always impressed with our children's enthusiasm for their logs and but this can mean that we have children waiting to be tested. We have reminded children that it is not only their Year 3 teachers that can test them, but that any adult in the school.

Home Learning

This year your Year 3 child will bring home a range of home learning tasks from reading comprehension and maths tasks to mini projects. We greatly encourage parental involvement in your child's homework: often a home learning task might be a speaking and listening activity centered around talking to an adult about their learning and researching topics a little deeper. Homework tasks are usually given out on a Wednesday and collected in/discussed/shared on a Monday. There are times - like when children have been on a trip - this might change but we endeavor to ensure that ample notice for any task is given.



PE
Tuesday - Keep-fit (outside)
Thursday-  Gymnastics 'Inside the Body' (inside)

Dates for your Diaries

Friday 11th November - Year 3 trip to Cemetery

Be Bright Be Seen

Our Travel Team took charge of their own assembly this morning to bring us a very important message. Cyclists and pedestrians must always wear bright clothing to be safe on the road in the evening - especially if they want to grow up to be able to do all of this:

The Big Pedal

Thank you to everyone who took part in the Big Pedal this year. We had a huge number of children involved. Hopefully, they will continue to enjoy coming to school in an active way.

Year 3 Explore Their Local Area

On Thursday our intrepid Y3 Explorers set out to have a look at their surrounding area. They followed the route on their map themselves. Visiting five different locations, the children compared the biodiversity, the transport and the housing of each area to see how things changed on our journey from our school location to the commercial centre of Lordshill.

BRAKE Giant Walk

For Road Safety Week, every year group went on a Giant Walk around Sandpiper Road and talked about how to stay safe around the roads. We also learned about being bright as the evening falls sooner.

KS1:



KS2:





Be Bright assembly video:

Launch of the Attendance Bike Competition

In Assembly today our Federation Attendance Officer and the owner of The Hub cycle shop in Shirley, helped Mr Taylor launch our exciting Attendance Competition.

Every child in Oakwood has the opportunity to win a brand new bicycle, along with a goody bag of safety equipment including a lock, a water bottle and a stylish helmet!

Every Friday, every child with full attendance for that week will be given a raffle ticket to enter the prize draw. The more weeks that they come in on time without missing a day, the more raffle tickets they will be able to enter.  The winner's name will be drawn from a tombola at the end of the year.

So keep trying your best to come to school on time, and good luck!      

Meet the Travel Team

These are the children who will be encouraging us all to travel to school without using the car. They will also be helping lead the school in staying safe when we are travelling around by being seen when it is dark, and learning the green cross code.

At our first meeting they designed posters to encourage healthy travel to school, which everyone can see in the ICT suite.

Bikeability

Well done to Year 5 for developing their Bike Safety skills!

Big Pedal

Today it was the big pedal and it was great to see so many children getting their bikes ready for Summer. After school the Travel Team set up an obstacle course which was extremely popular!