Welcome to Cedar Class, Year 3  2025-2026.

Cedar Class has 24 children.  The Cedar team are  Mrs Giles (Mon-Thurs),  Mrs Downs (Fri). Our teaching assistant is Mrs Hall and she is in class  every morning. Making learning fun is our speciality!  There are so many fun things  to look forward to in the year ahead.

Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you ever have any queries or concerns. 

Please could all parents teach their children how to tie their shoe laces. Thank you.

Term 4 PE  is Tuesday and Thursday.   Please wear your PE kit to school on these days and bring  extra warm layers for cold days and sun hats for the heat!   

Please bring a coat to school everyday. Children need fresh air and exercise so they can learn best and we do go out in light rain. Remember  a water bottle every day.  A piece of fruit at playtime really helps children to concentrate on learning up to lunch time.   Many thanks.

Useful Information and Links

Term 4

Term 3

By placing a piece of paper over a textured object  and rubbing it with wax crayon or pastel, the impression of the surface is transferred onto the paper, making its texture visible and easier to observe it's finer details.  We explored this in a lesson to think about raised surfaces and their effectiveness for printing  when we create our Iron Man images by pressing into  aluminium toiling foil in a couple of weeks time.

Writing

Our writing  lessons over the last few weeks have been based on the Iron Man story by  Ted Hughes. We have focussed on using different writing techniques and sentence types. The work of the class has blown our socks off, and we have to keep reminding ourselves that it is only a Year 3 class!  Imagine what they will be writing in Year 6!   Here are  just a  few examples to give you  an idea of the breath-taking quality.......

'Tip toeing timidly into the deep dark night, he knew he had to discover more about the Iron Man.

Hogarth peeped.

Hogarth peeped uneasily.

Hogarth peeped uneasily watching.

He heard scurrying  squirrels in the distance, crunching leaves under his muddy feet and rain splashing in puddles of mud.'

'Up on the oak tree tops, an owl sat as it was watching it's prey. Underneath the crunchy leaves, a small hedgehog was making it's home.  But deep underground, a sneaky fox lay in it's burrow.'    - Jake

'Up high on the huge tree tops, a delicate  owl rests with it's beautiful baby beside her.  Down low in the soft soil, a mole burrows, hiding from the foxes.  Behind a shimmering silver birch tree,  vermillion foxes play.'  Mia

'A gloomy mist fell. A translucent fog surrounded. A creepy gloom collapsed.  His torch sprayed light all over a colossal tree."

Generating questions about the Iron Man in role as the young boy, Hogarth from the Iron Man by Ted Hughes.

Where has he come from? Why is he here? Does he speak English? What are his intentions? Is he going to harm us?  Can we trust him? How did he get here? Should we be concerned?  How long will he be here for? Is he from outer space?  What is he made of?  Would he live in peace with us?  What does he eat? When and how did he arrive? Could he become our friend?   Should we  report him and have him sent away?

The answers are unknown. 

Term 2

Look inside the peep hole of the first box number (pictured above),  and what do you see?  Nothing!   Only darkness could be seen.

Shine a light  through the hole  (second picture above) and look again. What do you see this time?    A green plastic dragonfly!   Why couldn't the dragon fly be seen the first time we looked?

What is darkness?    Darkness is the  absence of light.

Have you ever  been in complete darkness,  really, really complete darkness where no light can peep under a door or through a crack in the curtains?

Try to find somewhere to experience it. How does it feel?  Can your eyes actually adjust to the darkness as  some people believe?   

As part of our Stone Age project we have  been reflecting on early drawings.   We imagined how people  in the Stone Age communicated, what they had to say  and even what they had available to use.  Some of the  real earliest  works  were in  deep caves and featured bison, horses, hunting scenes and handprints. They were generally created  using natural earthy colours from minerals and charcoal, and applied  by using fingers or twigs. Many real examples can be seen in France, Spain and Africa and can be over 40,000 years old.

Armed with  a piece of charcoal, piece of paper and the instruction to use  a hand only, children created many  different hand shapes, shades and different messages.  What do you think these pictures communicate?

Term 1

Previous Year 3 Class

Term 6 

Term 5

Term 4

Term 3

Term 2

Dance with Emma Seymour.

The children talked about what they knew about the Stone Age, then they thought about  movements for Hunter Gatherers.

In the lesson they  learnt what a 'gesture' movement  was and explored working at different levels. It was great  fun and  revealed that  there are many talented dancers in our class!

Non-chronological report writing

When learning to write features of different types of text, we often  learn and practise vocabulary.  For non-chronological text features  we have looked at  interesting sentence starters, causal conjunctions, generalisers, and the language of comparison.

Interestingly,    Surprisingly,     Amazingly,    Intriguingly, 

These are all examples of interesting sentence starters which hook the reader in and keep the  text exciting.  We  learn that each of these words  would have a comma after it when used at the start of a sentence.

most     all      some    many    a few    usually    occasionally       the vast majority

These are all examples of generalisers. They often tell us more information  such as how many  and how often. These types of words are useful in report writing to aid understanding.

caused by    results in        so       so that        because       therefore

These are examples of  causal conjunctions.  They are words  or phrases that give reasons or explanations for something in  a sentence.

like     unlike     similar to      related to       differs from

These are examples of language of comparison.  By comparing  and contrasting people can learn about similarities and differences and understand subjects better. 

We rehearse sentences orally using many examples before we begin to write them down. The more we practise, the more confident we get.

We looked at this picture and were able to  zoom in and look at things closely to inspect the finer detail. 

We noticed the feelings of all the different people within the picture.  It differed greatly from person to person and their perspective of things!

The clothing of the people was quite a talking  point and helped us to place this picture in history.

We supposed the professions of people and family relationships and what the interests of people were.

We discussed the light and dark within the picture and how it made us feel.  The tiny moon through the window was observed.

The more we looked, the more we saw!  We had great discussions and everybody noticed many different things.

How good is your superpower of looking!

Some of the facts we have read about Stonehenge

Stonehenge is the world's most famous stone circle.

It is in Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire which is about 2 hours from London.

The land is flat. 

Early British people settled here.

Some people believed the stones had special powers.

The bluestones at Stonehenge come from Wales and they are not actually blue, they are grey!

Some of the sandstones used are 4-7metres high and weigh as much as eight female elephants!

Some of the stones have fallen. Some are missing. Others have been damaged by the weather.

Nowadays, many tourists travel to England to see the  stones.

French

Bonjour! Salut! Since the beginning of the academic year, we have been learning the French letters of the alphabet  and several phonic sounds.

At the time of writing we have learnt these phonics; ch, oi, ou, on, i, ique, ille and in.   We have looked at examples of words containing these phonemes such as;  cinq (5), six (6), cheval (horse), oisseau (bird), famille (family), musique (music) and  cochon (pig) . French accents are coming on really well within the class.  

Below is some of the work completed in the last academic year to give you a flavour of what we get up to in Year 3.

Term 6 -The Tempest by William Shakespeare and Plants

We have been writing our own  beginning of The Tempest story. We have explored ‘ninja’ vocabulary through work with a thesaurus and generated similes, personification and more! We couldn’t be more proud of the  work ALL the children in writing and the progress they are making. 

A strong hurricane was erupting over the island. Palm trees were cut, ripped and sliced.  The gale hissed and slashed off their  branches which sent them falling through the air uncontrollably.   

On a sandy beach, not far from the mouth of his cave,  stood Prospero, the king wizard, his white lily hair and white lily beard streamed out in the hissing wind. His jet black robes flapped around.

By Esme 

Long, long away there was an island perished by a devilish storm. Hurricanes, gales and tornadoes, cracked and thundered. The heavy wind blew and sliced the poor palm trees. They rotated like dancers doing great backflips.  The gales squealed as loud as ten thousand lions roaring at the same time.  The palm trees that slouched were already in the distance.   The storm, which screeched and howled, got heavier and heavier.

On a wet, miserable beach stood mute Prospero, the hairy, wrinkly wizard.  Raging, wild weather yelled into the ears on the wizard.  In the dark, blood-curdling cave, his raven black robe fluttered furiously.

By Milan 

An aggressive, violent, horrific and torturous storm was raging over the island. Palm trees arched and the branches were crooked. They twisted and turned as flew through the air.

On a stormy beach, not far away from the mouth of the cave, Prospero, the evil wizard, was positioned with his  snowy white hair and beard streaming out in the wind. His charcoal robes were flapping around him.

By Ryan

Term 5 -Take One Tale and Amazing Bodies

Collective class thoughts on  what could be the odd one out.

Snake

• only one that doesn't have legs/feet/only one that moves by slithering
• only one that is a reptile
• has a very flexible spine and can coil right up
• it's spine is made up of many bones (between 200-400 vertebrae)
• it  may have more bones than the others

Elephant (or is it a woolly mammoth?)

• it has tusks
• only mammal
• it has the biggest, strongest, heaviest bone
• it is the only one with  4 legs/ it is the only quadruped
• it has teeth
• could be the only one extinct now if it is a woolly mammoth
• maybe it has the least number of it's species left in the world 
• it is the only one that doesn't lay eggs
• only one with ears on the outside

Bird

• only one that would have had feathers
• it cold fly
• only one with a beak/wings
• it has small bones
• birds have hollow bones
• it has claws
• it has 2 feet/ is a biped

What else could we have added?

Term 4 - 'May the Force Be With You' and  Robots

"Maybe the odd one out is the third one because 1 and 2 have humans involved. No-one is touching anything in number 3.

"Could it be the drawer because  it is the only one that has a push and pull?"

"It's the one with the magnet because it is the only one with a magnetic force."

What other reasons could there be?

Term 3 Take One Piece and Romans

Give it a title

We had to create the best name for the music that we had heard.   We had no idea what it was actually called. Why not listen to Anna Meredith's 'Connect It' and  see which you think  suits it best from the suggestions below.  In class we talked about everyone  having a different and individual response to what we had heard, therefore no suggestions are wrong!  We talked about  the need for capitalisation of the title and the possibility of using  alliteration to make it catchy. We agreed that  a short title would be more  memorable than a long  choice of words. 

Puffy Penguins

Banging Sticks

The Terrible War Goes On

Roman Fight

Banging Fireworks

Kicking Rockstar

Bang Go Intrigued Indians

Roman Battle

Banging Romans

Dance Along

Battle Brothers

Loud Lane

Tango Dancing

Titanium Hero

Sound Wave

Battle Of Shipwrecked Boats

Cavemen Singing of Torture

Banging Drums

Clap Stomp Clank Boom

People Who Kill

Music of the Beat

Noise From the Jungle

Raging Fireworks