DASP TREBLES

DASP TREBLES is a unique opportunity for your son to sing in a quality, all boys choir. We invite all boys with unbroken voices above the age of 6 to take part, no audition required. The choir will sing a church repertoire, with opportunities for performance at evensongs and services. DASP TREBLES will take place on Thursdays: 1545 – 1615 at the Thomas Hardye School. To take part, please email Peter Oakes (poakes@thomas-hardye.dorset.sch.uk) Cost is £2.50 per session, billed on an half-termly basis.

Moses

In the next couple of weeks, Year 3 will be learning about the story of Moses and the Israelites' escape from slavery in Egypt. I would like to encourage the children to see what they can find out about this exciting story! Mr Farrington

Science Family Fun - THS

The Thomas Hardye School is pleased to invite you on Saturday 17th March, 2012 from 1.00 till 4.00pm to 'Science Family Fun' in the Science Area. Bring your family and friends and come and work through a range of experiments and problem solving activities. This is a rolling programme of events involving St. Osmund's, Dorchester Middle, Puddletown St. Mary's and the Thomas Hardye School. Participating students will be awarded a school ceetificate. Attendance at three Science Family Fun Days will lead to the award of a CREST Science Investigators Star certificate. -Celebrating National Science and Engineering Week "Our World in Motion" - Open to all members of the public - Admission free - Refreshment available donations to Julia's House - Fair Trade produce available.

A note from Mr. Butcher's Blog - FREE SMARTIES

Taken from Mr. Butcher's Blog - I (Mr. Butcher) am giving away Free tubes of smarties to those that want to help with fundraising. There is a catch……you can eat the smarties but then save up all those odd 20 pence pieces putting them in the empty tube, once full you bring the tube to me with the money inside (about £6) and I will give you a new tube full of smarties to start all over again.

Song for Dorchester - Tag Cloud

Thank you to everyone who contributed to our tag cloud for the 'Song for Dorchester'. The tag cloud created can now be seen by clicking the image on our blog, the more popular a word was, the bigger it appears in our tag cloud. I have now sent this through to the Mayor of Dorchester so that it can be used as part of the wider project. Thank-you again for your help. Mr. Spracklen

Home Learning RE

This week Year 3 have been learning about the special day for Jews. We watched a video and looked at some special objects used by a Jewish family to celebrate Shabbat. Can the children find out some more information about this special day? Next week we shall be finding out about another Jewish festival called Succot.

Mr Farrington

Mathletics

Home Learning Mathletics


We are sending home a reminder for you of your child’s password for them to access the Mathletics Site.

The children are still very much enjoying using this site and making good progress through the appropriate levels.

Duncan MacBean

Year 3 Maths Homework - 20th January

Homework – 20th January 2012 (Year 3)


This week we have been working on our place value. I include a sheet that I have designed to explain some of the strategies we use in school to teach place value to children. Feel free to have a go at home, talk about the value of digits and start reading bigger numbers. At the bottom of the sheets you will find some useful web links to help you and your children learn more online.

There are also some Mathletics worksheets to have a go with.

Also we have started to learn our times tables. Below are the 45 times table facts up to 10x10 that the children need to learn. Highlight each one as your child learns it, why not keep a copy stuck to the fridge! Can you fill the mountain?



10x10

9x10 9x9

8x10 8x9 8x8

7x10 7x9 7x8 7x7

6x10 6x9 6x8 6x7 6x6

5x10 5x9 5x8 5x7 5x6 5x5

4x10 4x9 4x8 4x7 4x6 4x5 4x4

3x10 3x9 3x8 3x7 3x6 3x5 3x4 3x3

2x10 2x9 2x8 2x7 2x6 2x5 2x4 2x3 2x2

Video Problems

If you are having any difficulties in playing the Year 3Parent Information Session video through the school website please can I encourage you to download a copy to play in one of two formats: .m4v and .wmv (recommended for Windows users). These downloadable videos are listed on the same webpage as the original.

New school certificates...

New Certificates


You may be aware if your child has received any certificates recently that we have changed our use of certificates, cups and stickers to uniform use throughout the school and also to focus on children who work exceptionally hard throughout the school year.

Below is a summary of the changes we have made.

Each term cups and certificates are handed out to individual children in each class for the following subjects:

Creative Arts, PE, Maths, English and ICT.

Seven children per class are also awarded certificates for demonstrating any of the 7 aspects of our Caterpillar Citizenship standards.

We also have two new certificates which will be handed out in assemblies by Mr Farrington, these are, ‘Home School Learning’ and ‘WOW! Writing’.

Certificates which will be used in Praise assemblies or throughout the week by the Class teacher are:

* Well done for ___ from your class teacher

* ______ has been praised today in Praise assembly


A new sticker is going to be handed out throughout the week by team members for children who display excellent citizenship skills on a daily basis.

* ‘I got this for being a good citizen!’ Look out for these!!


New Praise cards

We have designed new praise cards which will solely focus on behaviour. The new system will split the school into two stages, KS1 and KS2. Each child will have a praise card and when excellent behaviour has been seen a child will be awarded a stamp on their card. The children will work towards the following levels:

KS 1 - Bronze (25), Silver (50), Gold (75), and then platinum (100)

They will then begin again on a new card when entering Yr 3.

KS 2 – Bronze (25), Silver (50), Gold (75), and then platinum (100)

When the child achieves an award they will receive a colour certificate in whole school assembly by Mr Farrington.

I hope this clarifies what you may have been seeing coming home recently. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask the class teachers about the new system.

Mrs Mewett

Mr. Butcher's Blog

Mr. Butcher (site manager) will be embarking on a Trek in Nepal this May to raise funds for the Fostering Network. To keep us up to date with his fundraising progress and how the trip goes, Mr. Butcher has kindly set up his own blog which can be accessed by clicking the link on the school homepage or by going direct to: http://www.johnfbutcher.blog.com/. Please check out the blog and consider sponsoring Mr. Butcher for this worthwhile charity.

Home Learning - Mythical Creatures

Mythical Creatures
Can you find the rest of the mythical creatures on the “Word Search”?


Can you do some research and find out about one of these mythical creatures? What do they look like? What are they like as characters? What adjectives might describe them? Can you draw a picture?

DM

Parent Information Session

If you were unable to attend Friday's parent information session you can now view the video of the session online. To view the video please visit the school website and click on the parent tab at the top of the page. Next click the Year 3 button on the right hand side, a link is then given to the video. The video should play on the school website if you have QuickTime installed, alternatively you can download a copy to play in various formats. We would welcome your feedback on this new way of sharing this information. Comments can be made directly to Mr. MacBean or through writing a comment on the class blog, simply click the blog title on the school website. Mr. Spracklen

POWSA Easyfundraising.org.uk

POWSA have raised £139.83 (as at 13/01/12) with easyfundraising.org.uk so far but we need your help to keep donations coming in. Sign up at http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/powsa and start making a difference...simply by shopping. Shop Online and Raise Money! Have you heard about easyfundraising yet? It’s the easiest way to help raise money for Prince Of Wales School Association POWSA - Dorchester! If you already shop online with retailers such as Amazon, M&S, Argos, John Lewis, Comet, Vodafone, eBay, Boden and Play.com, then we need you to sign up for free to raise money while you shop! So how does it work?  You shop directly with the retailer as you would normally, but if you sign up to http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/powsa for free and use the links on the easyfundraising site to take you to the retailer, then a percentage of whatever you spend comes directly to us at no extra cost to yourself. How much can you raise?Spend £100 with M&S online or Amazon and you raise £2.50 for us. £100 with WH Smith puts £2.00 in our pocket and so on. There's over 2,000 retailers on their site, and some of the donations can be as much as 15% of your purchase. Save money too! Easyfundraising is FREE to use plus you'll get access to hundreds of exclusive discounts and voucher codes, so not only will you be helping us, you’ll be saving money yourself.

Home learning: RE

This week we have been learning more about the Jewish synagogue. Can you find out more about how Jews worship in the synagogue? What things would you see in the synagogue?

Well done to those children who found out a bit more about the Torah last week!

Mr Farrington

La Jolie Ronde

Just a reminder that we have attracted a brand new Spanish club to our school which has been successful in other First schools in the locality. At present a YR,1 and 2 club is running after school on a Thursday, however there is a lot of interest for a Yr 3&4 club, we just need a couple more names to make this viable.

Class teachers or the school office will be able to give you more information, or likewise see me (here for a couple more weeks yet, hopefully!).


Mrs Mewett

Streetwise Competition

LV=Streetwise is a Safety Activity Centre in Bournemouth that pupils in Year 2 visit each year. This year they are running a schools' competition to re-name the railway station (currently Streetwise Central). The overall winner's prize is First Class return train travel to London and entrance to Madame Tussauds for a family of four, with a runner up cheque for £50. There are two age groups - 8 and under and 11 and under - and both winners will be invited to LV=Streetwise for a presentation photograph in early April with one or more of the judges at the newly named railway station. The closing date is Friday 30th March 2012 giving the overall winner an exciting day out in London for the Easter holidays! If you would like more information or would like to enter the competition you can visit: http://www.streetwise.org.uk/new/index.php?ref=63 to find out more.

I.C.T - I am blown away!

I unofficially asked Year 3 to make me a stop-motion animation film at home as part of last week’s I.C.T lesson in which we began our work on animation/pixilation. This request was made on a ‘if you would like to... I would be very impressed’ basis - I can’t believe the response I have had already though and I look forward to watching the animations tomorrow. I am blogging about this because if anyone else would like to have a go at making a stop-motion animation at home it is never too late. There is lots of freeware software out there for Windows, Mac and iPhone/Android phones that will let you do this either with your digital camera or webcam and if you would like any help or advice I would be happy to discuss this over with you. Last year this class wowed me with their science experiment videos that made a mark nationally in the Teaching Awards. I am now being blown away again by the pupils creativity and urge you to keep those films coming! Mr. Spracklen

Some home learning!

This term we shall be learning more about the religion of Judaism with Mr Farrington in our RE lessons.

Today we have learnt a little about the Holy Writings of Judaism.

Can you find out more about the Torah?

Literacy study - Myths and Legends

Happy New Year!
I hope you've had a great Holiday.
I did.
I thought the POWSA Christmas pudding was delicious! And so easy in the microwave too.

Right,.. down to business. The literacy unit that the children in Year 3 will be studying when they get back is a personal favourite of mine: Myths and Legends.
We will be placing an emphasis on the myths and legends from ancient Greece.

Here is some of the guidance offered for this "topic" in the National Literacy Stategy. I will be using this as a basic approach over the next 4 weeks:

  Myths, legends, fables, traditional tales (4 weeks)


This is the second of four narrative units in Year 3. The unit builds on the use of setting and sequencing of narrative events leading to a resolution from unit 1 on stories with familiar settings. This unit can be linked to other curriculum subjects and themes.

Phase 1
Compare a range of myths. Analyse a quest myth, identifying the text structure and language features.
Phase 2
Identify how settings impact on events in a quest myth. Create an interactive story map to support planning a quest myth. Use oral storytelling to plan a quest myth.
Phase 3
Children write their own quest myth incorporating settings that provide a challenge and settings with characters that support the main character.

Overview
Read a range of myths, legends, fables and traditional tales, identify and discuss common themes, for example good over evil, wise over foolish, etc. Sequence the key events using lists, maps and storyboards and describe the key characters with reference to the text. Demonstrate how the sequence of events can be varied. Using a familiar story theme, children plan and write own stories in style of myth/legend/fable, etc.

A Mr MacBean thought
Some of those ancient tales of monsters and heroes can be a bit on the gruesome side. I do try to make sure I present the stories in an appropriately playful way so that they are not too terrifying! I am always sure to point out that this is, of course, fiction and that you're not going to bump into Medusa in Tesco. However, jokes aside, if any of the children do get scared of any of the content please do let me know as soon as possible.
(They usually love it! And the more gruesome the better!)