Tuesday 10th February 2026
Safer Internet Day
This week was a very important day in the calendar, Safer Internet Day. This is a day that happens once per year to promote staying safe online. Each year, there is a different theme and this year’s theme was ‘Safe Use of AI’. AI is becoming more and more common in our daily lives, so we need to know how to safely use these programs. We learned what a chatbot is through a BBC Live Lesson, where we created a chatbot for vultures, which would give information about vultures to anyone who asked.
Then, we learned about some ways that we can use AI, such as Alexa and other chatbots. We learned that there are some ways which are safe that we should use AI for, like to play songs with Alexa or ask a question we do not know the answer to. We also learned there are some ways we should not use AI, like to do any of our homework for us or to make silly pictures of our friends. Finally, we used everything we learned to create posters showing some safe ways to use AI.
Friday 6th February 2026
Visit to The Glasshouse
Today, Year 3 had a very exciting Friday! We got on the bus at 10 o’clock and made our way down to The Glasshouse. We arrived at 10.50, where met by the people who would be guiding us. First, we were split into two groups, Northern Europe and Southern Europe. In Southern Europe, our first activity was to get a tour of the building. We were able to see both of the Sage rooms (where performances happen), a room for rehearsals and even got a surprise performance from a class of people learning to play the ukelele!
Then, it was time for lunch (thankfully, we were all starving!). We all sat and had lunch with our friends in our common area.
It was then time for our Barbour workshop. For this, we learned about different notes and the different sections of an Orchestra; string, percussion, brass and woodwind. We would roll a dice, which would give us a number between one and twelve, which we would use to select a note. Once we had 4 notes, we could put them together to make a harmony. We did this twice, before we used these notes to bring in the different sections of the orchestra (on a computer) to play them. This helped to create long, scary sounds, which sounded like it would go well with a big monster in a film!
After a short break, we all got back together for a very special treat. We got to be in the audience for an open rehearsal by the NRFH. It was amazing to get to see these talented musicians perform live!
Sadly, that was all we had time for on this trip and we had to get back to school. This was such an amazing trip and we are so glad we were able to experience it!
W/b 26/01/26
Computing – Emails
Over the past few weeks in our Computing lessons, we have been learning a very useful skill, how to write emails! Our first lesson is all about what an email is. We learned that an email is an electronic form of communication, like a letter that you send to someone over the internet rather than through the post. We learned about email addresses and that funny @ symbol that we use in them, the subject line and how that is a title for an email and how we normally structure an email and write them to people. We finished this lesson by writing an email to one of our friends in the class and delivering them to them.
The next week, we looked mainly at the email address that we have to enter to send an email. We found that this is really important to make sure our email gets sent and goes to the person that we want to send it to. We found that there are many different places these emails could end up if we do not enter them right. They should go to the persons ‘Inbox’, but could go into our ‘Undelivered’ box if it is not sent right. We had these boxes set up around the room and we wrote an email to Mr Robinson, before placing them in the ‘Sent’ box. They would get checked for the email address and if they were correct, they would go to his inbox and he would receive them. If not, they would bounce back into our ‘Undelivered’ box, and we would check the email address, correct it and send it again.
This week, we were learning about adding attachments to emails. We learned what an attachment is, where you can add something on to an email, such as a picture or a document. We then got our emails back that we sent last week, a piece of paper and a paperclip. With our piece of paper, we were able to draw a picture to go with our email, add it to our email with a paperclip and send them to Mr Robinson again. Mr Robinson then took them from his ‘Inbox’ and read some of our emails our loud!
W/b 19/01/26
National Handwriting Day
It has been another very busy week in Southern Europe class this week! On Friday, it was National Handwriting Day. In our class we are always encouraged to use our best handwriting, but today we got a chance to focus and show what our best handwriting really looks like. First, we talked about how we do our best handwriting: sitting up straight, having a nice sharp pencil, keeping our paper flat on the table and applying the appropriate amount of pressure when we put pencil to paper. Then, we had a look at some finger exercises to warm up our hands, like you would warm up before a sport! Finally, we read a poem called ‘Others’. We chose a line from the poem and wrote it in our best handwriting, using all the things we had practiced before. Then, we had a go at writing the full poem, taking our time to make sure our presentation was as good as it can be. At the end, we were able to decorate the page as well.
Everyone tried their best to produce their best piece of work, well done Southern Europe!
W/b 12/01/26
PE – Gymnastics
This week has been another busy week in Southern Europe! This half term, on Thursday mornings, we are going to the dance studio to do some gymnastics. Last week, we learned the importance of stretching, as this will help us to avoid injury when doing gymnastics. After our stretches, we started to learn about point balances and patch balances. We learned that a point balance is a balance on a small body part, like a foot or a hand. There are lots of different versions of these, for example, three-point balances have three small parts of your body on the ground, like two feet and one hand. We had a practice at lots of different types of point balances, and some patch balances, which are on a big body part, such as your back. Finally, we made a sequence with two-point balances and two patch balances with our partner!
This week, we moved on to looking at jumps. We learned that when we jump, we should land with our hands in front of us, our heads pointing forwards and our knees bent, feeling the tension in our muscles. We practiced this technique before moving on to some different types of jumps. We had a go at a straight jump, a star jump and a tuck jump. When we watched our partner do these jumps, we would give them feedback on what they could do differently to improve their jump. We so much fun and everyone worked really well together!
W/b 05/01/2026
Maths – Angles
After a lovely Christmas break, we have come back this week with renewed energy and had a great week in Southern Europe! In maths this week, we have been learning about different types of angles. On Monday, we used two pieces of card and a split pin to make some ‘angle checkers’, which we used throughout this week in our lessons. We also learned about three different types of angles; right angles, acute angles (smaller than a right angle) and obtuse angles (bigger than a right angle). We used our angle checkers to show these angles.
On Tuesday, we learned about different types of shapes, triangles and quadrilaterals. We learned that a triangle is a shape with three sides and three angles, while a quadrilateral is a four-sided shape with three sides. We drew some of these in our books and used our angle checkers to see what kind of angles these shapes had. On Wednesday, we learned that a right angle is also a quarter turn. We used our angle checkers to find right angles in the classroom and to navigate a treasure map!
Finally, on Thursday and Friday, we learned some more about quadrilaterals. We learned that a rectangle is a quadrilateral with four right angles and two pairs of equal sides. We also learned that a square is a quadrilateral with four equal sides and four right angles.