Chipping Ongar Primary School Oak Class

Oak Class (Year 3) is taught by Miss Albiston, the class teacher, and Mrs Mountney, the HLTA.

Recently, we have been learning all about India and the religion of Hinduism. We were lucky enough to visit the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Hindu Temple in London and experience a light ceremony while we were there. This helped us to understand what it would be like to follow Hindiusm and the beliefs that are important to this religion.

In Science, we have been learning about plants. We found out that plants need male ad female parts to reproduce and bright flowers help to attract insects for pollination. The most fascinating thing that we learnt was why some dandelions are yellow and some are white, studying closely the change that takes place after fertilisation and the white seed head that develops. We have been investigating how water travels up the stem to the flower and leaves, setting up our own experiement with celery and food colouring. Here is what happened on our second attempt:

We labelled the different parts of the plant after dissecting tulips:

As part of a cross-curricular Maths day about the human body, we asked the question: "Does being taller help you to jump further?" and investigated by measuring the height of every child in the class and recording distances for a standing long jump. We then stood in order of shortest to longest jump and observed to see if we were in height order. We concluded that being taller does help, but technique is also very important, as some of the longest jumps were performed by children who were not necessarily that tall.

As part of the Year 3 National Curriculum, we are learning to recite poetry off by heart and perform to a wider audience. Here are some of our performances:

We also wrote our own versions of 'Mix a Pancake' and performed these poems to the rest of the class.