Year 3 - Debate, discussion and dreadful tales

We started our new topic by unleashing all the evils into the world. There were biting things and itching things. Scrabbling and scratching things. Scraping and oozing things. Pandora’s box was the first story for Year 3 to analyse. It ends with Hope being released from the box, but just a smidgen.

“What did you think of the ending?” I always like to ask. “It wasn’t like the stories we normally read” was the general consensus. And that is true to some degree, as our young storytellers will find out. Greek myths often end in quite a tragic way, and yet they give us so many of our story archetypes. In fact, to start us off we each described a part of a painting and then ordered our sentences out to make a whole class story.

We also put our brains towards what we want to find out in our Topic to help our teachers structure our upcoming lessons. Here’s a sample:

• Did Greeks wear masks in festivals?
• Why are their buildings broken?
• Who are their golden knights?
• Did they have hoses?
• What sports did they play?
• How many god/goddesses did they have?
• How do they think the sun comes and goes?

Additionally, we have been creating our own Greek art on our Chromebooks. We have been getting used to using the styluses to order, group and manipulate images. Some of the finished pieces are quite psychedelic!

You may have also spotted that there is a very current debate about the Parthenon/Elgin Marbles in the news recently. As we are going to see the marbles themselves, the children will be debating points that they agree and disagree with to build up their verbal skills, so be prepared at home for deep discussions!