English in Year 3

This week our Shared Reading lesson in English focused on the skill of retrieving and recording information from a non-fiction text.

We began our lesson with some dictionary work to define some key vocabulary such as: herd, graze and remarkable which we encountered in our reading and used during the independent task.

Next, we read an extract from ‘Lost Species’ by Jessica French all about Stellar’s sea cows. Sea cows were a mammal related to dugongs and manatees, who lived in the Bering Sea. They sadly became extinct at around 1768, just 27 years after they were discovered! This is because sailors hunted sea cows for their meat on long voyages and especially loved the taste of sea cow fat. Another reason for their extinction is that zoologists believed that because the oceans are so vast, it was impossible to kill an entire species!

For the main part of our lesson Year 3 noted down what they already knew about regular cows. The children thought of lots of brilliant ideas including that they graze on grass, are used for milk and meat and live on farms. Then we shared ideas so that we had a bank of facts about cows.

For the independent activity, the children completed a Venn diagram of the similarities and differences between sea cows and regular cows by using our prior knowledge of cows and the text to help us find facts about sea cows.

Well done Year 3 for working so hard during this lesson and I am proud of how many of you reached the challenge!

What was your favourite part of our Shared Reading lesson this week?