Year 3
Welcome to Year 3!
The Year 3 team is Miss Cockle, Mr Claridge and our Teaching Assistants are Mrs Riley, Mrs Curtis and Miss Akram. As this is the beginning of your child's journey at our school, it is our aim to create a happy and supportive environment so they feel settled. We have a busy and exciting curriculum planned to inspire a love of learning in Year 3 and beyond!
English (Spring Term)
In the Spring Term, we will be reading The Iron Man by Ted Hughes as inspiration for story openings. As a class, we will investigate different types of story opening and discover which we prefer as a reader and why. We will then 'read as a reader' and start to unpick the language techniques Ted Hughes has used to provide suspense in his writing. This work will continue to build on descriptive language for characters and settings, and introduce the children to similes, metaphors and onomatopoeia.
We will continue to work hard to learn key spellings and practise cursive handwriting so that we begin to feel like proud writers. We encourage parents to consolidate this learning at home and links to key words and spelling strategies can be found below.
Phonics Play is also a great resource with many games and strategies for spelling that you can sign up to for free.
You can also log on to Letterjoin (www.letterjoin.co.uk) to support your children with the cursive letter formation.
English (Autumn Term):
In the Autumn Term, we will focus on developing the children's descriptive language and encouraging a love of reading through the study of Author's such as; Anthony Browne, Roald Dahl, Jeff Browne and Chris Van Allsburg. We take a very practical approach to the teaching of English, using exciting 'hooks', to inspire and engage children. We have crawled through tunnels and even traveled on the Polar Express to fully immerse the children in the texts.
We will also be working hard to learn key spellings and practise cursive handwriting so that we begin to feel like proud writers. We encourage parents to consolidate this learning at home and links to key words and spelling strategies can be found below. Phonics Play is also a great resource with many games and strategies for spelling that you can sign up to for free. You can also log on to Letterjoin (www.letterjoin.co.uk) to support your children with the cursive letter formation.
Maths (Spring Term):
For the first part of Spring term, we continue with our topic 'Multiplication and Division' where we look in more detail at formal written methods for both.
After learning about Money, where we will look at the value of different coins, their value and how to answer word problems involving money using our addition and subtraction knowledge.
We will then be learning about Statistics and how to read, create and use pictograms, bar charts and tables.
Then we move on to 'Measurement' where we focus on length and mass. Lots of practical maths will be used to ensure that the children are confident reading scales. Any practice at home would be good, especially measuring out ingredients for baking! Converting between different units of measure will be used to solve word problems.
Finally, we move onto our topic 'Fractions' where we focus on finding the fractions of shapes and numbers. As well as this, we look at equivalent fractions ordering and comparing fractions.
Maths (Autumn Term):
During the Autumn term in Maths we like to ensure that the children have a secure grasp of place value and number knowledge. The first topic we cover is numbers to 1000, where the children are able to consolidate skills learnt from Key Stage one.
After this, the majority of the Autumn term is spent on the four main operations + - x ÷. Children spend a long term consolidating the column method for subtraction and addition, with and without renaming.
When working on multiplication and division, we encourage lots of practical activities such as using cubes to make 'groups of'.
To help the children with this, any extra practice on times tables at home would be great, especially the 3s, 4s and 8s.
Topic (Spring Term):
For the first half of Spring term, we have been learning about our Topic Mighty Metals where we have had a trip to the park to investigate forces and see the different forces needed to be applied to different park equipment. We will also be going on a trip to Greatmoor Energy Centre to see how our household waste gets turned into energy and we will be learning how to reduce, reuse and recycle. We thought this would fit in perfectly with our topic of Mighty Metals.
Topic (Autumn Term):
For the first half of the Autumn term, we have looked at the digestive system and we had a doctor come into our lesson where we he answered any questions we had about the digestive system. We had fun designing our own smoothie packaging, creating smoothies and then making them. They tasted great.
During the second half of the Autumn term , we looked at our topic of Tribal Tales. We started off by creating a timeline and were surprised to see how long ago the Bronze Age was, we measured it out across the playground and field using one step for 100 years. We looked at how they lived and how they changed through the ages.
PE (Spring Term):
This term the children will be learning gymnastics and fitness in school. They will also start swimming once a week at the local pool. Swimming will be every Friday and the children will need to remember their costume, towel, hat and goggles (if a letter is written for consent).
After half term, the children will be lucky enough to do some football training with MK Dons!
Please remember, our PE days are now Monday and Tuesday so please ensure the children have a clean PE kit in on Monday each week. This includes a house colour T.Shirt, white PE shorts, trainers and a change of socks for outdoor PE. In winter months, joggers and a warm sweatshirt are required.
For safety reasons, long hair should be tied back and earrings should not be worn.
PE (Autumn Term):
Our PE days are Tuesday and Thursday so please ensure the children have a clean PE kit in on Monday each week. This includes a house colour T.Shirt, white PE shorts, trainers and a change of socks for outdoor PE. In winter months, joggers and a warm sweatshirt are required.
For safety reasons, long hair should be tied back and earrings should not be worn.
Science (Autumn Term)
This term, the children have been learning about Teeth and Healthy Eating. We have learnt about the importance of nutrition and have researched different food groups. We evaluated our lunch boxes to check we were eating a balanced diet.
Year 3 have identified the main body parts associated with the digestive system and have identified their special functions. They presented their findings by drawing on t-shirts which they then modelled.
Science (Spring Term)
The children will start the term by learning about Magnets and Forces. They will have plenty of opportunity to use equipment to find out how magnets work and to identify magnetic materials. We will also be carrying out experiments and the children will start to learn the importance of carrying out a fair test.
Later, the children will study Rocks and Soils. The children will learn about the three different types of rocks and how they are formed. They will investigate the properties of rocks and explore how fossils are formed. We will discover how soil is made and then explore different types of soil.