Our Year 3 Class  

A very warm welcome to our Year 3 class page.  In Year 3 the children are new to the juniors and sometimes a little nervous, so they need to spend time adjusting to new routines and expectations. The children enjoy the opportunity to develop their skills further and generally settle in really quickly to Key Stage 2. They become confident working both independently and in groups, seeing the huge benefits of sharing their ideas and learning. They especially enjoy Wednesdays because they get to go swimming! 

Our Year 3 Class 2024-2025

Class Information

This half term…Spring Term 1 (January - February 2025)

We have lots to do! It's a melting pot of an adventure as we look at several different themes this half term. It’s a great half term to teach and a great half term to learn.

English - Our class reader for this half term is Yours Sincerely, Giraffe. This is a really lighthearted story about determined friendship and understanding others. The children always enjoy it, especially when they are asked to draw what they think giraffe looks like at the end!

In writing, the children will bring the horrid history of London to life! Working alongside their history topic, they will write a non-chronological report all about the Tower of London. They will then choose something that has caught their imagination about London during their learning to research and write their own element of the report. The children will also link their written work to their science topic of Light (and Dark). They will use Orion and the Dark, The Nightbox and The Dark to help them gain many ideas to support their narrative writing, flipping the plot of ‘The Owl Who was Afraid of the Dark’ to create their own character ‘Dark’ who will be frightened of the Light. These are all lovely story and picture books for the children and will be used within the Reading Skills sessions to develop their inference skills.

The above will help us to learn grammar objectives including apostrophes, using inverted commas and subordinate clauses and conjunctions. We will also review different sentence types, using commas correctly between adjectives and lists, word classes and sentence structure. 

Spellings - We continue to use Spelling Shed to support our learning, following the Year 3 RWI scheme as well as dipping back to review any spelling rules needed. We will also focus on the Year 3 statutory word lists. We begin, however, with spellings of contractions!

Maths-  Once we have completed the current addition and subtraction unit, this work will then become daily starter work in Number Ninjas. Children need to be able to calculate subtracting multiples of tens and hundreds mentally as well as consistently and accurately apply written methods, and so arithmetic practice will be paramount. We will then move on to multiplication and division. For Year 3 we focus on x3 x4 and x8, learning multiplication and division facts as well as looking how they are related. For example 2 x 6 = 12 4 x 6 = 24, which is double. By the end of the term, we aim to have the children familiar with written methods for each of the operations. This half term we will also continue to test the children regularly on times tables, so the use of TT Rockstars is highly recommended and we will be pushing our mental recall of number bonds within 10.

Science - The children move onto understanding light and dark. Through stories such as Orion and the Dark and The Nightbox, we consider what dark is and what it is not. The class will explore light sources and address some common misconceptions around these, before learning about reflection and reflective materials. We then work scientifically by investigating shadows - how they are made and patterns of their sizes throughout the day. The children also find out which material is best to make a shadow puppet theatre and perform their own show of Humpty Dumpty.

History & DT - This half term the children meet their first history topic! Following the theme of 'The Power of the Monarchy', they will discover who some of Britain's important Kings and Queens were and why our King today has very little power compared to monarchs one thousand years ago. They will practise their chronology skills by putting each monarch within a time line which will also contain other key events in British history. Our little historians also take a small step in developing their skills by considering how some Kings and Queens were portrayed through propaganda and why some sources aren't very reliable.

Their Design & Technology structures unit will see the children become a real life William the Conqueror as design and build their own castle. The class will identify key features and understand how the structure is made up of different 3D shapes. This follows on really nicely from last half term’s Art sculpture unit using shape. They will design their castle against design criteria and build it, taking stiffness and strength into consideration and using 2D nets to build 3D shapes.

Computing - 'Journey inside a computer' - The children will recognise basic inputs and outputs and that a computer follows instructions following an algorithm. They build a paper laptop to help them identify the parts of computer and understand their purpose including the components that make up the memory. They create a giant piece of artwork by following their own algorithm, helping them to understand how different parts each follow an algorithm.   
   

French - In this half term, in a unit called 'French Playground Games - Numbers, Age and Time', the children will learn how to count in French from one to twelve, recognise the written number words, ask how old someone is and answer the same question. They will be practising this new vocabulary by playing, counting and playing some traditional French games.

Music- The children focus on the musical skills of 'beat' and 'pitch' this half term. They will explore and identify metres in a song, recognise rhythm and practise layering rhythms. They will play in small groups, independently and as a larger group to build up layers of rhythm and metre. 
       

RE – How do festivals and worship show what matters to Muslims?

During this unit the children will learn some beliefs about God in Islam. They will find out how Muslim beliefs and idadah (worship) link to prayer, fasting, celebrating and the intention to live out the Five Pillars of Islam. The children will also consider the values of submission and self-control, and whether they can benefit all people, beyond Muslim.

PE - School Games Value is TEAMWORK 

Treating everyone equally, supporting each other and working together to have fun and achieve. Celebrate each other’s success and be a positive team player.

This complements the Heartsmart theme of 'Too much Selfie isn't Healthy which teaches the children to reflect on their own behaviour and actions and think about others before themselves. Visit the website www.heartsmartprimary.com for more information on what Heartsmart is all about.

Indoor - During our indoor PE sessions, the class will meet their first games unit; dodgeball. They will apply their fundamental movement skills to dodge and jump quickly, keeping an eye on the game whilst also attacking. They will learn the rules and apply them with respect, showing school games values through out. The children will also be encouraged specifically to try to include catching as this is an important element of the game but often shied away from!

Outdoor – we continue to develop out fundamental movement skills. Lots of these should now be at a point where the children are applying them to sports and activities ti help them to be successful. If we can’t already skip, we definitely will be able to by then end of this unit! Games like tag, floor is lava and many of our short movement breaks rely on the skills of balance, coordination and agility. We will be masters!

Autumn 2 Term NEWS… (October- December 2024)

In Autumn 2 we were so very busy! Not only did we have all our work to complete but we also had to celebrate Christmas! We created calendars, cards, ornaments and danced the afternoon away at our Christmas disco in all of our sparkles, and were join by our elves from home for Elf Breakfast! Year 3 took part in the Christmas Service at church and we even managed to fit in a Santa Dash thanks to our Sports Ambassadors!

Before all that though, the class had worked really hard, especially in maths, to try to master written methods for addition. We will need to continue with this regularly during spring but hopefully our concrete equipment has helped to give us good grounding. In English, the class wrote some beautiful Remembrance poems thoroughly enjoyed meeting Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant to inspire their writing.  

We were budding scientists, investigating magnets and all their ‘super’ powers, asking some really great questions and suggesting answers to them. The class enjoyed learning about the significance of Noah’s rainbow in the Bible, and how this applies to our lives now; the importance of promises and our School Value of Trust.

We took part on Odd Socks Day for Anti-Bullying and celebrated our first Star in the Jar reward. On top of all that, we also tried to travel to school actively at least once a week to earn November and December’s badges. It’s no wonder we were ready for a rest!

Autumn 1 Term NEWS… (September - October 2024)

Our brains have definitely grown this half term! A huge focus for Year 3 has been developing our teamwork skills. We have woven it into as many opportunities as we can; quick active games, partner work, group work, whole class missions like our Star in the Jar rewards. We have also begun to develop our resilience skills, using our PATHS and Heartsmart lessons to understand that mistakes are learning opportunities and not failures. This has been tough for lots of us, and we will continue to work on it.

Along the way this half term, Year 3 have settled into new routines in the juniors and shown that they are working hard to follow the Shine Rules. We very quickly settle into each day ready to learn and have enjoyed using the equipment at break times, as well as Funky Moves Friday! The class have enjoyed learning about volcanoes and discovering about rocks (with the help of Starburst!) and what goes on beneath our feet (with t eh help of playdough!). They have had lots and lots of practical maths lessons to support their new learning on 3-digit numbers and created some wonderful Mr Men characters of their own.

We finished the half term with our Star in the Jar reward of pjs and own clothes, as well as a sneaky trip to the cinema to watch the brand-new Pixar film ‘The Wild Robot’, which brought lots of emotions out! What a tearjerker!

It’s been a very busy half term and I think we are all ready for a well-earned rest, ready to go again for Autumn 2!