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 2 (February- April 2025)

English - The children will spend the first weeks on poetry, using a selection of Michael Rosen's poetry including The Sound Collector. They will, as always, use the Writing Rainbow to write their own versions both independently and in groups. They will also be performing some! It's great fun and quite a fast moving set of writing. Following this, we will recount some well known nursery rhymes challenging our young writers to consider perspective in their narrative. They will then use the book 'My Strong Mind' to write instructions on how to have a strong mind. We will use 'How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth' alongside this as both texts show instructions in a light-hearted and informal way which opens the children's eyes to different uses of writing. By the end of this half term, we hope to have increased the children's confidence with independent writing and the ability to use gathered vocabulary and the Writing Rainbow to plan their writing. They will also have ample opportunity to use the SPAG that they will learn each week.

SPAG focuses will be word families, word classes - in particular identifying whether a word is being used as a nouns or verb - sentence sense, adverbs of manner and time and sentence types.

Spellings will continue to work through the Year 3 statutory list of words as well as learning different prefixes and suffixes.

Reading skills will feed into our nursery rhyme writing as well as science and history topics to give the children a better knowledge base to then apply the topic-based skills. We will focus on skimming and scanning, looking for key words in a question to help us to find an answer in a text, and begin to look at summary skills.

For shared reading in class we will use a selection of short and picture books based around emotions and relationships which will feed into the final ‘Strong Mind’ instructions.

Maths-  While the children continue to secure their 3, 4 and 8 times tables, we move on to using related calculations to help us to find answers to bigger questions. Then the children will learn to multiply 2 digit numbers by 1 digit numbers, using the process of exchange when needed. Some children will move on to using this as a written method, others will complete these using equipment or diagrams to support their learning. TTRockstars will help the children's recall of facts and weekly tests will continue. We will also continue to use written methods for addition and subtraction so that we don’t forget them, as well as our number bonds and times table tests!  

Science & DT - Our focus this half term is Nutrition. This ties in really well with our DT topic ‘Eating Seasonally'. During both, the children will learn about a balanced diet, how to create balanced meals and what each food group does for our bodies. Alongside this, they will find out about seasonal foods in Britain, what types of foods we import and where from and how the rainbow colours of food give a clue to the nutrients they contain. Finally the children will make a seasonal vegetable tart, creating their own recipe and adding foods together. In science, we also look at animal diets to help us to understand that different animals need different foods to be healthy.   

History - Vikings!! This is the first KS2 unit which works backwards from 1066. Currently the children know this year as the year William the Conqueror came to the throne, but what was before that?! The children find out what the Vikings were like and why our opinion of them has changed – and why. They use their historical skills of questioning to find out about Vikings as craftsmen and evaluate how fair history has been towards them based on what evidence is now available. Their understanding of British history is extended in learning about where the Vikings came from, how much of Britain they invaded and why they came in the first place. 

RE – How do festivals and family life show what matters to Jews? 

Children will explore some Jewish beliefs about God, sin and forgiveness through creative and interactive lessons. They will understand what the festivals Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur mean, how Jews express the meanings through symbols, sounds and rituals. They will be able to make links between their beliefs and how they live and will be encouraged to question whether it is good for Jews to remember the past and look forward. This will be a lovely unit to expand the children’s understanding of other religions and compare against their last unit about Muslims and their faith.   

Computing - the class will understand more about coding and programming by 'Tinkering with Scratch'. They use loops to create an animation, tell a story and program a simple game.    

PATHS – We will continue our personal development by learning through role play and stories. The children will firstly add ‘calm’ and ‘lonely’ to their emotion wall, before further developing their problem solving skills, always using the Signals Control Poster to remind them of how to approach tricky situations.

Heartsmart- 'Don't Hold On To What's Wrong!'

This unit focuses on Forgiveness and learning how to process negative emotions, disappointment and hurt.

Don't hold on to what's wrong is about choosing to forgive, leaving the pointing finger in our pocket and accepting that we too need grace just as much as we give it away. Everyone makes mistakes. Don't demand perfection, instead celebrate progress, that's what loves does.

Visit the website www.heartsmartprimary.com for more information on what Heartsmart is all about. 

French - After learning the number to twelve and how to say their age, the children will now progress to learning basic classroom instructions and the names for items in a school bag such a pencil, ruler and rubber. They will find out if these items are masculine or feminine in French and then they will be able to say a simple sentence to explain something they have or do not have in their bags!

Music – the children will be practising their vocal skills this half term. They will learn the correct posture for singing, and how to warm up their voice. They will sing in partner rounds, learning to continue their part whilst listening to others at the same time.

PE - School Games Value is RESPECT

Year 3 will return to dance this half term, refining their skills at dancing in formations, unison and canons. Using the theme ‘Dance Through the Decades’, the children will have the opportunity to create actions and choreograph a little of their own dances.

Spring Term 1 NEWS!

Following the Christmas celebrations, we returned taller and ready to fill our brains! During this half term the class received their second Star in the Jar reward which involved lots of their own stationery from home and an activity afternoon. Year 3 did lots of active learning this half term. We had a visit from Commando Joe’s to teach us a little bit about resilience. We also had loads of fun across the half term with active breaks focused around Teamwork - as our school games value. Our foundation subjects saw us exploring light and shadows (we loved that!), role playing some of the stories of Britain’s best known monarchs and playing French playground games. In Computing we were active learning by role playing the parts of a laptop and their jobs and PE (always active!) introduced us to Dodgeball which was brilliant! We have some very exciting half terms coming up as the weather improves - we can’t wait!

Autumn 2 Term NEWS!

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!

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!