Welcome to Year 3

A warm welcome back to school and to Key Stage 2!

Your class teacher this year is Miss Armstrong, who will be supported in class by three learning assistants, Miss Richardson, Mrs King and Mrs Brittain.

R.E. 

In R.E. this half term, we will be learning about prayer and listening to the Word of God at Mass. We will consider the value of prayer to us as Christians and understand that we follow Jesus’ example by talking to God through prayer. In addition to talking to God, we will also think about the importance of listening to his word at Mass and understanding how Christians use these teachings to live better lives and walk in the footsteps of Christ. 

Topic

Over the course of this term, we will be learning about the Rainforests of the world. We will learn how to locate the rainforests around the world using maps, atlases and globes and will begin to identify both the human and geographical features of the rainforest, including; types of settlements, land use, climate zones and the layers of the Rainforest. To extend our learning further and help us to draw comparisons between the tropical rainforests and the forests of England, we will visit Coombe Abbey in Coventry for shelter building activities in the forest.  

English

In the first few weeks of this half term in English, we will create our own guides to Rainforest survival using ‘The Lost Book of Adventure’. We will consider our needs for survival by choosing items for an explorer’s pack and use a trip to the Glasshouse at Jephson Gardens to help us imagine and describe the environment using all of our senses. 

Children will then use their learning so far and inspiration from the book ‘Jungle Challenge’ to write their own fictional stories about an adventure in the Amazon. 

Poetry

Our poetry focus this half term, stems from the beautiful ‘Lost Words Spell Book’. This book will be used as inspiration for our own ‘spells’ (poems) linking to our Rainforest topic.               

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

We will begin this half term by using subordinate clauses and time conjunctions to add detail to our sentences. During the planning and writing of our survival guides, we will use persuasive conjunctions to convince our peers to include our items in their explorer packs and use headings and sub-headings to help readers find information quickly. When writing our narratives, we will begin to use paragraphs to organise our writing and inverted commas to punctuate speech between characters.

Maths

We will be starting this half term by reading and writing numbers up to 1000 in both words and numerals, developing our understanding of the value of each digit, helping us to find 10 or 100 more or less than a given number at speed. We will then begin to explore the ways we can partition numbers to help us solve a range of problems and explain our answers. We will also revise counting in steps of 2, 3, 5 and 10 before challenging ourselves to count in 3’s, 4’s and 8’s as we begin to stretch our knowledge of the multiplication tables. Later this half term, we will recap the methods we use to complete mental addition and subtraction problems before moving on to adding and subtracting numbers using written methods. 

Times tables

It is so important that your child can recall and use times tables at speed. Their ability to do this will significantly influence their learning. Please help your child by practising with them. The internet is a great tool for finding games, songs to make this a fun thing to do together. In year 3, children should know the 2, 5 and 10 times tables and begin to learn the 3, 4 and 8 times tables.

Science

In science this half term, we will be studying plants. Our key areas of focus will be; identifying parts of a plant, discovering what plants need to grow well, investigating how water is transported within plants, exploring the important role that a flower plays in the life cycle of a flowering plant and sequencing the stages of the life cycle of a flowering plant. Children will develop their understanding of scientific processes by; setting up investigations, asking and answering scientific questions, recording their findings and presenting their results in a variety of ways, drawing conclusions based on their findings and ordering and classifying information which is presented to them.  

P.E.

Children will have P.E. with Mr. Bromley on Monday and Friday afternoons. Please ensure your child has the correct kit on both of these days. Unfortunately, children who do not have the correct kit will be unable to participate in PE lessons. This half term, children will be developing their ball skills and coordination through practising and playing football and tag rugby.

Things to remember…

- Reading books must be read each night and reading records signed by an adult including page numbers. Children are not expected to read a whole book each night. 

- Appropriate P.E. kit needed in school every Monday and Friday 

- Homework will be due on alternate Mondays 

- Please send children in to school with named water bottles 

- Practice times tables; 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 10