Welcome to Year 3!

Class Teachers:

Maple: Miss Macleod

Spindle: Mr Gook

Support Staff: 

Miss Adams

Key Messages/Dates

• PE is on a Thursday. Please ensure your children come to school in full PE kit.
• During this half term, Year 3 children will have access to Forest School in the afternoons. Your child will have the opportunity to visit Forest School as part of a small group once a week. Please ensure your child has appropriate outdoor coat and wellies/spare shoes with them.
• Tuesday 10th February - Local area walk to study the topography.
• Water bottles should contain water only.
• Children need to be reading at least 3 times a week and recording it on Boom Reader.
• Children need to be playing TTRockstars at least 3 times a week.

What are we learning in Year 3 this term?

Spring

Reading

These are the texts that we cover throughout the year:

At St Margaret's we are passionate about reading! We teach a daily reading session based on a  Curriculum for Unity School’s Partnership (CUSP) text.

This term, our core texts are 'Sam Wu is Not Afraid of the Dark' by Katie & Kevin Tsang and 'Operation Gadgetman!' by Malorie Blackman. The core texts are supplemented by a variety of additional texts, to support children developing their reading fluency and confidence across a range of text types.

Writing

At St Margaret's Primary Academy we follow CUSP for our writing curriculum. The CUSP curriculum is a vocabulary rich, knowledge based approach to help develop pupils' retrieval, vocabulary and deepen learning. During the Spring term Year 3 will be learning to write in a third person narrative and produce a piece of advanced instructional writing.

Maths 

At St Margaret's Primary Academy we adopt a Mastery approach to teach maths lessons. The mastery approach supports children in becoming fluent and confident mathematicians. Maths lessons include ‘Flashback 4’ where children recap 4 previously learnt skills, fluency activities and opportunities for children to apply their knowledge to reasoning and problem solving. This half term we will be continuing to develop our understanding of addition and subtraction, then we will move onto length and perimeter, finally finishing with multiplication and division.

Children will have the opportunity to practice and develop their multiplication tables knowledge daily.

This term we are focusing on our 3 and 4 times tables, whilst revisiting our 2s, 5s and 10s.

Geography

In geography, we will be looking at the United Kingdom (UK). We will be focusing on:

• What are the regions of the United Kingdom?
• What are the cities and countries of the UK?
• What are the physical and human landmarks of England and Scotland?
• What are the physical and human landmarks of Wales and Northern Ireland?
• What are the topographical patters of the UK? What can I see in our local area?

Science

This half term, children will be learning about forces and magnets.

We will be focusing on the following concepts:

• What are contact forces?
• How do surfaces affect the motion of an object?
• How does friction affect moving objects?
• What is a non-contact force? How is this different to a contact force?
• How do magnets attract and repel?
• Which materials are magnetic?

French

This half term during French we will be looking at introductions and questions.

The children will know:

• How to say their name.
• How to say their age.
• How to describe their feelings.
• How to ask and answer questions.

They will be able to:

• Ask people their name and age.
• Respond to questions about their name and age.
• Express their feelings.
• Ask someone how they feel.
• Talk about their mood.
• Have a conversation in French.

PSHE

At St. Margaret's Primary Academy, we follow JIGSAW as our PSHE scheme of learning.

This half term we will be looking at "Dreams and Goals".

We will be:

• Looking at our own hopes and dreams.
• Understanding how sometimes hopes and dreams do not come true and that this can hurt.
• Reflecting on positive and happy experiences to counteract disappointment.
• Showing resilience by making and planning new goals when disappointed.
• Use problem solving to achieve a goal by being part of a group.
• Identifying and sharing successes in groups by the contributions made.

RE

During this half term we will be studying the Christian religion. Our learning question and enquiry will focus around, "Could Jesus heal people? Did he perform miracles or is there some other explanation?"

We will be focusing on:

• Explaining what a miracle is.
• Explaining the Christian viewpoint about one of Jesus' healing miracles (healing of the leaper)
• Explaining the Christian viewpoint about another of Jesus' healing miracles (healing of the blind man)
• Explaining the Christian viewpoint about an additional Jesus' healing miracle (healing of the paralysed man)
• Summarising the Christian viewpoint about Jesus' healing miracles.
• Talking about a miracle that the children would like to see happen in the world today.

Home learning

We expect children to read a minimum of 3 times a week at home; this should be logged on Boom Reader. If you need support with Boom Reader, please come and speak to a member of the Year 3 team who will be more than happy to help. 

Children are expected to practice their times tables at home regularly using 'Times Tables Rockstars' (TTRS)

https://ttrockstars.com/ 

If you need support with logging into TTRS or are unaware of your child's login, please reach out to a member of the Year 3 team.