Year 3 @ Mount Street Primary 

Welcome to the Autumn Term in Year 3!

Welcome to an exciting and busy year. We will be working together to discover, explore and enjoy lots of new topics throughout our lessons.

Our priority will be to focus on daily reading to improve our fluency and understanding and daily TTRS practise to ensure our speed and recall of facts to help us in our new learning.

Class work: We will provide you with pencils, rulers, rubbers, colouring pencils and handwriting pens for those with a licence.  We ask that pencil cases are left at home as there is nowhere to store them safely in class.

Home learning: 

Reading – 10 minutes reading daily. We ask that an adult signs the reading diary and it is handed in at least once per week. This is a whole school focus this year!

Spellings: There will be weekly tests.

Times Tables:  TT Rock Stars daily.

Games and PE:

Children will need to wear their PE kits to school on our PE days. Please make sure that they are wearing their kit on the correct days only – Wednesday and Friday. I will always let you know via Dojo if this changes for any reason. Children with long hair MUST have it tied back for PE lessons and stud earrings MUST be covered with tape (that is brought from home) or they will need to be removed.

Kit: black trainers, black shorts or tracksuit bottoms and the PE top provided by school. PE hoodies are only to be worn on PE days.

Space is limited in our cloakroom so please make sure that your child only brings a small bag to school if necessary.

As ever, if you have any questions or queries, please do get in touch via Dojo or the school office.  We will always do our best to answer any questions as soon as possible.

Mrs Clement-Stallard and Miss Knight.

Maths

This term, we will start by developing our understanding of place value up to 1000, recognising the importance of the value of each digit in a 3-digit number and being able to write these numbers in words and numerals.  We will develop our understanding of addition and subtraction using the column method and begin to explore multiplying and dividing by 2, 5, 10, 3, and 4. We will start to develop our knowledge of unit and non-unit fractions and find equivalents to a whole.

Multiplication remains a key component to year 3 – ensuring that children can bring multiplications, number facts and number bonds to mind easily to assist them in understanding more challenging mathematic concepts.  TTRS will be used daily to support our recall of multiplication.

English 

In English this term, we will be developing our writing skills across a range of genres including, instructions and historical fiction. We will consolidate our sentence structure and punctuation and develop our vocabulary and enhance our writing by editing and improving. Complementing our creative writing will be grammar sessions looking at key tools such as using apostrophes for possession, punctuating direct speech, using conjunctions, adverbs and prepositions to express time and cause and to use fronted adverbials. We will recap key spellings from previous years and then focus on learning the Year 3/4 spelling words as well as different spelling patterns including prefixes and suffixes.

Whole class reading activities will be a part of each day. The texts we will look at will be topic based and include fiction, non-fiction and poetry. During these sessions we will further develop our fluency of reading through vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, sequencing and summarising (VIPERS) skills.

Science

This term we will learn about different rocks and their properties and learn about megafauna and soil. Throughout the second half term we will be learning about light and how it travels. We will discover that dark is the absence of light and how light is reflected. We will also investigate shadows.

Art

After half term, we will be looking at why do we make art using Palaeolithic art as a stimulus. We will look at work by Pablo Picasso and Satoshi Kitamura to influence our own artwork.

Computing

This term, we will be using Teach Computing as our main source to develop our understanding of connecting computers within school, looking at devices and how they work. Later in the term, we will be creating media using stop motion to create our own moving picture.  

DT

This term we will be learning about construction of picture frames before designing and making our own picture frame using a design criteria.

French

This term we start our languages journey through Key Stage 2 using the iLanguages programme. We will learn about French culture, how to say different greetings, classroom instructions, animals and numbers.

We will listen to stories, learn phrases and rehearse speaking and writing in French.  Later in the term, we will learn about and compare traditions linked to the Christmas holidays.

Geography

For the first half term, we will be learning about The UK. We will learn the difference between UK, GB and British Isles, 8-point compass directions, different countries, regions and counties within the UK and using maps to identify physical and human features.

History

After half term, we will be finding out about Prehistoric Britain. We will learn about the different eras within prehistoric Britain including Iron Age, Bronze Age, Stone Age, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Palaeolithic. We will develop our skills as archaeologists using artefacts and ecofacts to discover about hunter gathers, agriculture and different kinds of settlements. 

Music

As well as singing and performing this term, we will be having music tuition from Mr Norman learning how to play the gamelan.

PE

This term, we will be practising our gymnastics skills using Real PE and developing our invasion game skills by learning about attacking and defending.

After half term we will be following the DDMIX dance scheme and learn an African dance and we will develop our football skills.

PSHE

Following the Jigsaw programme, this term we will be looking at Being Me in My World through a variety of discussion tasks and activities including our own personal goals, nightmare and dream schools and looking at rewards and consequences for our actions.

Later in the term we will be looking at Celebrating Differences through a variety of discussion tasks and activities including understanding that all families are different and sometimes conflicts happen and what bullying is and what we can do if we witness a bullying incident.

Religion and Worldviews

This term we will be looking at how Christians think about the Bible. During the second half term, we will be discover what the trinity is and how it is symbolised.

Author Study

This term we will be using Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver as our class text as well as in some whole class reading lessons so we can develop our love of reading for pleasure and learning about author styles.

It is a gritty story about a boy who is very special in a stone age mystery. His guide, a young wolf cub leads is safely on his quest.

Useful Information

E-Safety

As so many of us are spending more and more time online, it is important that the children have a secure knowledge of how to be safe.  We will discuss various issues regarding this each week.  If your child or yourself have any questions linked to their online world, then please do not hesitate to get in touch or have a look at some of the links below.

Useful Links