Year 3
Welcome to our class page. This serves both Year 3 classes and we can't wait to share our joint learning journeys with you. Here you will find anything and everything you need to know about Year 3, including pictures and explanations of our learning.
Important Things to Remember:
Home/school diaries and reading books: Please bring these in daily.
Diaries will now only be checked once a week on a Monday, if there is an important message you wish for us to read urgently, please make sure your child brings their diary directly to their teacher or write a separate note.
P.E: Monday and Tuesday afternoons
Please ensure that your child wear their P.E. kit to school on their P.E. days.
Swimming: Swimming will take place in the Spring Term subject to restrictions.
Mid-morning snack: Pupils in KS2 are allowed to bring in a piece of fruit as a mid-morning snack to eat during playtime.
Water Bottles: Please encourage your child to bring a named, reusable water bottle to school to drink throughout the day.
Homework:
Reading
We ask that children read at least 4 times per week.
Please sign your child’s diary to indicate when they have read. On a Monday morning, we will check your child’s diary and stamp the bottom of the page if they have read at least 4 times.
This will then gain them a star on the ‘Reading Road to success’ (which can be found in their reading diary). For every week your child reads at least four times, they will take another step along the road. When they eventually get to the bronze finish line, they will receive a certificate. Their next goal is then silver, where they will receive a special book mark, and then Gold. This is the ultimate goal, where they receive a book token.
Spellings
At the beginning of each half term, children will receive a list of Spelling words which shows which spelling patterns and spelling list words we will be focusing on each week in school. These spellings will then be tested weekly and an overall test of the termly rules at the end of each half term. Please encourage your child to regularly practise their spellings at home.
Maths
At the beginning of each half term, a new ‘Key Instant Recall Fact’ will be introduced that your child will be focusing on for that half term. Please encourage your child to practise these at home.
Creative Curriculum
Homework books containing optional homework tasks will be sent home at the beginning of each half term; these will all be linked to our topic for this term. We look forward to celebrating the wonderful creations that your children have done at home!
Our first topic is Small Acts, Big Impacts. This topic focuses on recycling and the impacts this has on our planet. We will be exploring some inspirational stories and focusing on the positives that particular individuals have had on our world. Remember to stop by and see our journey through this topic.
Autumn 1
After a lengthy time of home schooling, followed by the six week holidays it was wonderful to get back into the classroom with everyone this half term. It hasn't taken long for children and adults to settle back into our new, Covid safe, routines.
In our lessons we have delved into the story of Isatou Ceesay, the recycling queen of Gambia! First we created newspaper about her incredible achievements and then, inspired by her, we created persuasive letters to encourage others to reduce our level of plastic waste in our own school.
In maths we have sought to consolidate and improve our understanding of place value and deepened our knowledge through engaging with 3-digit numbers. We have learnt about the value of each digit and the relationships between making numbers 10 times bigger and smaller and how this effects place value. We then used this knowledge to become experts when using the column method to solve addition and subtraction problems.
In topic and science we have been looking at the life cycle of a flowering plant where the children explored what plants need to thrive and survive. We conducted some fantastic experiments where we grew plants under different conditions to observe the results. We have created beautiful pieces of art, where we studied the different parts of a flower.
In geography we have been observing how land is used in our local area, nationally and internationally. We took this opportunity to take a stroll around our local area to see how land it used in Forsbrook. We looked at land-use and created our own farm using topographical maps and sought to find what kind of farming would be best according to the lay of the land.
A special mention must go out to all the fantastic pieces of homework we have received this year in both classes, they have been incredible!
It has been a fantastic start to our first half term of the year. School has looked slightly different, but the children have adapted wonderfully well and we are so proud of them!
We can't wait for Autumn part 2!
Autumn 2
Autumn 2 has been a fantastic end to a strange year in Year 3, where the children have carried on their fantastic work from the previous term.
This term we have travelled back in time to visit the Egyptians!
In English, we have explored the story of the Egyptian Cinderella a twist on the famous fairy tale. We followed Rhodopis (the Egyptian Cinderella) on her journey from Greece, being a servant in Egypt, to eventually becoming the wife of the Pharaoh. We created descriptions of the main characters and also retold the start of the story in our own words.
In Maths, we have built on our knowledge of place value by using it to solve difficult addition and subtraction problems and consolidated our knowledge of the formal column method. We then moved on to practicing our multiplication and division, using our knowledge of times tables to help solve related facts. These are 2 tricky concepts but the children were amazing.
In topic, our trip back in time took us to Egypt around 5000 years ago to look at the Ancient Egyptians and their civilisation. We learnt all about the incredible monuments which they created, their dependence on the River Nile and how they created mummies. We even created our own! (Tomatoes, not people!)
In science, we explored animals including humans. We looked at the different foods animals need and paid close attention to what we as a humans need to eat, even looking at what different nutrients are in some of our favourite foods. Next we saw how important bones and muscles are to our everyday life and how we would be lost without them.
Again we have had some fantastic pieces of homework and are incredibly proud of what the children have produced this term. Well done everyone!
The Year 3 team wish you all a wonderful, peaceful and safe Christmas and a happy 2021. We look forward to welcoming the children back in the new year for Spring 1!
Spring 1
Stone Age to Iron Age
Our term started with a special topic looking at Beauty and the Beast. We should have been making our annual trip to the theatre to see this wonderful show, but since this year hasn't been all we'd hoped for, we decided to pay a tribute to our trip by exploring the traditional story. We picked apart the features of a diary entry and wrote diary entries as Beauty or the Beast.
We began our main topic by dissecting poo. You may be thinking 'how on Earth does this link to the Stone Age?' Well we discovered that this is how historians found out about people of the past. We discovered that the people we were learning about ate small stones, berries, sticks and had animal bones in their poo. This made us question why would these people have these remnants left over? This is how we discovered our new topic.
We travelled back in time to begin our journey through the Stone Age towards the Iron age. We started our adventure by looking at how the people of the Stone Age attempted different tasks and how they were some of the first humans to use tools to help them as hunter-gatherers.
Next, the children completed their own research about the Bronze age. They developed their own questions and DISCOVERED the answer using the internet and other resources. We then went on to explore Stonehenge in detail and found out how this magnificent landmark was made. We made our own mini Stonehenges using clay, junk modelling, play doh and other resources our fabulous learners found at home. We wrote all of the facts that we learnt around the model, creating fantastic, informative dioramas.
Finally, we reached the Iron Age where we created our own FABULOUS double-spread fact files about Iron Age hill forts.
In English and guided reading, we have been exploring and examining the story of the Iron Man by Ted Hughes. A tale of an unexpected friendship between a COLOSSAL iron robot and a young country boy; and the battle for the fate of the world between the Iron Man and the Space-Bat-Angel-Dragon. We have created an alternative ending to the story by adding our own unique twist to the ending; all of which have been a JOY to read!
In Maths, we have been focusing heavily on our multiplication and division skills, using our super knowledge of timetables to help us. There have been many new concepts explored this half term, from using the column multiplication method to division problems leaving a remainder. The EFFORT and RESILIENCE shown by the children has been AMAZING, and as a group we have made GREAT progress.
In science, we have been studying the effects of forces by exploring the magnetic pull in magnets. We have discovered what supports this magnetic pull and created fantastic posters on where we can find a natural magnetic force on our planet.
It has been a WONDERFUL start to the year and despite missing our friends as some of us have completed our schooling at home, we have all worked super hard and your teachers could not be prouder of you. Go Team Year 3!
Spring 2
What a super time we have had in our spring term. Primarily, the most delightful occurrence was getting to have our class all back together. We have thoroughly enjoyed our time exploring our topic ‘Angry Earth’.
We started by diving into our new text, Escape from Pompeii, which explores the lives Livia and Tranio who lived in a town called Pompeii, Italy during the time of the great eruption of the Gentle Mountain. The children explored this by becoming journalists and reporting the facts of the eruption. They explored the lives of those in ancient Italy and found out what the people of Pompeii did with their lives before this tragic event.
We then jumped straight into ‘Pebble in my Pocket’ which was our non-fiction text that told us all about the formation of the Earth and life on earth. We created artwork from the amazing descriptions in the text and discovered lots of vocabulary that was new to us. We explored the vocabulary meanings using dictionaries and created our own super-word bank.
We researched Mount Vesuvius and used our knowledge from our science lessons in which we explored the Earth and the layers that make the Earth. We researched what these layers are made of which led us to finding out all about rocks! We became geologists and discovered the 3 main types of rock; sedimentary, igneous or metamorphic. We tested different rocks to discover what type they were in our science experiment and found that we already have some of these types in and around our environments. Geology rocks!
In understanding so much about the earth’s layers, we began to explore how ‘angry’ the earth can get by exploring earthquakes and what causes them. In our research, we found that there are fault lines in the earth’s crust which are the areas where most earthquakes take place. We discovered countries worst hit and how they cope with these earthquakes. We then decided that we would like to help these countries by making great, earthquake proof structure that used damp mass tempers and cross bracing to strengthen and support. We tested our structures and evaluated their effectiveness.
In computing, we have been working on using ancient Romans in our stop motion animations and learnt how stop motion animations were created without computers. We created our own flipbooks and then learnt how to create the same thing digitally. It was great to explore this in so many different ways.
It has been amazing having everyone back together and we cannot wait for our next term together.
Summer 1
What a fantastic half term we have had all together at school. We have explored our new topic 'Super Shakespeare' where we found out all about the best bard himself.
In English, we delved into Shakespeare's final, independent play 'The Tempest'. This play has magic, mystery and treachery and hooked us in from the off. We learnt all about writing in the present tense and how to use the features of a playscript to write an alternative ending to The Tempest.
In maths, we have learnt all about fractions. What fun this has been! We even opened our own fractions pizzeria where we had to make pizzas that fit the orders of the customers. We have been able to find fractions of objects and fractions of amounts and have become very skilled in using a bar model to represent the whole and parts which helped us to find the numerator needed.
In topic, we have been learning all about Shakespeare himself, his life, his dreams and his successes. We have written fact files and discovered all about the life he led. In science, we have learnt about light and created our own shadow theatre, writing a play script and performing it using shadows. We have learnt about the different sources of light including the sun and how to stay safe in the sun. In computing, we have learnt all about coding on Scratch. We have sequenced code to create algorithms that play sounds, move and change costumes.
It's been an action-packed half term. We cannot wait for the next term!
Summer 2
What a delightful term it has been to complete our final one together as Year 3's. We have been studying all things Roman and some gruesome discoveries have been made as we explored how the Roman's lived.
In English we have been finding out all about the legend of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome and the start of the Roman Empire. The children have learnt about the lives of these 2 legends and how one came to an untimely death at the hands of his brother. We used our research to create superb biographies about Romulus and really honed our non-fiction writing skills ensuring that the features of biographies were used throughout. We have created some amazing writing!
In Maths, we have been travelling through the quirky world of shape, angles and measurements. We have turned the world on it's head as we discovered shape in different axis, learnt all about acute, obtuse and right angles and decided that a metre is definitely longer than a millimetre and you get more liquid if you order in litres instead of millilitres.
In topic, we have continued our historical investigation into the Roman way of life by discovering the start and expansion of the Roman Empire, how this went from Kingdoms to Republics to an Empire and how the Roman managed to gain oh so much control! We learnt about how England changed as a result of the Romans and what impact their time here had on our landscape. We were able to see this for ourselves when we visited Deva (Chester) to explore it all first hand. We marched through the streets of Chester as Roman soldiers, learnt how to defend attacks as a team and got to handle actual Roman artefacts. It was an amazing day!
We have had a super time in Year 3, we can't quite believe the term is over but our children have been amazing and we wish them all the luck in the world as they move through to Year 4.
