Year 3

P.E

Indoor PE will be on Monday afternoon and outdoor games on Tuesday mornings. Please can all children arrive wearing their PE kit on these days.  Track suit bottoms and jumpers will be needed for the colder months. 

Home learning

Each Friday, children will be given spellings based around the expectations of their year group. They will have a suitable number based upon their ability level. The test will be on the following Friday.  The children are expected to read regularly throughout the week, with parental completion of the reading record on at least three occasions. This should indicate when and how much the children have read. It would also be helpful to include a very brief comment on any problems or successes from the activity.

Curriculum- Yearly overview of topics

Overview for the Year

Autumn Terms -"Savage Stone Age" and “Walk like an Egyptian” (Stone Age, Ancient Egypt, rocks and volcanoes and earthquakes)

Spring Terms 3 & 4 “Lost at Sea/Survival” (Animals including Humans, Plants)

Summer Terms 5 & 6 Cities of Gold (Chocolate, Light)

English

Reading

Regular reading at home is essential. The children should be heard reading aloud at least 3 times per week. Discussions between the child and the adult are key to helping to improve and develop their understanding but also allows the children to work on their expression when reading aloud.  Each child has their own reading record and these need to be completed with approximately three adult signed entries per week, indicating when the child read, what they read and anything that arose from the discussion. If the record has been misplaced or left at school, the entries should be completed on a piece of paper, which can be stuck into the book.‍

Spellings

Spellings will be handed out on a Friday and tested on the following Friday. We will teach the spellings patterns and rules throughout the week. The words given each week are primarily taken from the required National Curriculum spelling list for year3/4children. Mrs Greenhouse/Miss Lewis, however, will be working with some children who need greater practice, repetition and reinforcement of some of the phonics work completed in Year 2. This has proved extremely beneficial in the past in raising the standard of these children, allowing them to access the Year 3 curriculum with more ease and confidence. 

Handwriting

Throughout the week we will ask the children to practise their spellings through handwriting. Part of the curriculum expects all children to be joining their handwriting.  

Maths

Times tables facts

It would be helpful if children could practise their times tables at home as well as in school so that class maths challenges that encompass times table facts (fractions, multiplications, problem solving etc) will be much easier and exciting to solve. 

Telling the time is also something that we would appreciate your help with, particularly as we have to ensure by the end of Year 3 children can tell the time in 3 different ways and using 3 different types of clocks- analogue, digital and 24 hour. 

By the end of year 4, ALL children are expected to know their times tables, up to 12x12, by heart and with instant recall, so we endeavour to make this easier for them by encouraging these recall skills in Year 3. The new curriculum focuses heavily on calculation strategies, particularly for multiplication and division, so it is essential that the children work at learning these at home. They are a key skill which they will use throughout their lives.

We are having a huge push on our times tables at the moment as it forms a key part of what we must know to move forwards in our learning. We would really appreciate any help with the learning of this key skill please. 

RE

At Manadon Vale, RE is taught to give every child the opportunity to explore the big questions about life, to find out what people believe and what difference this makes to their lives. Pupils gain the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to handle questions raised by religion and belief and to reflect on their own ideas and ways of living.

In Key Stage 1 and 2, we follow the Plymouth Agreed Syllabus for RE. The principal religions and non-religious worldviews represented in the UK are covered taught through 'Key Questions'. These key questions are explored through the study of sacred texts, through creative arts, with visiting speakers and visits to places of worship and with lively discussion and debate.

In Year 3 the key questions are:

• What do Christians learn from the creation story? 
• What is it like for someone to follow God? 
• How and why do people mark the significant events of life?
• How do festivals and family life show what matters to Jewish people? 
• Why do Christians call the day Jesus died ‘Good Friday’? (Salvation)
• Why is the Torah so important to Jewish people?

Termly overview

Autumn Term

During English this term we will exploring the book ‘Cave Baby’.  Will be discussing the characters and predicting what we think will happen next. There is a recap of sentence punctuation, as well as the use of expanded noun phrases and the use of the correct tense.  We will be retelling the story in our own words before moving onto writing anon-chronological report about the Stone Age.

In Maths, we will start the term revising place value, before moving onto addition and subtraction, as well as multiplication and division. We believe that all children, when introduced to a new concept, should have the opportunity to build competency by taking this approach.  This is why we use the following resources to help us; Concrete – children should have the opportunity to use concrete objects and manipulatives to help them understand what they are doing. Pictorial – alongside this, children should use pictorial representations. These representations can then be used to help reason and solve problems and finally, Abstract – both concrete and pictorial representations should support children’s understanding of abstract methods.  

In Science we start Year 3 by looking at Rocks.  We discover the different types of rocks, the rock cycle and the process of fossilisation.  We then move onto Forces, exploring what a force is, the different types of forces and how magnets work.  We use a range of enquiry approaches and skills to encourage the children to explore and ask questions.

In PSHE, we celebrate‘Being Me in my World’ and after half term, move onto ‘Celebrating Difference’.These units from the ‘Jigsaw’ scheme of work, encourage opinions and discussions around a wide range of issues- rules, acceptance, pride, empathy, reflection and are usually started each week with an introductory assembly, generating a whole school focus for adults and children alike. Within the classroom, we use kind and positive words and listen to each other. More over, the units involve giving and receiving compliments and sharing ideas in a cooperative and mutually respectful way. Indeed, they underpin and reinforce all of our school values.

In History, we begin by learning about the Stone-Age and making comparisons to our lives today. We are using the wonderful book ‘Cave Baby’ as a stimulus to enable children to picture the lifestyles & survival issues encountered during that period. We will explore timelines within a specific time in history to set out the order things may have happened and introduce new vocabulary to enable children to describe events and periods in History. New facts will involve guided and independent research skills and delivered in a fun and interesting way!

‍