Welcome to Year 3

Year 3 Curriculum Map

Welcome to Year 3!

A very warm welcome back! We hope you all had a lovely break and managed to spend some time together as a family. We have a very busy half term planned for the children as we countdown to Christmas! This half term we will be continuing with our topic on 'Poles Apart' but with a bigger focus on geography skills rather than history. In Science, we will be learning about light and darkness as well as carrying out some scientific experiments. We will also be starting some sewing in art as well completing our DT topic on pneumatic toys. In RE the children will be learning about different celebrations, as well as the Christmas story as we draw closer to December. We can't wait to get started now the children have all settled into life in Year 3! 

Teachers in Y3

The Year 3 teaching week will be covered as follows; Miss Jackson - Monday, Tuesday and Friday and Mrs Pape - Wednesday and Thursday. We are also supported by Miss McNamara throughout the week.

We understand communication is vital for sharing information. It is always busy first thing on a morning, as we are preparing the lessons for the day in class. But should you wish to pass on a message an adult at the cloakroom door can pass this on to us. Anything of urgency, or that is confidential, please ask an adult at the door and we will try and meet with you briefly in the cloakroom area. Should you wish to contact us by email, these are our addresses.

Emma.jackson@adel-st-john.leeds.sch.uk     Katie.pape@adel-st-john.leeds.sch.uk

It will be useful to add both of us to any emails you send, so we can both be aware of anything needing our attention. We will aim to respond within 2 working days.

This half term our theme of learning is called ‘Poles Apart’. We are looking at the Arctic and Antarctic, explorers, animals and making a virtual trip there using the new VR headsets. The long-term plan shares all the subjects that will be covered this half term, and a brief description of what they will include.

Reading in Y3

We make reading a priority in Year 3. We encourage the children to develop a love of books in all genres and themes, with a big focus on reading for pleasure. During the school day children will be reading independently as well as taking part in class guided reading. The children will be able to choose a book from our class bookcase, which they can read in class at quiet reading times. They will also choose a book from the school library to bring home. They will be able to return this book when they have finished it and choose a new one. We appreciate some books are longer and will take more than a week to read. Books will be signed in and out, so we can monitor the regularity of children’s reading.

PE

PE this half term, is swimming on Wednesday morning. PE kit needs to be worn to school that day – full black tracksuit, white t-shirt and trainers with swimming costume for girls and swimming trunks for boys (worn underneath). Children will also need a bag with a towel and underwear. This bag needs to be big enough to fit all their clothes including a coat and shoes – this is because lockers will not be in use and belongings will be kept poolside. PE is also on Thursdays, again PE kit and trainers should be worn that day. The PE focus for this half term will be ball skills, including tennis. THERE WILL BE NO SWIMMING ONTHE FINAL WEEK OF THIS TERM. 

Homework

Spellings will be sent home on Friday, a copy will be added to Seesaw, for children to practise at home. The test will take place in school on the following Friday, with Miss Jackson.

We also encourage you to read with your child at least 3 times per week. Every child in school will have a reading record, even if they are a free reader. This is a place to record any new words children have learnt, progress you see or titles of other books read at home.

Mathletics online – there will be three activities set on Mathletics that link to our learning that has taken place in the week. Your child can use paper to help them work out answers. Find Mathletics at Mathletics.com and use your child’s logging in details to access their account. The beauty of Mathletics is, it shows the teacher how a child did with a particular learning intention but also there is an option for children to do more than just the activities set. Use the help buttons if unsure of an activity.

A national times table test now takes place in Y4, so we will prepare the children for this by testing their fast recall of answers throughout the year. To support your child at home, there are some great activities on the ‘Top Marks’ website. One game in particular, ‘Hit the Button’, requires fast recall of times table answers. Another great website is timestables.co.uk which does a mock test and has some fun games that make learning times tables fun.

Things to remember:

• All children should bring a flask or bottle of water to school. This should be taken home and washed every day.
• In Key Stage 2, children are required to bring their own snack, as it is no longer provided. This should be a piece of fruit to be eaten at playtime. Our school is strictly ‘nut-free’ due to some children having allergies.
• School Policy is that, other than for religious reasons, we do not wear jewellery in school apart from a watch. We do not wear Fitbits or expensive watches as it is the responsibility of the child to keep them safe. These need to be removed for PE lessons.

We are very excited to provide and share in this year of your child’s education. We look forward to meeting you at parent teacher meetings and hopefully seeing you at celebration events throughout the year.

Many thanks,

Miss Jackson and Mrs Pape 

Autumn Poetry

We have been working really hard in English and creating our own Autumn poems based on the senses. We began with an autumn walk around the school grounds, photographing some of the important changes that take place during this season and using these ideas to plan our own writing journey. We have tried to incorporate alliteration, personification and rhyme into our poetry as well as focusing on the layout of a poem. It was very difficult to choose just a few to share on our class blog as they were all amazing, but they are all displayed within our classroom for visitors to see! We hope you enjoy these two poems below as a taster! 

Artists at work!

This term we have been exploring the work of Hokusai with our main art focus being on 'paint'. We began our project by looking at his famous print work 'The Great Wave of Kanagawa' and listed some questions we wanted to find out about the piece of art work. We then explored some of his work, looking at some of their similarities and differences, as well as which ones we liked and disliked. Our aim is to create our own impression of 'The Great Wave' and this week we looked at colour mixing to create different shades of blue. We learnt that adding white to blue created different lighter shades as well as how to make these shades darker without using black. Next we will be creating some initial sketches for our final piece but practising this skill in our sketch books first. The children love art lessons and the smiles on their faces and cheers when they entered the classroom to see the paint on the tables said everything! We can't wait to show you some of our final pieces in a few weeks! 

Glockenspiels

In our Music lessons we have been learning to read and play two different notes; D and E. We started by playing the notes separately using glockenspiels and then together to create one piece of music. The classroom was quite noisy at times as I am sure you can imagine but we are making some good progress! 

Rockstar Thursday!

We LOVED dressing up as rockstars today for our ‘Times Tables Rockstars’ Launch Day! 

We are investigators!

This week we have carried out our first scientific investigation of the year! The children worked in groups to solve a 'pattern seeking' enquiry question- Can the person with the longest femur jump the furthest?

We had lots of scientific discussions and it was wonderful to see some amazing maths skills being incorporated. It was particularly pleasing to see the children building on their maths knowledge from last week- ordering numbers to 1000. We had some interesting outcomes but we concluded that this was not always the case and that offer factors can influence this outcome. Fantastic group work, maths skills and scientific discussions!  

Geographical Skills

As part of our topic on 'Polar Regions', we have been building on our learning from Key Stage 1 about compass points. This week we have been learning about the eight points found on a compass and practised located these points outside as a class as well as drawing our own outside. 

School Council Voting Day

We really enjoyed taking part in the House Captain elections and listening to each candidate's manifesto. Some of our Year 3 children also made banners and headbands showing their support for their desired candidate!  

Outdoor Learning

Practical Maths

This week in Maths we have been learning about numbers up to 1000 and how we can partition these numbers into hundreds, tens and ones. We had a great practical Maths session today where we were doing some flexible partitioning using Base 10 with a partner. 

Skeletons!

We began our new Science topic last week where we discussed what we already knew about the human body, nutrition and muscle development. The children were then asked to draw their own skeletons and locate and name any bones which they already knew the name of. 

The children worked brilliantly in small groups and it was wonderful to see their interaction as they discussed their ideas. It was also very interesting to see what they thought specific bones were called and where they were located!! We are looking forward to exploring the human body over the next few weeks and addressing these misconceptions! Watch this space.

Dreams!

This week we have been talking about our dreams for the future and who inspires us to reach our goals. The children had some wonderful responses which we shared as a class. We have children who would like to be authors, footballers, interior designers, bakers, scientists, inventors and many who would like to travel the world! Many of them are inspired by famous people but also by family members which brought a tear to my eye! One girl in our class told me "People inspire me to never give up, always to reach for my dreams!".

We then created dream jars based on the story 'The BFG ' by Roald Dahl which we are looking forward to displaying around school.