Year 3

Welcome to year 3! It is great to see all the children again and our new year 3s are already showing how enthusiastic and keen to learn they are.

For September 2021, we will have two Year 3 classes, Juniper and Hawthorn, and you can meet your teachers to the right.

At the moment, Ms Dolz is unwell and temporarily not in school but she will be back soon.  In the meantime, Mr Ferrandino is teaching Hawthorn class.

Please take a look at our Twitter account and use #Year3UHPS, #HawthornUHPS  or #JuniperUHPS to see what we have been up to in class.

Top tips for year 3

PE: Friday is our PE day.  Please send your child into school wearing their school PE kit (weather appropriate) on Fridays.  The children will spend the whole day in PE kit.

Reading books: Please ensure that reading records and reading books are in bags every day to allow children to read to an adult whenever possible.  Reading records will be checked regularly and it is the expectation that your child should show their record to their teacher a minimum of once a week.  Once children have finished a reading book, they need to hand that book in  the following morning to be changed along with the reading record.  For some children, changing books will  be daily and for other children who are reading longer texts less frequently but the teacher will still need to see their reading records.

Home learning: We set home learning tasks on Seesaw every Friday.  The home learning tasks are based on what the children have been learning about in school and the expectation is that children complete a minimum of one task per week, if possible by the following Tuesday.  These home learning tasks are in addition to home reading, Times Tables Rock Stars  (or learning times tables in another way) and Numbots.

Times Table Rock Stars: Children will be tested on times tables at the end of Year 4, by which time they are expected to know all times tables up to 12 X 12.  It would be incredibly beneficial for your child to work on times tables at least once a week at home and Times Table Rock Stars is a fun and effective way to do this.

Spellings: In addition to spelling lessons in class, we will send home a spelling activity most weeks on Seesaw with a list of words to learn.  These lists will be made up of a mixture of spelling pattern words and Y3/4 statutory words.  The Y3/4 statutory word list is attached and the children are expected to know all of these words by the end of Year 4.

Water bottles: Your child will need a bottle of water in class every day.

Snacks:  Children are encouraged to bring a healthy snack to eat during morning break time.

Topics for Autumn term

In English this term, we will be following a text called ‘The Seal Surfer’, by Michael Foreman.  It is a lovely book about a boy and his grandfather.  The boy, who spends a lot of time in a wheelchair and walks only with crutches, loves surfing and makes friends with a seal.  It is a “powerful book that demonstrates friendship flourishing across generations, species and abilities.”   Most of the children’s writing this half term (Autumn 1) will be based on this story.

Pathways to Read:  Our book for Autumn 1 is “The Sea Book,” by Charlotte Milner.  We will use a mixture of whole class and grouped reading lessons to explore this non-fiction book.   The children will learn about the features of non-fiction books; retrieve and record information; use dictionaries to check the meanings of new words and ask questions to further their understanding.

Our main topic for Autumn 1 is ‘Water Water Everywhere’ which links with our texts.  This is a predominantly Geography based topic.

Our Science unit for Autumn 1 is ‘Humans and Other Animals.’  In this unit, the children learn about nutrition and food groups, skeletons and muscles.

In Maths our first unit is ‘Place Value.’

Our knowledge organisers give more detail about what the children will be learning and what they need to know.  Knowledge organisers for  Maths, Science and Topic are available on the links below.

READING AND WRITING IN YEAR 3.

We follow the Pathway to Read and Pathway to Write schemes, by the Literacy Company.  Our topics are linked to these English units including all history, geography, DT and art.  Our Science units are also linked to reading and writing units as much as possible.

Thank you for your support, from the Year 3 team.