Minorca Mount, Denholme, Bradford. West Yorkshire BD13 4AY

01274 832123

Denholme Primary School

Happy Learners High Achievers

Welcome to Year 3 (Birch Class)

Class Teacher: Mrs Toft

Teaching Assistant: Miss Moralee 

SPRING TERM 

The pros and cons of spring 

English          

This term our model texts will be related to our Science and Geography Topics.  The children will continue to develop skills using the Writing Rainbow and the Write Stuff Scheme. We are working on our sentence structure using nouns and verbs and ensuring sentences make sense and will be using adverbs, adjectives, prepositions and conjunctions to build more complex sentences. We will continue to spend time practicing use of a range of punctuation including capital letters, full stops, commas, exclamation marks and apostrophes for contraction and possession and will also now concentrate on use of inverted commas for direct speech.

Our model texts will be the humorous "The Incredible Book Eating Boy" by Oliver Jeffers and the amazing "An Anthology of Intriguing Animals" by Ben Hoare. The children will write their own narrative comedy and a non chronological report about an animal from the Arctic or Antarctic.

 

Reading

The children will have chance to choose a book from the library each week to bring home to read and will have a Year 3 reading book to bring home as well.  Now the children are in Year 3, the class reading books will take a while to read through so will not be changed as frequently. All class reading books have been carefully selected by our English lead so they are challenging and appropriate for each year group. You can help by encouraging your child to read as much as possible at home and ideally for at least 15 minutes each day. Please note all their reading in their reading journal. 

If you get chance at home, spend time sharing reading and chatting about their books and interests. Ask questions about the plot and characters in a story. What is the purpose of the book? What does your child think will happen next? What are some of the key facts they have learned if reading a non fiction text? Ask your children if they can summarise what has happened in 3 bullet points. If they do not know the meaning of a word, can they find this out from the surrounding text or use a dictionary to look this up?  Can they explain what punctuation is used and how this helps them to read the text? Can they use expression and intonation? We will be continuing to develop these reading and oracy skills in class this year. Can they identify any text features or grammar or writing skills that we have learned in class? As we progress through the year ask them to show you any adjectives, adverbs/adverbial phrases/ similes, onomatopoeia, direct speech when they read and can they explain why certain punctuation is used by the author?

                    

Spelling and handwriting

Spelling is tricky! The more the children see, hear and use words the better for their spelling. Here are the Year 2 and Year 3 statutory spelling lists - the children will learn and be encouraged to use these in all their writing in class and we will also practice phonics and learn and practice spelling rules too. These words will be included in your child's homework journal and any practice they can do at home can only help.

T-L-5157-Year-2-Common-Exception-Words - St James' Primary School, Wetherby

The children should practice writing down and spelling words. Make it as fun as you can. There are some ideas here to help you and you can find a lot more on the internet.

                                               Spelling Menu Activities | Windy Nook Primary School

You could have a competition at home - choose a few words at a time and see if the children can spell more of these words correctly than you!

STATUTORY WORDS SPELLING CHALLENGE - Can the children write a sentence using only words from the statutory spelling list? If they bring it in to class there will be prizes if the words are spelled correctly! It can be silly as long as it's a full sentence. 

I am sure the children can do much better but here are some examples:

Breathe regularly, question often, learn knowledge.

Occasionally, important women accidentally describe various potatoes!

 

The children will start to bring home handwriting packs to practice formation of letters and use of finger spaces. Please can you encourage that they practice as often as they can at home making sure they are writing on the lines and concentrating on neat and tidy presentation so that we can progress with cursive writing and joining correctly formed letters.

 

Maths   

This term the children will recap equal groups, use of arrays and multiplying and dividing into 2, 3, 5 and 10. They will also now learn to multiply and divide by 4 and 8.

If you can please encourage practice of times tables at home as this will really help the children in class.

The children all have access to TT Rock Stars and Mathletics and the following websites are also great fun - please encourage your child to use these and enjoy continuing their learning at home:

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/maths/primary-maths-age-7-8-year-3/

https://www.mathsisfun.com/tables.html 

You can also find lots of times tables songs and videos online. 

 

Topic

The children will learn about the Polar Regions. They will use maps and globes to locate the Arctic and Antarctic Circles and develop vocabulary to name the countries within the North and South Poles and consider similarities and differences. They will learn the names and locations of different climate zones including the equator and Northern and Southern Hemispheres and discuss and consider different types of landscapes in these areas.

Science                           

Class 3 will learn about "Animals Including Humans" and "Light". They will ask and answer questions to be able to explain how living things obtain food, understand how to create a balanced meal and will use scientific language to explain the human skeleton and name and label bones. They will also learn about light and dark, how light travels and discuss and consider reflection of light. They will conduct experiments in order to see and explain how light can be blocked to create different shadows.  

 

Design and Technology/Art

In Design and Technology, the children will design a recipe and instructions and make and eat/evaluate their own ice cream and in Art will study the Polar Artwork of Emma Stibbons to learn and develop their own shade and sketch techniques using pencil and charcoal.

P.E.

Class 3 will have two sessions of PE which will now take place every Wednesday and every other Friday. This term our PE units are netball and then cheerleading and the children will also continue to learn skills with a visiting coach.

They will need to come to school in full PE kit: plain black jogging bottoms, plain black hooded jacket, plain black shorts, red school PE T- shirt and plain black trainers.

 

Homework

Homework will be set on a Friday to be completed in their homework book and returned by the following Wednesday. This may include spellings and handwriting practice. 

 

If you need to contact us please use this email address: mrs.toft@denholmeprimaryschool.co.uk