Welcome to Year 3 (Birch Class)
Class Teacher: Mrs Toft
Teaching Assistant: Mrs Clark
English
This half term in English the children will be writing their own Non Chronological Report about an animal of their choice concentrating on how to draw in, engage and interest their reader using amazing facts and description and working on presentation utilising main and sub headings and paragraphs. We will continue to follow the Jayne Considine Write Stuff English planning and develop and enhance skills using the Writing Rainbow.. The children will also write their own adventure piece working with the fantastic "The Last Bear" as our model text which highlights some very important issues such as climate change and endangered animals. The children will continue to practice writing complex sentences with conjunctions and dialogue using inverted commas.
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. These are brand new to school this year and have been carefully selected by our English lead so they are challenging and appropriate for each year group. These will take the children a while to read through. You can help by encouraging them 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.
Ask questions about the plot and characters. 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. 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.
Spelling
Spelling is tricky! The more the children see, hear and use words the better for their spelling. Here are the Year 3 statutory spellings for Year 3 - 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.
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.
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!
Maths
We will be continuing with Multiplication and Division. As well as the 2, 5 and 10 times tables learned in Year 2 children are expected to know their 3, 4 and 8 times tables by the end of Year 3. Any practice they are able to do at home will be really helpful.
This half term the children will recap multiples of 10 and continue to learn related calculations and problem solving with division and multiplication. We will be multiplying 2 digit numbers by 1 digit numbers using partitioning with and without exchange and looking at remainders.
We will then learn length and perimeter. The children will be measuring, comparing, adding and subtracting using metres, centimetres and millimetres. Get your rulers and measuring tapes out so the children can practice measuring length and perimeter of objects around the home!
We will also be continuing with our school wide push towards increasing times tables fluency so please encourage your child to use Times Tables Rock Stars.
YouTube has great videos for this.
The children may like to use "Hit the Button" and "Mathletics" which the school now subscribes to to help them.
Useful websites for Maths at home
https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/kids-activities/fun-maths-games-and-activities/
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/times-tables
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/z6vg9j6
Topic
This half term we continue with Geography, learning about "Life in the Freezer (The Polar Regions)". The children have learned to identify and locate the coldest places on Earth and will now explore how humans and animals adapt to live there. They have used maps and globes, learned to describe different climate zones and identify similarities and differences between the Arctic and Antarctica and will now learn about climate change.
Science
This half term the children will learn about Light and consider the big question "What happens when the lights go out?" The children will learn that we need light to see, that it travels from a light source to our eyes and to understand that light is reflected from different surfaces. They will carry out different experiments to be able to explain the answer to this big question using relevant scientific language.
P.E.
Our P.E. day is Wednesday. We will be learning dance skills used in cheerleading. Children will need to come to school in full P.E. kit.
Reminder: school P.E. kit is black jogging bottoms, plain black hooded jacket, plain black shorts, red school P.E. T-shirt and plain black trainers
Homework
Homework will be sent home on Friday each week together with suggested spelling and handwriting practice . Please return the homework by the following Wednesday to allow for work to be marked.
If you need to contact us please use our class email mrs.toft@denholmeprimary.co.uk