English

In English, this term, we began with a poetry unit, ‘Wish A Spell’ by Brian Moses.
The children were inspired and eager to write their own versions after reading and analysing the poem. During this unit, they revised commands, noun phrases, possessive apostrophes, and were introduced to the use of ‘a’ and ‘an’. For their final write, the children thought about their own wishes and came up with interesting ingredients they would need for their wishes to come true.

We have also studied an explanation text based on the film ‘How to Train Your Dragon’.
Within this unit, the children learned about time conjunctions, cause and effect conjunctions, prepositions and adverbs. They also explored the purpose and importance of headings, sub-headings, and paragraphs, and applied these when writing their own texts. For their final hot write, the children had the opportunity to choose their own mythical creature or animal to train. They were encouraged to use the new skills they had learned in their writing. Have a read of some great and unique explanation texts below!

 

Reading

During this term in reading, we have been looking at a non-fiction text and some poetry. We started by exploring The Big Book of the UK. The children enjoyed discovering different facts about towns and cities across the UK.  They had the opportunity to practice their skimming, scanning, and retrieval skills. One of the favourite facts the children found was that in the UK, more than 100 million cups of tea are drunk each day!

We then moved on to a book called Poetry Pie. This book was full of funny poems that the children enjoyed exploring. We spent some time looking at rhyming couplets, as well as fluency and expression. The children enjoyed performing poems in groups for the class and had the chance to recreate a poem called Lame Excuses. They had a lot of fun coming up with excuses to tell a teacher as to why they hadn’t read their reading book.

Maths

In Maths this term, the children have been focusing on multiplication and division, with an emphasis on their 3s, 4s, and 8 times tables. The children have been able to demonstrate how things are grouped. For example, “How many cupcakes are on the plate? There are 4 cupcakes on 3 plates. How many cupcakes are there altogether?” (4 x 3 = 12). The children have enjoyed using pop songs to help them learn their times tables, and I’m sure they would love to sing them to you! By looking at addition and subtraction it has allowed children to consolidate their learning of the basics and transfer their knowledge into learning and understanding their times tables. We are going to continue to build on their knowledge of multiplication and division after half term. In the Spring term, we will be looking at Length and Perimeter, Fractions and Mass and Capacity. 

 

Science

In science, we have been learning all about skeletons. In our first lesson, we explored what the human skeleton looks like and its structure. In the second lesson, we focused on the function of the human skeleton and how it supports and protects our body. In lesson three, we investigated how bones and muscles work together to help us move. Next, we will be looking at how skeletons are different in different animals and exploring what nutrition is and where it comes from. The children have enjoyed discovering how our skeleton is essential to our everyday life!

 

Art

During art, we focused on tonal shading. The children enjoyed learning about the shade scale and exploring how light affects the shades on objects. We went outside for one of our lessons, and the children put their skills to the test by drawing and shading a tree. We then explored still life images of fruit and vegetables, and the children practiced shading with colour. The final part of the unit was drawing a portrait, where the children explored proportion and lighting.

 

RE

This term in RE, Year 3 has been studying places of worship. The children have learned about the importance of different places of worship for different religions. They created posters on how to behave in a place of worship and specifically what happens at a mosque, church, and synagogue. We look forward to learning about humanity next term.

 

Value

This term, we have focused on independence. The children have been encouraged to start tasks independently in class and use their prior knowledge to solve problems on their own. They have started to show that they are independent learners by sourcing math resources to support their understanding and using a dictionary to assist them with their writing.