Year 3
Autumn Term
Year 3 Newsletter December 2024
Wow! What a busy half term Juniper and Mulberry have had. The children have continued to work extremely hard and apply themselves to all areas of the curriculum. They are very much in need of a holiday ready to re-energise for spring term!
This Half Term
Throughout this half term, the children have thoroughly enjoyed and engaged within our weekly forest sessions. They have created tribes, participated in hunting, story-telling, cave painting, fire making and whittling of sticks. Their communication, resilience and ability to work as part of a team has improved each week. We are very proud of their efforts – especially in some very cold weather!
In maths, our focus on addition and subtraction has allowed the children to become much more secure in both their mental and formal written methods. The children have applied this to word problems, showing an improvement in their reasoning skills.
In literacy, we based our writing on our autumn 1 class reader, ‘Krindlekrax’. The children explored characters from the story and used adjectives to write effective descriptive sentences. Can the children remember their chosen ‘Top Trump’ character? We used the ideas from the story to create our own ‘zero to hero’ story incorporating speech and conjunctions. Next, we explored seasonal poems. The children spent time looking at a poem called ‘Autumn is Here’. We explored key features and experimented with metaphors, alliteration and personification. The children are working hard on their final publications before bringing them home!
The children have loved our recent class reader, ‘The Stolen Spear’. This really enriched their history topic and allowed them to apply their factual knowledge and understanding. The Stone Age experience day at the beginning of the term kick started some great learning in history. The children have been very engaged and often have furthered their learning at home!
In art, the children have been very excited to create Christmas biscuit packaging for Lord Sugar’s TV programme ‘The Apprentice’. They have worked hard to research, design and plan and create their own net. They then created their final product ready to show!
Coming up in Spring 1:
English: We will begin our writing unit based on the book ‘The Stone Age Boy’. We will then progress onto exploring our non-chronological unit called ‘Why Does the Earth Shake?’
Maths: We will be continuing our learning on multiplication and division. After this, we will introduce length and perimeter.
Science: ‘Animals including humans’ will be our Science topic this half term.
Geography: We will introduce our unit on volcanoes and earthquakes. This links nicely to our writing unit.
Art: In art, we will be learning about sculptures.
PSHE: Relationships education-a separate letter will be sent to explain this in more detail.
RE: We will explore the question – ‘How do creation stories help people understand the world?’
Computing: Revisiting the importance of online safety.
Music: We will be focusing on timbre and dynamics. We will use glockenspiels to improvise and play simple tunes.
French: We will learn vocabulary associated with animals.
PE: We will complete a gymnastics unit with a focus on cannon and unison and a dancing unit based on wild animals.
Important Reminders
- Homework is still set every Friday to be handed in on the following Tuesday. Thank you for your support with this, we are particularly impressed with the high quality of work that has been sent in.
- Daily 10 minute reading is essential – please continue to support your child to do this as part of their homework. Asking questions about the text, characters and plot is helpful to check on your child’s reading comprehension. Please make sure reading books and bookmarks are kept in their plastic wallets and are in school daily.
- Please continue regular practise of times tables with your child. This can be a mix of online games, written practise and quizzes. Practise on TTRS will help improve speed and may earn certificates. We also award purple points for regular timed practise on TTRS.
By the end of the year, we will have learnt x3, x4 and x8 tables in addition to the x2 x5 x10 learnt in Year 2.
- We are continuing to work on our Year 3 spellings by using the scheme ‘Read, Write, Inc’. If your child is part of the extra spelling group then they may receive spellings to practise and overlearn at home. Please look out for any words that get sent home to revisit and learn.
- Please ensure water bottles, coats, jumpers and other items of clothing are named and taken home at the end of the day.
- PE days are Juniper – Tuesday and Wednesday/Mulberry – Tuesday and Friday.
- Please can you remind your children to stay off the grass and stick to paths around school to avoid muddy feet coming into school.
Contact emails
If you need to contact us, please use the following emails:
Key Dates
6 Jan School opens to pupils
7 Jan Karate Y3 (usual PE kit to be worn)
27 Jan Open the Book assembly by Churches Together
14 Feb School closes for half term break
PTA non-uniform day
24 Feb School opens to pupils
Additional Information