Year 3

We’ve had a great start in Year 3! The children have settled in well, showing lots of enthusiasm, curiosity and increasing independence. They’ve been getting to know their new classroom routines, making new friends, and embracing the challenges ahead with a positive attitude. It’s been lovely to see their confidence grow already. They have developed their mathematical understanding, strengthened their reading and written skills, explored the natural world through science, and investigated how people lived and adapted throughout prehistoric Britain.

In English, the children have been enthralled and captivated with two books - ‘The Wilderness’ and ‘Leon and the Place Between’. The Wilderness allowed the children to explore the text through reading, discussion and imaginative writing. They developed their understanding of characters, settings and atmosphere, using descriptive language and vocabulary choices to engage the reader. For their final written piece, they planned, drafted and edited their own Wilderness Guide. Leon and the Place Beyond is a very imaginative text which gave the children the opportunity to develop their inference, prediction and comprehension skills. They investigated how illustrations and language create atmosphere, and used their ideas to write creatively, developing characters, settings and narrative structure. For their final written piece they planned, drafted and edited their own stories based around the original text.

In Maths, the children have been learning about place value. They have developed their understanding of numbers, including representing, partitioning, comparing and ordering numbers. They also explored the value of each digit, used number lines and practiced counting in different steps. Our other topic has been addition and subtraction, where the children have built more confidence in adding and subtracting numbers using mental strategies, number lines, place-value knowledge and formal written methods as appropriate. They have practiced estimating, checking answers and solving problems, including calculations involving exchanging where appropriate.

Rocks has been our science topic, and the children have investigated different types of rocks and explored their properties, uses and formation. They compared and grouped rocks according to their appearance and physical characteristics, learning how rocks are used in everyday life and how fossils can form. They really enjoyed looking closely at different rock samples and carried out an investigation to test hardness, buoyancy and permeability of a selection of rocks.

In history, they have explored how life in Britain changed from the Stone Age through the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. They investigated how people lived, found food, travelled, built homes and developed new technologies. Using archaeological evidence, artefacts and historical interpretations, the children have discovered how we learn about the past when written records are unavailable.