Awesome Owls (Year 3)

Autumn 1 Newsletter

A very warm welcome back to school after the summer holidays. I hope you have all had a lovely summer break and all the children are refreshed and well rested ready for the learning challenges ahead in year 3!

As you can see from the title, we have chosen to be called Awesome Owls for this academic year. During our summer transition days we have discussed the fact that an owl is represented on our school badge and are seen as wise and clever!!

This half term our topic will be Stone Age to Iron Age. We will learn all about which order the three key ages of prehistory happened in, why are they called Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age and what were some of the developments in how people lived from Stone Age to Iron Age.

In English, we will be writing some instructional texts about how to make a trap to catch a prehistoric animal and writing a setting and character description linked to the Iron Age. Our Maths lessons will focus on place value. Please keep on regularly practicing times tables: x2, x3, x4, x5, x 8 and x10. They really do make a difference to all maths work completed in class.

PE kit

Our PE days are on Mondays and Wednesdays. Starting on Wednesday 18th September we will be swimming at the Arc. On swimming days children come to school in their full school uniform. Please make sure they are wearing the correct PE kit.  We will try where possible to do PE outside. Obviously this is weather dependent but where possible we will try and arrange at least one session a week that can take place indoors.  Please make sure your child brings a warm tracksuit top.

Targets:

Reading:

• Reading books at an age appropriate level (within the year 3 Lexile Range)
• Asking questions of a fiction story – ( Stig of the Dump) to improve understanding
• Explaining and justifying understanding of the text using the PE prompt ( Point and Explain)
• To record information from a range of non-fiction texts

We will listen to children read in school in a variety of situations. The expectation will be that parents listen to children read their books at home and record any reading completed into the home/school reading record book. Please bring this into school everyday. Every Friday we will collect in Reading records and the children will be working towards Bronze, Silver and Gold certificates depending on how many reads they have collected at home over the year.

Science:

• I can compare and group rocks based on their appearance and physical properties, giving a reason
• I can describe how fossils are formed.
• I can describe how soil is made.
• I can describe and explain the difference between sedimentary and igneous rock

E Safety: (Self Image and Respect)

This half term we will be examining how we can describe positive ways for someone to interact with others online and understand how this will positively impact on how others perceive them. We will explore how an online identity can be different to the identity we present in ‘real life’. We will create an avatar poster to describe the right decisions about how Ito interact with others online and how this will impact on how others perceive me.

Homework

Your child will continue to receive homework every Friday to be handed in by the following Wednesday. Maths and English homework books will be handed out in the coming weeks. Please dojo me with any problems or activity your child has found hard and where possible we will follow this up in class. 

Spellings will be handed out on a Friday to be tested the following Friday. Children can take their books home so that you can see their results, but they must have their book back in school every Monday.

Times tables will be tested every Friday morning. Children will be learning a selected times table during our weekly maths lesson. The aim is for all children to know their times tables up to 12x12 by the end of year 4.  Any short practice, at any time will help your child to know all their facts for quick recall.  For the first half term I will test the children using the Daily 10 Top marks website: https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/daily10.  It will be set at level 4 and we will start on a 10 second interval for each question. This can be practiced at home at any time.

If you have any questions or if there is anything I can do to help then please do not hesitate to ask.            

Kind regards

Mr Fidler

Class teacher Year 3

Curriculum Web and Topic Knowledge Organisers for this half term

Please take a look at the wonderful things we will be learning about this half term. 

Knowledge Organiser Autumn 1