Year 3
Summer 1, 2025
Welcome to Year 3!
We hope you had a lovely half term break and are ready for more learning in year 3 with lots of new things to learn.
Start time - 8:40am Pick up time - 3:15pm
If you have any questions, concerns or worries, please contact me at year3@cpa.dsat.education and we will do our best to respond as soon as we can.
Key information
Please ensure that your child brings a labelled water bottle to school everyday as well as ensuring that all items of your child's uniform is clearly labelled too. Snacks are not provided in Key Stage 2, please send with your child a healthy fruit snack or cereal bar for break time.
PE is on a Tuesday morning - please send children to school in their PE kits. They will get changed into their school uniform afterwards so please ensure this is in their bags too. Please ensure long hair is tied back and earrings are removed or covered. Covering such as a plaster should be provided from home.
Reading books will be changed on Thursdays, please ensure your child brings their reading book and their reading record to school.
Homework will be sent out on a Thursday and will be due back the following Thursday.
Please click on the link below to find the information shared during our Beginning of Year meeting in September.
Year 3 Beginning of Year meeting information
Curriculum
Here is a summary of what we will be learning in Year 3 during the Summer term:
Writing
Our writing this half-term will be based on the book 'Journey' by Aaron Becker, a beautifully illustrated, fantasy fiction book with no words! It is about a lonely girl who draws a magic door on her bedroom wall and through it escapes into a world where wonder, adventure, and danger abound. Red marker in hand, she creates a boat, a balloon, and a flying carpet that carry her on a spectacular journey toward an uncertain destiny. When she is captured by a sinister emperor, only an act of tremendous courage and kindness can set her free. Can it also lead her home and to her heart’s desire? With supple line, luminous colour, and nimble flights of fancy, author-illustrator Aaron Becker launches an ordinary child on an extraordinary journey toward her greatest and most exciting adventure of all. In response to the book, we will be writing an adventure story based on ‘Journey’.
Reading
Our reading sessions this half term will be based around the book 'Amazing Rivers' by Julie Vosburgh Agnone and Kerry Hyndman. The blurb reads: Fearless adventurers, set sail on a fascinating voyage down the world's most extraordinary rivers! Incredible wildlife, from brown bears catching salmon that swim upstream to anacondas large enough to eat a pig. Astounding natural wonders, from a boiling river so hot you can cook an egg in it to a multicoloured river that flows like a liquid rainbow. Awesome river traditions, from ritual baths to rubber duck racing to barefoot waterskiing. Join author Julie Vosburgh Agnone and award-winning illustrator Kerry Hyndman in this fact-filled celebration of some of the most REMARKABLE rivers on EARTH!
Through daily reading, children will practice their fluency in a variety of ways including teacher led reading, choral, echo, paired and individual reading. We will learn to retrieve and record information from non-fiction, identify how language, structure and presentation contribute to meaning and use dictionaries to check the meaning of words that they have read.
Children will complete a variety of activities in response to our reading to develop comprehension skills including:
- Predict what might happen from details stated and implied
- Clarify the meaning of words in context
- Teachers will model fluency at an appropriate speed with accuracy, automaticity and prosody
- Fluency practice read at an appropriate speed with accuracy, automaticity and prosody
- Retrieve record and present information
- Summarise reading from previous sessions
- Participate in whole class discussion to explore answers to questions
Spelling
Children will be following the Head-Start spelling programme again this year, with a dedicated spelling lesson each day. Please click on the links below to see the spellings we will focus on over the year. We are now working on the Summer term.
Year 3 Head-Start spellings Autumn term
Year 3 Head-Start spellings Spring term
Year 3 Head-Start spellings Summer term
Children will also be encouraged to spell the year 3/4 common exception words, please click on the link below
Year 3/4 Common Exception Words
Maths
This half term, in 'Angles and shape', we will be learning to:
- Use angles to describe turns and explore properties of shapes
- Identify angles inside a 2-D shape
- Recognise right angles and their relationship to quarter turns
- Understand the terms ‘acute’ and ‘obtuse’
- Use a right-angle checker to identify perpendicular lines
- Draw perpendicular lines
- Identify and explain parallel lines
- Identify rectangles including squares
- Create 2-D shapes and describe the properties of 2-D shapes
- Draw a 2-D shapes and calculate the perimeter
- Describe the properties of 3-D shapes
- Identify and describe lines of symmetry in 2-D shapes
This half term, in 'Measures', we will be learning to:
- Read weighing scales with different intervals
- Weigh and compare mass in mixed units
- Estimate mass
- Read scales when measuring volume
- Measure and compare capacities in mixed units
- Estimate capacity
- Solve addition and subtraction word problems
- Solve multiplication and division word problems
- Solving problems on measure
Each week children take part in a times table challenge where they have 3 minutes to answer questions based on their times table and related division facts. It is important to build times table fluency as speedy recall will enable them to progress and prepares them for the governments Year 4 Multiplication Check. TTRockstars (TTRS) can also help, further details of TTRS are at the bottom of this page. Click on the following links to view the weekly times table challenges.
To further support your children at home, please encourage them to learn their times tables and to practise and remember our Key Instant Recall Facts (KIRFs) for Autumn term. Please click on the following links for Year 3 KIRFs, we are now focussing on Summer 1.
Year 3 Summer KIRFs
Science
This half term, the children will be learning about flowering plants and plant growth. Children will learn to identify and describe the functions of different parts of flowering plants: roots, stem/trunk, leaves [and flowers]. We will also explore the requirements of plants for life and growth (air, light, water, nutrients from soil, and room to grow) and how they vary from plant to plant. Finally we will investigate the way in which water is transported within plants.
RE
This half term we will be focussing on Hindu Dharma and our key enquiry question is 'How can Brahman be everywhere and in everything?
We are learning to understand the Hindu belief that there is one God with many different aspects. In this enquiry, the children look at the Hindu beliefs in God and how these beliefs are formed into images and murtis. They consider the stories and symbols and how these beliefs impact their impact on daily life.
PSHE
We will be learning about living in the wider world, focussing on the theme money matters. Through a range of speaking, listening and written activities, we will encourage children to think about where money comes from and how it can be used. Children will discuss how we spend money, why people might need to borrow money and the consequences of this. Children will begin to explore how we
can prioritise what we spend money on and what choices we have, including environmental considerations of wider spending. Through this unit of learning, children will also consider what influences their spending and how we can keep track of what we spend.
We are continuing to deliver a program to all year groups at school called myHappymind. myHappymind is all based around helping children to understand how their brain works and to support them in developing positive skills and habits to be their very best selves!
We finish our sessions with our school's Let Your Light Shine Prayer, click the link here;
My Happy Mind
This half term our theme is Engage. This module supports children by helping them to understand how to set meaningful goals that matter and how to stay resilient in times of challenge. This module is all about building self-esteem and resilience too.
Please click on the link below to access an overview of what the program entails.
myHappymind Parent information
History
This half term we are focussing on the Romans and our key question is 'How have the Romans influenced our lives today?' During this half term we will be using these historical skills:
Chronology – sequenced and scaled timelines
Source work – extracting and interpreting
Enquiry – creating and answering questions, pursuing a line of enquiry
Cause and consequence, significance
Through this theme, we will complete a range of activities to help us understand the Roman Empire and it's chronology, the Roman invasion, achievements and Legacy and finally Hadrians Wall.
Music
This half term our theme is enjoying improvisation. Exploring the structure of songs is interesting and important. There are patterns in songs that you will recognise. Listening, singing, playing and improvising are some of them. Introduction, verse, and chorus are some more. This half term children will be learning to improvise over a section of a song.
Computing
This half term we will be learning to design and present an effective presentation. Children will learn to create a page in a presentation, add media to a presentation, add shapes and lines to a presentation and add animations to a presentation.
Art
This half term we will be focussing on printing, building on children's prior use of poster paint to print with 3d shapes in the style of Paul Klee. We will look at the work of artists such as Gordy Wright, Sarah Alps and some ancient Greek motifs for inspiration. Following the explore and develop ideas, investigate and make, evaluate and develop process, children will create a collograph plate.
French
This half term our theme is 'Les Glaces' where we will be learning about ice creams. Children will learn to name and recognise up to 10 different flavours for ice creams, ask for an ice-cream in French using ‘je voudrais’, say what flavour they would like and say whether they would like a cone or a small pot/tub of ice-cream.
Physical Education - Athletics
This half term we will be learning about the skills needed for Athletics. This will also help us to prepare for our upcoming sports day event. Children will be learning to develop their ability to jump as far as they can, to ‘chest push’ as far as they can, to hurdle effectively and to think about how they can use their body to maximise their performance in sports.
Indoors PE kit
Navy/black shorts and a white polo shirt or t-shirt (N.B. This should be a different polo shirt to any worn as part of the school uniform)
(for gymnastics, a black leotard may also be worn).
Outdoors PE kit
Tracksuits will be allowed for outdoor games in cold weather; these should not be in team colours/fashion brands.
Trainers should be worn which are robust, sturdy and intended for exercise and not fashion.
Home Learning
Maths homework - 1 piece of maths homework will be given out every Thursday to be handed in by the following Thursday.
Reading - Please aim for 15 minutes each day, sign the home reading record books and have them in school for book change on Thursdays. Building on from Key Stage 1, it is expected that children read a minimum of 20 times a month in Key Stage 2, children achieving this and beyond will receive a golden ticket for the half termly prize draw.
Times Table Rock Stars - Click here to play! (This takes you to an external site which we have no control over)
TTRS is an on-line programme to boost fluency and recall in multiplication and division skills. It is available on a range of devices, including mobile phones. You can play online at ttrockstars.com or download the TTRS app. Playing little and often will significantly improve your child’s recall and understanding of multiplication and division facts. These are critical foundations in maths so we are excited by the impact TTRS will have. Children will earn virtual coins to personalise their rock avatars and move up the rock leaderboard from "New Artist" to "Rock Hero"! In order to get the best out of TTRS children should regularly play for short bursts of time over the week, there are 18 stages to complete! TTRS uses the same log in details your child used for NUMBOTs in Key Stage 1.
If you have misplaced your log in details or are having trouble accessing the website, please email me to let us know.
Reflex
Reflex is an online, game-based program that helps students build fast and effortless recall of math facts. Research has shown that quick recall of math facts is critical for future success in mathematics. We recommend that children use Reflex and achieve the Green Light at least three times each week!
If you have misplaced your log in details or are having trouble accessing the website, please email me to let us know.
Thank you for your support. If you ever have any questions, please feel free to speak to a member of the Year 3 team.
Mrs Rowe, Mrs Barnes and Mrs Crieghton.