Year 3 Topic Letter

Autumn Term2016

Dear Parents,

Welcome back to the new school year. Below is some information about the learning we will cover this term, we hope it will be of help to you.

Topic /

Suggestions on how you can help

R.E. – Children will be learning about the domestic church through the topic of Homes. We will also learn about Baptism and Confirmation in our topic on Belonging. In our Visitors topic, the children will learn about the coming of God and will explore how Advent is a special time of preparation. / Discuss and share your own experiences of Baptism and Confirmation.
Talk about your family and its importance.
Please refer to the RE letter on the school website for key dates.
In Englishthe children will experience writing in different forms such as poetry, creative writing and diary entries. Through focused activities, the children will continue to develop their word and sentence level skills covering a range of areas including verbs, tenses and punctuation. Speaking and listening, drama and role-play are also an integrated part of our teaching. / Discuss the Big Writing topic with your child as this will help them prepare for Friday’s writing task.
Listen to your child read daily and record comments in their reading diary. Read and share books with your child and go to the library.
In mathematicswe willstudy reading and writing numbers to 1000, mental recall of addition and subtraction to 20 and doubling and halving. We will focus on word problems based around the four operations. The areas we will study include money problems and decimal notation, time to 5-minute intervals, measuring length, names and properties of 2D and 3D shapes, symmetry and right angles, fractions of shapes and numbers and data handling – pictograms and frequency tables. / It is important to help your child to learn and practise their times tables as this will help them in all areas of maths.
Help your child practise their mental maths targets set at CHaT day.
Our Local Area–We will locate our local area on a map and will learn how to give directions. We will study the areas human and physical features. We will also be looking at the main cities in the UK using maps. / Discuss where you live with your child and use Google maps to locate your home and local landmarks. Practise giving directions from one place to another.
The Stone Age and Iron Age- This will include looking at the life style, clothes and food of these times. We will cover the changes that occurred as the tools changed from stone to metal. / Discuss with your child what they are learning about at school. Use Espresso and the internet to find out more about this period and identify similarities and differences between then and now.
Rocks and Soils- Children will learn to identify naturally occurring rocks and how to group them according to their characteristics. They will plan and carry out investigations to compare rocks and will discuss the everyday uses of rocks. / Discuss with your child the uses of different rocks. Walk around your local area or garden and see what rocks you can discover. Look at their shape, size, texture and colour and discuss with your child.
Healthy Eating-the children will learn to identify the different food groups and what makes a balanced diet. They will learn about teeth and how to keep them healthy. They will also investigate the diets of different animals. / Discuss the food pyramid with your child. Share with them the importance of having a balanced diet and how this affects our bodies.

Computing– The children will be learning to programme an animation and will be finding and correcting bugs in programs. They will be using i-pads and netbooks to facilitate this while also exploring and using new software.

P.E. –Both classes will have outdoor/ indoor PE every Thursday, Wednesday or Friday. The children will be focusing on multi-skills and dance.
Home Learning for Year 3
Home learning is issued on a Friday to be returned on a Tuesday.
  • There will be anEnglish piece of homework to complete as well as a ‘Big Writing’topic.
  • Discuss the talk time topic several times in preparation for Big Writing.
  • Practise spelling words/ patterns using High frequency words for reference.
  • Read daily with your child and record in their reading diary.
  • Mathletics tasks will be set weekly.
  • Children may be asked to do some research for science, history and geography topics.
  • Children should continue to work on their personal targets, which will be reviewed at our CHaT meetings.

Thank-you for your support,

Mrs Carrig and Miss Begum