Parent Information Pack
Year Three
This booklet will provide you with information regarding your child’s transition into year 3.
General Expectations to Enable Effective Learning
Parents can make a real difference to a child’s learning; you are crucial to their education. There is a wealth of evidence that shows that children do better when:
- There is a close working partnership between the home and school
- Parents show a keen interest in their child’s education and learning
- Learning is made a part of everyday life by the school and parents
- Children are actively involved in making decisions about their own learning.
How can you help in this journey?
From early years, through Primary School and into Secondary school, family time is really important. Listening to your children, sharing experiences, laughing and having fun is crucial for lifelong learning to take place.
Reading:
Sharing a book with your child, talking about the story, listening to your child’s point of view, encouraging them to express their point of view is vital to enhancing their enjoyment and the importance of reading. Questioning your child whilst they are reading will enhance their comprehension of a text.
Experiences:
Introduce your child to as wide a variety of experiences as possible. Visit the local library, art gallery museum or a historical site. The majority of these are free, especially for children, and provide a wealth of activities to engage you and your child. Many of these can be linked with topics that will be learnt in school and can really help children gain a deeper understanding of what they are learning.
Everyday Learning:
Encourage your child to read the signs on tube and bus journeys, write a shopping list together, add up the cost of buying their favourite food. Encourage your child to explain how to do things, you may be surprised at how much they already know.
Routine
Routines are really important for children.
- Ensure that your child has a regular bedtime and is getting plenty of sleep
- Mealtimes are an important family time. It gives you a chance to talk to your child and them to develop an understanding of healthy eating.
- Children need to become responsible for having all their equipment in school, this starts in lower school by parents checking with their child and progresses through to the child knowing what they need by the time they are in upper school.
Dropping and collecting your child from school:
· A member of staff will be on duty from 8.30am – and you may drop your child at school from this time.
· From 8.40am your child will go into school due to the soft start.
· Your child must be in class by 8.50am or they will be marked late.
· The school day currently finishes at 3.20pm, and you should collect your child from the basketball playground next to the lower school field at this time.
· Please inform the office, or write a letter to the class teacher if you have arranged alternative child care e.g your child is going home with a friend or a relative is collecting them.
School Uniform
Boys
A bottle green pullover with school logo
Grey trousers
A plain white polo shirt
Black shoes
Girls
A grey skirt OR grey trousers in a woven fabric (i.e. not leggings or ski-pants)
A plain white polo shirt
A bottle green cardigan or jumper with new school logo
Green/white check summer dress (not stripes)
Black shoes
Grey tights only or grey or white socks
White headscarf for Muslim girls
A word about shoes
Please ensure that your children wear sensible shoes to school. Children are very active during the day both inside the school and in the playground. Their shoes need to be comfortable and safe. “Strappy” sandals are likely to cause trips and falls and boots are not suitable for all day wear.
Jewellery
For safety reasons children should not wear jewellery. The only exceptions are stud earrings and essential religious items. See below for advice on jewellery during PE.
PE Kit
Please supply your child with a draw string bag which may be left at school during term time. P.E kits will be sent home on a half-termly basis unless there is a reason to send it home earlier. Children are responsible for their own P.E kits, so please ensure all items are clearly named.
· Please provide a pair of black shorts and a T-shirt in their house colour. Please also provide a pair of clearly named black plimsolls.
· Please also provide a plain, no hooded, tracksuit or jogging top and trousers for outdoor PE.
· Gymnastics and dance take place in the hall and all children are required to wear plimsolls. Trainers are worn for outdoor PE.
· Should your child need to wear jewellery for religious purposes please provide micropore tape to cover the jewellery during the lesson so that it doesn’t present a hazard to your child or others working alongside them. Your child’s named supply of tape should be kept in their P.E bag.
Please ensure that all articles of clothing and footwear are clearly marked with your child’s name.
Uniform can be obtained from any major chain store and several local shops including Angels in Rayners Lane and Kevin’s Schoolwear in Pinner.
From time to time “nearly new” items of school uniform are donated by parents. These are available for sale in school. (Details of these dates appear in newsletters).
Year 3 Equipment List
Please ensure that your child has the equipment listed below:
· Book bag / School bag
· Pencil case (clearly labelled with name)
· Pencils
· Sharpener
· Rubber
· Ruler
· Glue stick
· Colouring pencils
· Felt-tips / Highlighter (optional)
· A blue Berol or similar handwriting pen (not Biro)
· Trainers for outdoor PE
· PE kit (clearly labelled with name)
Snacks
Please remember that if children would like a healthy snack at break time, it must be provided from home. Do make sure that the snack is easy to eat in the playground, it could be a piece of fruit or a yoghurt in a pouch for example.
In addition, please ensure your child has a water bottle in school to ensure they stay hydrated throughout the day.
Homework
Homework will be set on a Monday and will be due the following Monday. The homework task will be a form of ‘pre-teaching’ and the learning will be continued throughout the week that it is due in.
DB Primary:
DB primary will be introduced in September 2016 which is user friendly version of Fronter (an online education system). DB primary will be updated with new topics in accordance with children’s learning. Each child will be provided with their login and password in year 3 to ensure they have access to DB primary. A homework page will display the: homework slip, spellings, and any worksheets or tasks that you may be required to complete at home. If you do not have access to the internet, please inform the class teacher, and they will be happy to provide a paper copy.
Literacy:
Children should read and fill in their reading log a minimum of 3 times per week, for 15 minutes each time. Their reading log should be signed or initialled by a parent/guardian. Children can read their choice of school reading book from our library or a book of their own.
Spellings
Children will be given 10 spellings to learn for a test each week. The list will be stuck in their homework diary each week and available on ‘DB Primary’. They will also be required to write a sentence using each spelling in cursive handwriting. Please do not be alarmed if spellings appear ‘easy’ at the beginning of the year, as it is necessary to recover some of the phonic stages.
Writing
Children will be given a writing task which should take up to 30 minutes to complete. Occasionally this may be replaced with project work which may last a few weeks.
Maths:
Children will be given a maths task which should take up to 30 minutes to complete. This may be computer based, and will often include the use of ‘Mathletics’ which can be differentiated and monitored by the class teacher.
It is helpful for children to have a routine for completing their homework. If you can set aside a regular time and a quiet space for them to work they are likely to find it easier to focus. We recommend that your child attempts the homework earlier in the week, then there is plenty of time for teachers to support them if necessary.
Please ask your child what their homework task is. They should work as independently as possible. If your child has required a great deal of support to complete the task or has found it very easy, please communicate this to the teacher by writing a note in the homework diary.
Homework will be peer marked by other students under direction of the teacher and then marked by the teacher, using our triangle marking policy and the teacher’s initials. It is the children’s responsibility to bring the homework on time and show it to the teacher.
Please ensure you sign the reading record and homework diary every week, this will be checked once a week by the class teacher. The homework diary may be used as communication between home and school, if you do write a message to the class teacher, please ensure that your child brings it to their attention.
Failure to complete homework:
After a settling-in period, children will be expected to return their homework every Monday. Should a child not hand in their homework, a detention will be issued with immediate effect and the class teacher will still expect to see the missed homework. If there is a valid reason for missing or incomplete homework, we ask that you inform the class teacher by sending in a note.
Detentions are usually held on Monday and Wednesday, if missing homework has resulted in a detention the class teacher will inform the child of their detention date. Detentions are completed during the school day at break time.
Year 3 Literacy guidance.
Reading
· Encourage your child to read regularly, they can read a range of different text types eg. books, newspapers, recipes, posters, instructions, football programmes, cereal boxes ….
· Let your child see you as a reader – newspapers, books, recipes, magazines etc.
· If your child has difficulty with a word … Sound out the phonemes eg t -r-a-ck track, Use the pictures for clues. Read to the end of the sentence to see if you can guess what the word might have been.
· Ask your child what the story is about – talk about the setting, characters, what has happened so far, why did the characters do/say what they did?
· Talk about the book – who wrote it, drew the pictures? Does your child know any other books by the same author?
· If your child is struggling with the book they are reading, consider whether it is an appropriate level. You could try reading some of the book to them and seeing if they understand the story. Try alternating between yourself and your child reading so they can still enjoy a book which may be too hard for them to read entirely independently. If your child is losing interest in a book, allow them to choose another rather than forcing them to finish. This will help to ensure your child does not come to see reading as a chore.
Spellings
Children are given spellings on a weekly basis which are appropriately challenging. They are expected to then use these spellings in homework, class work and class discussions. They are also encouraged to use thesauruses and dictionaries.
Writing
Children will be taught a variety of genres and expected to use a high standard of English according to their ability and aptitude for challenge. Writing sessions will also focus on correct use of spoken and written grammar.
Having discussions with your children about current affairs, trips, books, TV programmes etc is important and enhances their literacy abilities.
Year 3 Numeracy guidance
Below are several ways in which you can support your child for numeracy.
· Count, read, write and order numbers to at least 1000.
· Read number names – eg one hundred and forty-two, one thousand and twenty nine.
· Know what each digit means (including 0 in eg 506 or 1009)
· Continue simple number sequences eg odd or even numbers, counting on or back in ones or tens from any two or three digit number (34, 44, 54, 64 ….).
· Understand that multiplication is the inverse of division and to use this to solve problems, eg 3 x 7 = 21, then 21 ÷ 7 = 3, and 21 ÷ 3 = 7.
· Know by heart all addition facts for each number to at least 100
· Know that numbers can be added and multiplied in any order, eg 6 + 24 =30, 24 + 3 = 30 and 3 x 5 = 15 and 5 x 3 = 15
· Understand that multiplication can be carried out as eg
3 x 5 is 5 + 5 + 5 or as an array - *****
*****
*****
· Doubles of all numbers to 50, eg double 26 is (answer 52).
· Halves of all even numbers to 100 eg half of 56 is (answer 28). Understand that halving is the opposite of doubling.
· Know by heart facts up to 10 x tables. Including eg how many 8s in 64?
How many lots of 6 in 24? 70 is how many groups of 10?
· Estimate, measure and compare lengths (using centimetres (cm) and metres (m), masses (weight using grams (g) and kilograms (kg), and capacity (using millilitres (ml) and litres (l), and suggest and use the correct equipment eg ruler, measuring jug, scales.
· Read a simple scale to the nearest labelled division eg 50g, 250ml, 7cm.
· Use a ruler to draw and measure lines to the nearest centimetre and millimetre.
· Use the mathematical names for common 2-D and 3-D shapes, eg hexagon, cuboid.