Year 3
Y3 Blog
Welcome to our Year 3 Blog!
We will be updating our Blog fortnightly, with information about the children's upcoming learning.
Weeks Commencing 27th November and 4th December
Maths
We continue our unit of learning about multiplication and division.
Here are links to the White Rose videos which cover our learning. We won’t be using these directly in class, but you may find them helpful for supporting your child at home.
Multiply by 3 https://vimeo.com/732395341
Divide by 3 https://vimeo.com/732395377
3 X table https://vimeo.com/732395412
Multiply by 4 https://vimeo.com/732395444
Divide by 4 https://vimeo.com/732395477
4X table https://vimeo.com/732395516
By the end of Year 2, children are expected to have fluent recall of their 2, 5, and 10 times tables. In Year 3, we will continue to practise these, and will learn our 3, 4- and 8-times tables. We are currently learning our 3 times table by rote. We practise this 4 times a week.
English
We are reading ‘How Dogs Really Work’ by Alan Snow. There are many other books in this series if your child is enjoying it, you could borrow them from Exeter library.
During this unit, the grammar skills we are focusing on include:
- Use of heading and sub-headings
- Extending sentences using conjunctions
- Using adverbs
- Using pronouns to avoid repetition
Spellings
Week beginning 27th November
The tricky words from our Year 3&4 Spelling list this week are:
experience experiment extreme famous favourite February
Our spelling pattern for this week is: Adding the suffix ‘-ful’
Did you know that we can make an adjective by adding the suffix -ful to lots of root words?
thank + ful = thankful
cheer cheerful
wonder wonderful
joy joyful
peace peaceful
We don’t have to swap, double or drop any letters when we add the suffix -ful. Here is the rule:
If a suffix starts with a consonant letter (-ful), it is usually just added straight on to a root word. No changes are made to the root word.
Oh, I almost forgot to give you a little tip about the word ‘beauty’. We have to swap the y to i when adding the suffix -ful.
beauty beautiful
Week beginning 4th December
The tricky words from our Year 3&4 Spelling list this week are:
forward forwards fruit grammar group guard
Our spelling pattern is Adding the suffix -less
thank thankless
hope hopeless
fear fearless
care careless
We don’t have to swap, double or drop any letters when we add the suffix -less. Here is the rule:
If a suffix starts with a consonant letter (-less), it is almost always just added straight on to a root word. No changes are made to the root word.
Reading
This half term, we are reading ‘Cave Challenge’ by Bear Grylls. We will all read it together and focus on comprehension skills and development of vocabulary understanding.
Science
We are learning about rocks and fossils. We have learnt how igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock have been made. We have carried out comparative tests for hardness and absorbency to compare the 3 rock types. We are now learning about Mary Anning and how fossils are made.
R.E.
We are learning about Judaism. We will learn about Yom Kippur and then the story of Moses. We are now learning about the festival of Passover and the 10 commandments.
Art
Our Art links with our Stone Age learning in History. We are learning about the style of prehistoric man-made art. We will experiment with using the pigments in natural products to make different colours and then with using different brush strokes. We have scaled up our drawings and are now creating a cave painting on a textured surface.
History
Our History for this half term is all about the Stone Age. We will learn about how archaeologists use artefacts to understand life in Stone Age Britain and what life was like in the Stone Age.
Weeks Commencing 13th and 20th November 2023
Monday 20th November – Hedgehogs and Moles on school trip to Kents Cavern.
During the week commencing 20th November we will be assessing the children’s learning alongside our curriculum teaching.
Maths
We will begin a unit of learning about multiplication and division.
Here are links to the White Rose videos which cover our learning. We won’t be using these directly in class, but you may find them helpful for supporting your child at home.
ultiplication – equal groups: https://vimeo.com/732395145
Use Arrays: https://vimeo.com/732395183
Multiples of 2: https://vimeo.com/732395224
Multiples of 5 and 10: https://vimeo.com/732395261
Sharing and Grouping: https://vimeo.com/732395301
By the end of Year 2, children are expected to have fluent recall of their 2, 5, and 10 times tables. In Year 3, we will continue to practise these, and will learn our 3, 4- and 8-times tables. We are currently learning our 3 times table by rote.
English
We will finish writing our own story based on the ‘The Beasties’ by Jenny Nimmo. We will be trying to include the grammar skills we’ve learnt, including:
Punctuating direct speech using inverted commas (speech marks).
Using subordinating conjunctions to extend our sentences.
Organising our writing in paragraphs.
Spellings
Week beginning 13th November
The tricky words from our Year 3&4 Spelling list this week are:
continue describe decide different difficult disappear
Our spelling pattern for this week is: Words ending in -el
travel cancel
vowel camel
tunnel towel
jewel label
Week beginning 20th November
The tricky words from our Year 3&4 Spelling list this week are:
early earth eight eighth enough exercise
Our spelling pattern is Words ending in -al
capital animal crystal magical
tropical festival sandal
Reading
This half term, we are reading ‘Cave Challenge’ by Bear Grylls. We will all read it together and focus on comprehension skills and development of vocabulary understanding.
Science
We are learning about rocks and fossils. We are learning about how igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock have been made. We will carry out tests for hardness and porosity to compare the 3 rock types.
R.E.
We are learning about Judaism. We will learn about Yom Kippur and then the story of Moses.
Art
Our Art links with our Stone Age learning in History. We are learning about the style of prehistoric man-made art. We will experiment with using the pigments in natural products to make different colours and then with using different brush strokes.
History
Our History for this half term is all about the Stone Age. We will learn about how archaeologists use artefacts to understand life in Stone Age Britain and what life was like in the Stone Age.
Weeks Commencing 30th October and 6th November 2023
Maths
We will continue to develop our addition and subtraction skills. Before half term, we were learning how to add and subtract using the column method with no exchanges.
Now, will develop this further by learning how to exchange and cross the tens and hundreds boundaries.
Here are links to some White Rose videos which cover the learning for this week. We won’t be using these directly in class, but you may find them helpful for supporting your child at home.
Add crossing the tens boundary. https://vimeo.com/731050814
Add crossing the hundreds boundary: https://vimeo.com/731052104
Subtract crossing the tens boundary: https://vimeo.com/731052793
Subtract crossing the hundreds boundary: https://vimeo.com/731053730
We will then learn about how to estimate our answers and to check them using the inverse operation.
By the end of Year 2, children are expected to have fluent recall of their 2, 5, and 10 times tables. In Year 3, we will continue to practise these, and will learn our 3, 4- and 8-times tables. This half term we will be focusing on the 3 X tables.
English
We will be getting to know ‘The Beasties’ by Jenny Nimmo. The book about a little girl who can’t get to sleep at night. Each night a cute little Beastie tells her a story to help her sleep. It’s a lovely book, and once we become familiar with it, we will begin to write our own Beastie story.
The grammar skills we will be learning include:
Punctuating direct speech using inverted commas (speech marks).
Using subordinating conjunctions to extend our sentences.
Organising our writing in paragraphs.
Spelling
Weeks commencing Tue 31st October and Mon 6th November 2023
Our focus words from the Year3 & 4 Statutory Spelling list will be:
centre century certain consider circle complete
The spelling pattern will be ‘Words ending in -le’
For example, simple, middle, apple, triangle, rectangle
Reading
This half term, we will be reading ‘Cave Challenge’ by Bear Grylls. We will all read it together and focus on comprehension skills and development of vocabulary understanding.
Science
We will be learning about rocks and fossils this half term. We will be carefully observing some igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock samples using the magnifying lenses. Then we will find out how these 3 rock types were made.
R.E.
This half term we will be learning about Judaism. Our first lesson will be focused on the Jewish Festival of Rosh Hashanah. Then we will learn about Yom Kippur.
Art
Our Art links with our Stone Age learning in History. We wil be learning about the style of prehistoric man-made art. This week we will use charcoal pencils to draw animals in the prehistoric style. Then we will take one of these drawings and scale it up to make an A4 size charcoal animal drawing.
History
Our History for this half term is all about the Stone Age. This week we will find out what the children think the Stone Age was like and begin to explore whether their ideas are correct. For example, cartoon pictures may combine Stone Age people and dinosaurs, but dinosaurs died out 60 million years before the stone age! We will then learn how archaeologists have found out about the Stone Age period.
20.10.23
We have been busy getting our new website up and running and are now ready to begin sharing your child’s learning with you.
Here is a summary of the learning we have been focusing on during the first half term:
English - We used the book ‘Intriguing Animals’ as a starting point for writing our own animal information pages. We learnt how to structure our writing using headings, sub-headings and paragraphs. We have used our writing for our Design & Technology booklet and this will be coming home at the beginning of the half term holiday.
To finish off our English this half term, we are writing poetry! Our focus is on choice of vocabulary, particularly adjectives. We are also using prepositions. Look out for the finished poem which will be coming home soon!
After half term, our Blog will also tell you which spelling patterns and the 6 tricky spelling words we are focusing on each week.
Maths – Our first maths unit was about place value and recognising the relationship between ones, tens and hundreds. We are now learning about addition and subtraction. After half term, we will include the White Rose video links to show you the exact focus of the children’s learning each week. The videos are not used in school, but are great for showing you how we teach the skills, and for using with your child to consolidate their understanding.
We have also been making sure that children can use Times Table Rock Stars (TTRS) as this is a key programme we use to support the children with their rapid re-call of times table facts.
Topic – In science, we have been learning about skeletons, muscles and joints. In Geography, we have been learning all about sustainability. We have looked at how we can make sustainable choices at home and at school, such as re-cycling, using re-usable bags, walking and cycling when we can and turning the lights off. We’ve looked at the different ways that electricity can be made and identified which methods are sustainable for the environment. In RE, we have been focusing on Islam, learning about the 5 pillars of Islam.
Year 3 children should be reading at home on a daily basis for 15 minutes. The children have a home/school reading record which also contains helpful information about the spellings they will be learning during Year 3.
When you read with your child, please fill in their home reading record to say what they have been reading and provide a comment/reflection on their reading. Teachers collect these in each week.
In maths, Times Table Rock Stars should be accessed - the recommended time is 21 minutes over each week. https://play.ttrockstars.com/auth/school
Spellings
Year 3 & 4 Statutory Spelling List
Spellings
Week beginning 27th November
The tricky words from our Year 3&4 Spelling list this week are:
experience experiment extreme famous favourite February
Our spelling pattern for this week is: Adding the suffix ' -ful'
Week beginning 4th December
The tricky words from our Year 3&4 Spelling list this week are:
forward forwards fruit grammar group guard
Our spelling pattern for this week isthe suffix ' -less'
Week beginning 20th November
The tricky words from our Year 3&4 Spelling list this week are:
early earth eight eighth enough exercise
Our spelling pattern is Words ending in -al
capital animal crystal magical
tropical festival sandal
Weeks commencing Tue 31st October and Mon 6th November 2023
Our focus words from the Year3 & 4 Statutory Spelling list will be:
centre century certain consider circle complete
The spelling pattern will be ‘Words ending in -le’
For example, simple, middle, apple, triangle, rectangle