Year 3
September 2024
Welcome to Year 3
This term our main topics are 'Ancient Egypt' and ‘Our Local Area’. This is an exciting year as the children will be also introduced to Spanish and will have more opportunities to visit our nature area during their Forest school days.
We have attached the overview of the term's topics for your information
PE days are:
Wednesday - Games with Mr Fyfe (outside weather permitting)
We would recommend sending your child to school without earrings on PE days. If not, please ensure your child can remove their own earrings. If they can’t put them back in, it would be greatly appreciated if you can send in a little pot for them to place them in safely so that they do not get lost from class to home. All clothing and footwear needs to be clearly labelled to avoid things getting lost.
Homework and Class Newsletter:
Homework will be set each Friday and sent home via the NO REPLY email. Spellings will be tested on a Friday and the children's results will be recorded at the back of their reading records.
Reading quizzes
These will be completed on the following days:
Monday - Matthew Team
Tuesday - Mark Team
Wednesday - Luke Team
Thursday - John Team
Friday- any child who may have not have a chance to do it during the rest of the week or they have finished their book.
Year 3 Autumn overview 2024
Year 3 - RE Overview - Autumn 1
ANGLIAN WATER VISIT - YEAR 3 19th NOVEMBER 2024
Today we welcomed Richard, from Anglian Water, into our class. He came to provide an educational experience to the children to teach them about the water cycle, cleaning our water and how to make good choices to respect and reuse this resource. The visit included lots of hands-on practical experience to carry out some controlled tests in science. It also feeds into our English this term, which is to learn how to read and write instructions.
We are taking part in the Anglian Eco Award, which involves completing educational booklets to use and apply our learning and we will also carry out a water usage survey at the school. If we are successful in doing our tasks (all children will be set the booklet for homework and each booklet must be returned), we will receive our Eco Award. The star prize will include a water butt for our Forest School edible garden use.
Well done Gabriel for being the only person that Richard has spoken to who remembered the fact that Anglian Water clean 1.2 billion litres of water a day. Myla, Willow and Aurora found out that we waste 34 litres of water a day by leaving the tap running when we brush our teeth. Here in the south east, we are in a very dry corner of the UK and our rainfall is equal to Sydney in Australia. Thank you Max for recalling this fact. Isaac remembered that only 1% of the world's water supply is drinking water, 97% is salty sea water, 2% is ice and snow water content.
Learning how to preserve the water that we have and making sensible daily choices to do this
Evaluating how well instructions are written and identifying features of instructional writing
October: the month of the rosary - praying the rosary in our prayer garden.
How is God present in my life?
During our Autumn Forest School sessions, this is a question we explored. As we take time to be silent, we hear the presence of God's creations in our Nature Garden. This reminds us of God's daily presence. As we passed our cross from around the log circle (Costa Rican cross which links with our target language in MFL, Spanish), children gave thanks in their own words. Typical responses from children are about how they feel the warmth of God's love in the forest. They feel close to God and some feel an overwhelming need to say thank you for the trees, the birds, the insects and plants but also the joy that the woodland provides. This moment of thankfulness brings us together as a community and reminds us of our Catholic Social Teaching animals, especially, Shristi the Sun Bear. He reminds us that we care about God's world and we are united in the forest, as we try to build a closer connecting relationship with all living things. The gentleness demonstrated by children in the woodlands is astounding. They will do all that they can, to avoid stepping on an insect or disrupting a habitat.
How is God present in our lives?
Our Religion topic, 'Homes', brings us closer to our Christian brothers and sisters around the world. We were reminded of this during our recent assembly shared with Year Four. As we communicate in Spanish, we try to reflect on how our Christian community is wide and diverse. Children commented on how Spanish is spoken in more than 45 countries in the world. To celebrate our Christian connection, children prayed together in our whole school assembly, united with our parents, using our target language to commence and end our prayers.
Many parents have commented on how pleased they felt to see their children using Spanish in their prayers and appreciating that our Christian community is vast. We have native Spanish speaking families in the school who communicated this directly in our welcome session in class after our assembly.
MFL Prayer Assembly
Year Three work hard to take opportunities to deepen our understanding of our RE topic during Circle Time. This enables children to vocalise ideas and connect with their peers. Circle time supports transitioning from Key Stage One to Key Stage Two. We approached many of our RE lessons about Homes, within our circle, to share thoughts and understanding vocally before returning to class written work.
Autumn Curriculum Learning
Watch this space to see some of our fabulous extended writing around Roald Dahl's 'Fantastic Mr Fox'. Our outdoor learning using drama to stimulate language, really did help us.