Welcome to Giraffes class!

We are the genius giraffes and we are a Year 3 class.

Our teacher is Mr Matthews and our Teaching Assistants are Mrs Watson and Miss Fox.

Writing and Grammar:

In Writing, we will continue to use ‘Pathways to write’ to support our writing learning. In the Autumn term, we shall be using two amazing books which will inspire us to produce published pieces of writing.

The first book we will be looking at is Coming To England by Floella Benjamin, the genre of writing we shall be producing will be a letter detailing Floella’s thoughts, feelings and experiences as she moves from Trinidad to England in the 1950’s. The letter will contain paragraphs, expanded noun phrases and prepositions to show the change of place and time.

After the half term holiday, we shall be reading ‘Nen and the Lonely Fisherman’ by Ian Eagleton, this text will support us in writing a fantasy story which will have exciting characters, settings and plot. We shall be building our writing skills by including dialogue and planning our writing carefully by discussing the structure, vocabulary and grammar used in a narrative.

This year, we will be developing our understanding of Grammar by using Grammarsaurus’s ‘Place value of grammar’. In the Autumn Term will be learning about different types of nouns including common, proper, collective and partitive nouns. We will then learn about ‘being’ and ‘to have’ verbs before moving on to regular action verbs and verb phrases.

Reading:

In the Autumn Term, Year 3 will be exploring a range of fiction and non-fiction texts from Grammarsaurus’s comprehension crusher resources. Our Non-fiction (information texts) will help us learn about the human skeleton, the five human senses, hunter-gatherers, the great fire of London, counties and regions of England and capital cities of the UK.

Our fiction texts will focus on some narratives from other cultures such as the Mexican tales of ‘The rabbit and the moon’ and ‘The sun and the moon’; some narratives inspired from historical events including ‘Edmund Hilary’s amazing achievement’ and ‘A giant leap for mankind’. We will also explore some poetry through the poems ‘On the day of the dead’ and ‘The last leaf’.

Some children will explore other texts as part of their learning, as well as continuing to develop their Phonic knowledge.

We will assess our reading progress by undertaking regular ‘Bugclub’ assessments.

Spelling:

In our Spelling lessons, we will learning about words with the ‘ou’ digraph; words including ‘y’ that make an /i/ sound; words ending in ‘sure’ and ‘ture’; exploring challenge words that follow irregular spelling patterns; words with the prefixes ‘re’ and ‘mis’ and words ending in ‘ing’, ‘er’, ‘ed’ and ‘en’.

Maths:

As we begin year 3, we will be consolidating the previous skills we have learnt in Place Value. We will understand how to represent and partition numbers up to 1000 and where they can be placed on a number line.

Addition and Subtraction will see us spotting patterns with numbers and adding and subtracting across, 1’s, 10’s and 100’s. We will be using concrete and pictorial representations of numbers to help us understand their value and what happens to the numbers when they are added to or subtracted from.

Multiplication sessions will see us multiplying and dividing by 2, 5, 10, 3, 4 and 8. We will be sharing, grouping and looking at how arrays can help us solve calculation problems.

Science:

Our science topic for the first half term is Light and Shadows. We will be exploring how our eyes enable us to see, what creates a shadow and how we can change the size of a shadow using a light source.

During the second half of the Autumn term, we will be learning about Nutrition and Movement. We will be exploring what nutrition is, where a human gets their nutrition from and what the role of the skeleton and muscles are and which animals are vertebrates and invertebrates.

RSHE:
We will begin our RSHE learning with some of our new ‘No Outsiders’ learning, using the text ‘This is our house’ by Michael Rosen to help us learn more about discrimination. We will explore the theme of ‘Happy and healthy friendships’ and being a good friend by learning about the qualities of a good friend, personal space and resilience. We will also learn the importance of staying safe online and how we can do this by learning more about ‘self-image and identity’.

In the second half term we will learn what a ‘bystander’ is. We will also learn about similarities and differences including valuing and respecting others. We will continue our E-safety learning by focussing on what ‘trust’ may look like when we are online and how to stay safe.

Geography:

Our Geography learning this term will focus on the United Kingdom. We will learn about the 4 countries of the UK and their capital cities; that the UK is organised into regions and counties; about some key human and physical features of UK and know how to use a map. We will also learn about topographical features, as well as focussing on specific human and physical features of the East Midlands region.

Art:

Our focus artist this term will be William Morris. We will learn about his style of artwork and how this is connected to the ‘arts and crafts movement’. We will observe and sketch natural objects using techniques such as hatching, cross-hatching and shading. We will then design a printing block inspired by William Morris’ artwork before creating our own printed artwork.

Computing:

Computing lessons will see us building upon E Safety as we live in a digital age and must understand strategies for keeping ourselves safe when using technology.

We shall be using both Chromebooks and an iPad to create digital media, using Desktop Publishing. We will recognise that a text and layout can be edited, and that text and images can communicate information.

Programming lessons will see us Sequencing Sound within a program, we will identify that command have an outcome and recognise that a sequence of commands have a specific order.

RE:

Our RE learning will focus on the theme of ‘Beliefs and questions’ in the first half term, where we will be exploring important Christian events such as The Nativity, Easter, Pentecost and Harvest as well as understanding Christian beliefs about creation. We will also be learning about the features of a church in preparation for our annual Year 3 carol concert and visit to a local church - St Augustine’s.

Our theme in the second half term will be ‘Worship and sacred places’. We will learn more about how Churches, Mosques, Mandirs help people worship in their communities and why these places are special.

Music:
In the first half-term, our music topic title is ‘Writing music down’ where we will understand, improvise, listen to, respond, sing and play music. In the second half-term, our topic title will be ‘Playing in a band’.

MFL:

Now we are in Year 3, we shall be taking part in French lessons, these lessons will develop our understanding of the French language, French speaking countries and the foundations of French phonics.

We shall learn how to greet each other in French answer how we are feeling and count up to 10 in the first half of the term.

Later in the term, we will be learning about Les Animaux, understanding what animals are called in French and taking part in speaking, writing and reading sessions in French. We will be learning songs and playing games in French too.

PE: 

In PE this Term, Giraffes will be working with a coach as part of our Gymnastics learning. We will learn about how we can use space to develop our travelling skills, as well as linking these to rolls. We will also practice handstands, cartwheels, round-offs and jumps.  We will also undertake some ‘Outdoor adventurous Activities’ which will include such as teamwork, problem-solving and understanding maps. The children will work as part of a team to solve a range of problems and will learn how to give and receive directions using appropriate directional language. They will develop their understanding of maps by using symbols and a key as well as learning how to orientate a map. In the final lesson of the unit, they will be introduced to the adventure sport of orienteering where they will learn some of the symbols used for orienteering and will need to follow a map to move between two locations. Collaborative working, both in pairs and as a group, is an important aspect within this unit.

We will also focus on ‘games’ which will include throwing and catching a ball.