Hayfield Primary School

YEAR 3

Mrs Gayle/ Mrs Neel (on maternity) 

Mrs Morgan and Mrs Murray

 

Welcome to year 3! This is our first year in juniors, so our learning is becoming more challenging as we dive deeper into our topics. In Year 3 we continue to develop the independence and organisation of learning we began last year, pushing ourselves to review and improve our work.  As we begin our journey into KS2 we now have more opportunities to get involved in extracurricular activities, such as sporting events led by Mrs Mills, which will continue to encourage the children to become even ore independent and resilient.

 

In English we continue to develop our reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. We read exciting and engaging texts and have fun with different drama techniques like role playing and hot seating to inspire the children to create imaginative and ambitious writing of their own. This includes a range of texts such as instructions, recount, non-chronological reports and narratives. In Maths ,our fluent in 4 morning routine helps us to build confidence and our use of mathematical vocabulary. In our Maths lessons we continue our spiral curriculum using White Rose Maths, this helps to embed important methods and deepen our understanding of subtraction, addition, multiplication, division, measurement and fractions. In science we learn about bones and muscles, nutrition, rocks and soils, plants and forces. In Geography, we compare Hayfield and the Jurassic Coast, we delve into volcanoes and tectonic plates and oceans of the world. In History, we look at what it would be like to be a child in WWII, the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. We use our Art and Design and Technology lessons to create meaningful pieces inspired by our other topics.

Autumn

 

As we start our KS2 journey we will be thinking about how we can continue to be good role models for those younger children. We jump straight into our writing, using the books ‘Mr Pusskins’, ‘The Soccer Fence’ and ‘The lion and the Unicorn’ as inspiration for our narratives. We have an exciting trip to the Air raid shelters in Stockport, which ties into both our History and English topic, allowing the children to truly reflect on what life was like. We also will have fun experiencing Evacuee Day whereby the children will spend a day in school involved in many WWII themed activities. This is the inspiration for our final English topic of the term, a recount, the children love retelling our special days in detail. In Maths, we start with solidifying our place value understanding and move onto more difficult methods for addition and subtraction and finish the year with multiplication and division. The children enjoy using our times tables songs found on youtube to help them remember, they also enjoy using hit the button to encourage fluency and speed in their recall of both their multiplication and number bonds. In science, we will be learning about skeletons and muscles and then moving on to the importance of nutrition. Our art and DT will be linked to our class country (South Africa) and artist Esther Mahlangu, the children will design their own Esther Mahlangu inspired artwork, followed by their own African masks.  

Spring

 

In Spring we will now be more confident with the expectations of year 3 and begin to push ourselves further to improve in all areas. We begin by creating our own monster pizzas in English, developing our own recipes for the monsters that are taking over our classrooms. This will then be adapted to a more human-certified pizza in our DT lessons. In our Geography lessons we will dive into volcanoes and try and plot these on a map and understand why these happen. All this work around volcanoes inspires our art, in which we use a range of different resources to create different styles of volcano artwork! History sees us transport ourselves back to the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. Again our English links to this as we create a narrative inspired by Stone Age Boy and then non-chronological report designed to give step by step instructions to rid Hayfield of these pesky Mammoths that time traveled with our Stone Age characters. The children love to create weird and wonderful contraptions to humanely capture these friendly beasts. The children will explore ways to create artwork similar to those found in the caves using paints and charcoal to devise their own versions. In science the children learn about the rock cycle and different types of rocks, we have a visitor come and share his rock collection and do some geological experiments and then move onto exploring plants as scientists. In Maths, we continue building on our multiplication and division understanding, learning more of our times tables songs to help us. This knowledge then helps us to build upon our confidence in fractions. Followed by the more favoured topics of length ad perimeter and mass and capacity, which usually have lots of fun filled activities involved.

Summer

 

The Summer term is always packed with so much fun. We have both our Whitehall activity trip and our Sealife Centre trip both of which the children absolutely adore.  We also have Forest School this term, this is always a favourite with the children and with it being summer term beginning outside in the warm weather is always appreciated. They get to learn how to start fires using a rod and steel, create artwork and dens inspired by the outdoors and make and bake bread and much more. These sessions are so important to build confidence and resilience within our children at Hayfield. In English, we create a narrative based on the book Juniper Jupiter and then have our own day as Superheroes. The children love to spend the day creating costumes, solving problems and learning super songs. These memories are then retold in our recount which we send to Juniper Jupiter to explain how we are also Superheroes. For our final half term we focus on the oceans of the world. Our English focus is inspired by Shark Lady all about Eugenie Clark and her journey breaking barriers in the science world, with our final theme day as Marine Biologists the children experience many activities such as observing animals, understanding equipment and drawing different habitats from under the water. In science, lots of knowledge will be illuminated during our light topic as we explore how light travels and moves, and ways we can block, use or reflect light around us. After completing our work on the Iron age, our topic work is based on the oceans of the world and how we can preserve these and what the habitats look like for different animals. Our final terms of maths uses all of the skills built up throughout the year, covering fractions, money, time, shape and statistics. Working with money and learning coins is always a fun few weeks and the practical nature of the questions and problems we solve have everyone ready to go shopping or pay the bill after a fun restaurant meal!