Year 3

Welcome back! We hope you had a lovely holiday.

Please use this Home Guide to support any work that you may choose to do with your child at home. The idea behind the guide is to provide parents with suggestions for home activities that will reinforce your child’s learning in school. Please go through this guide with your child. It contains all the information about what we are covering this half-term, including:

Literacy:

Spellings for this half term - please practise these with your children. Children will have a spelling test each week, and are expected to have learnt their spellings for a possible test on any given day. Children will also have a weekly Guided Reading session including homework to be completed for the following week. We also include details about the topics we are covering in class.

Maths:

A summary of the topics we are covering this half term, and a list of the multiplication and division tables we will be expecting the children to know by the end of the year.

Plus: Ideas for activities to reinforce learning with your child in other subjects across the curriculum.

General information:

Snack - the government does not fund a free snack for KS2 children. During morning play, children are allowed to eat a healthy snack that you may provide for them each morning.

Water - please provide children with water bottles to enable them to stay hydrated during lessons. These can be refilled during playtimes or at home, and must be taken home weekly to be washed to avoid the spread of germs.

Timings – please ensure that your child is ready, in their class line, to be picked up at 8.45am promptly each morning; to avoid being marked in late when the register is taken or missing the Early Morning Activities that take place throughout the school.

Literacy Topics:

Below are the topics that we will be covering this half term in class, and suggested activities for parents and children at home.

Poetry: Shape Poetry, Calligrams and Poetic Expression

We will begin the term by studying Calligrams: words that are designed/written in a style that represents the meaning of that word. From there we will experiment with designing our own Calligrams, using words taken from our various other topics. These will include weather descriptions, known verbs and adjectives. We will then use these skills to develop our descriptive writing by producing poetic sentences in which all of the words are Calligrams. Finally, we will develop a class poem that is written in the shape of its theme/subject.

Activities:

Encourage your child to respond to paintings, pictures, stories, photographs, experiences, etc, in a poetic fashion; describing what they can see. Try and write a poem with your child about a day out or an event from the past. You’ll be surprised what they can do! You can also use Google to explore Calligrams on the Internet, and practise designing your own at home.

Fiction: Adventure/Mystery Stories

Focus book: The Iron Man by Ted Hughes

While we will read this story in class, you may want to read other types of adventure or mystery stories with your child.

You could discuss:

- How suspense and mystery is created through 'omission' (what the writer leaves out) and cliffhangers.

- The structure of any stories your children read (beginning, middle, end)

- The way adjectives are used to create atmosphere
- How ‘well-chosen’ verbs and adverbs make the story more exciting
- Different ways of starting sentences
- The setting and characters in the story.

Encourage your children to write stories of their own, and type them up on the computer! In particular, get your child to write a prologue or further chapter to a well-known story (what happens next?)(what hap.  Consider where the story could go, or what may have happened to the character before / after the original story.

Fiction: Storytelling

As usual, we will end the term with a week of storytelling, with a focus on story language and structure. This will involve enacting stories through drama, discussing themes, re-writing our own versions of stories and learning others by heart. The more stories your children read the better. All of these will contribute their memory bank, allowing them to draw on this when writing their own stories in class.

Science: Rocks and Soils

We will first complete the last few lessons of our Materials and their Uses unit. Our new topic will then be Rocks and Soils. During this unit the children will learn about different types of rocks, where rocks come from, what they are used for, how soil is formed and the differences between different types of soils.

The different types of rock that we will be looking at will be: slate, marble, clay, granite, sand and chalk.
 

Suggested activities:

- Research house building materials using the Internet and magazines.
- Research the different types of rocks listed above and discuss.
- Take a look at the BBC website on rocks and soils: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/revision_bites/rocks_soils.shtml
- Discuss the words in the glossary below with your child.

Science Glossary:

Absorbent – can soak up a liquid or gas.

Breeze block – lightweight building block often used for the inside walls of houses.

Cement – a mixture of heated clay and lime that sets hard.

Concrete – a mixture of cement, sand, water and stones.

Core – the hot, solid centre of the Earth.

Crust – the cold, rocky outer part of the Earth.

Impermeable – a material through which liquids cannot pass.

Limestone – rock made mostly from the shells of ancient sea creatures.

Loam – the best kind of soil for most gardens. It’s not too heavy or too light.

Mantle – the part of the Earth surrounding the core.
 

Mortar – a mix of cement and sand that holds bricks together.

Ore – a rock that contains metal.

Particles – tiny bits that make up rock.

Permeable – allows liquids and fluids to pass through.

Quartz – hard, clear material found in some rocks.

Sieve – a container with a mesh bottom used to separate small and large particles.

Soil profile – the side view of ground showing different layers of soil.

Texture – the way that the surface of something feels.

  

Geography:  Weather Around the World

We will first complete our Investigating the Local Area; Balham unit that we were unable to start last term due to other whole-school activities. Details of this unit can be found in the Home Guide from last term. We will then start the topic Weather Around the World, in which we will explore the world in the context of weather patterns, climate zones, and the affect weather has on the environment and the people that live there. This will also touch on holiday destinations, why we go on holiday in the first place and what we do there.

Perhaps you could spend some time with your child locating destinations on a map and discussing the typical weather conditions. You could even discuss how this climate may affect the people who live there and how they behave as a result.

At the end of this half term we will be setting a Geography Weather Around the World Homework project to be completed during the half-term. More details on this will follow nearer the time.

PSHE:

We will be continuing the SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) programme, which we have found very successful. Our topic this half term is Going For Goals – setting targets for ourselves, and trying to achieve them.

Other Broader Curriculum Subjects:

Once we have finished our Mosacis In Art, our new topic will be Portraying Relationships. We will be using the Apple Macs to take photos of the children’s ideas of friendship and will then work with different mediums to draw them.

ICT work will be linked to Geography and our exploration of the weather around the world. The children will use Apple Mac computers and new Green Screen software to create presentations in the style of the weather presenters you see on the news.

Typing practice at home is also highly recommended, as is any practice using search engines to research topics or navigating computer menus / educational websites.

Children will also be continuing to learn French in weekly lessons with Mr. Westland. You might want to get them to share any new words they are learning with you!

Music: The children will continue to have a weekly music lesson with Mr Morris every Wednesday.

Dance: The lessons with Ms Robbins will be on Tuesday. Children must have the proper kit – black cycling shorts and t-shirt, or a leotard. Long trousers are not permitted for dance. Please make sure that long hair is tied back.

P.E.: The children will continue to have a weekly P.E. lesson with Morris Tolaram and this will be on Mondays. Again, children must have a kit that they change into: short or tracksuit trousers, t-shirt and trainers. Long hair must, again, be tied back. 

A strict policy is in place for P.E. kits in KS2 and children may be excluded from P.E. if they do not have the correct clothes.

Please see the menu links on the left-hand side of the page for detailed Numeracy topics / activities and weekly spelling test dates and words.