Year 3

Year 3 Berners-Lee, Dyson and Thompson 2023/2024

In Year Three, we have had an enthusiastic and hardworking start to the school year. The children are showing a positive attitude to their classwork and are excited about their new learning in the year ahead.

In English, we have been reading How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth by Michelle Robinson and Stone Age Boy by Satoshi Kitamura. We have spent time discussing the fantastic vocabulary and grammatical features in the books and the effectiveness of the language choices made by the authors in engaging the reader. We have learnt about prepositions, imperative verbs, synonyms, and fronted adverbials. We used all of these skills to write our own instructions, alternative endings, and asked and answered questions based on the texts. We’ve particularly enjoyed learning how to use dictionaries and thesauruses. 

Maths has had a big focus on composition and calculation to 100 and bridging 100. Working as a class, we have discovered that: 

• there are ten tens in 100
• there are 100 ones in 100
• 100 can also be composed multiplicatively from 50, 25 or 20
• units are commonly used in graphing and measures
• known addition facts can be used to calculate complements to 100
• known strategies for addition and subtraction across the tens boundary can be combined with unitising to count and calculate across the hundreds boundary in multiples of ten
• knowledge of two-digit numbers can be extended to count and calculate across the hundreds boundary from/to any two-digit number in ones or tens. 

Our question for R.E. this term has been “How did belief in God affect the actions of people in The Old Testament?” We learnt the Old Testament stories of people whose belief in God affected their actions;Solomon; Jonah; Daniel; David and Goliath; Ruth; Moses; Abraham. We also discovered that Christians believe God calls them in different ways; Christians believe that God stands by them at all times; and thatwe have difficult decision to make in life and the right choices are neither not always the easiest nor the most popular.

Our learning has not stopped there. In Science, we have looked at Light. This involved exploring that light comes from a source, that there must be light for us to see - without light it is dark, and that we need light to see anything, even shiny things. We learnt that transparent materials let light travel through them, and opaque materials don’t let light through. We also investigated how beams of light bounce of some materials (reflection) and that shiny materials reflect light better than non-shiny materials.

History this half term has been all about the Stone Age to the Iron Age. We have improved our historical enquiry skills by gaining an overview of the major changes from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, considering how we know about a historical period without written sources, and by researching what it might have been like to live in Britain during this period. 

We have improved our hockey skills in outdoor P.E. with the qualified coaches from Surbiton Hockey Club and enjoyed our dance lessons in the hall. One of the most important things that we have learnt is to try our best and keep persevering. 

In PSHE, we have been discussing what it means to be ‘me in my world’. This included being aware of how to make others feel welcome and how to make our school community a better place. We also explored how everyone has a right to learn and that we can help this by caring about other people’s feelings. 

In our Computing lessons, we have learnt aboutsystems and networks. This has involved understanding how digital devices work, and the parts that make up a digital device including how they help us. We then went on to find out how we are connected and how this links to how computers are connected. Finally, we looked at our own school network. 

In our Music lessons, we have been enjoying the styles of R&B, western classical, musicals, Motown, and Soulmusic. We have listened to and appraised: 

Let Your Spirit Fly by Joanna Mangona

Colonel Bogey March by Kenneth Alford 

Consider Yourself from the musical ‘Oliver!’ 

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye 

You’re The First, The Last, My Everything by Barry White

We also built on our knowledge and understanding about the interrelated dimensions of music. 

We have really enjoyed the challenge of Year Three so far and are looking forward to all our new topics.