The Year 3 Team

Forest School is on Thursdays! Please bring forest school kit in one bag and wellies in a separate bag.

Thank you. 

Term 3 – Week 1 (WB 5/1/26)

Happy New Year! It has been wonderful to welcome the children back to school and hear all about their festive celebrations and family time. They have settled back into routines brilliantly and have been eager to share their experiences with their friends.

In English, we have started reading our new class text, The Ice Palace. The children have really enjoyed immersing themselves in the story so far, using descriptive language to create vivid icy settings and making thoughtful predictions about what might happen next. This will support their reading comprehension, vocabulary development and creative writing over the coming weeks.

In Maths, we are revisiting and developing our understanding of multiplication and division. We have begun by multiplying and dividing by 10 and will soon move on to recalling and practising strategies for multiplying 2-digit numbers by 1-digit numbers. The children will be using a range of methods, including arrays, counting in steps, repeated addition and other visual strategies to help secure their understanding. Please continue to encourage regular practice on Times Tables Rock Stars at home, as this greatly supports confidence and fluency in this area.

In Geography, we have really enjoyed starting our new topic on rocks. The children have been learning about the different types of rocks and how they are formed. This was especially fun and memorable as we used Starburst sweets to help us understand the differences between sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks! Over the coming weeks, we will continue this topic by exploring where different rocks are found and how they are used in everyday life.

Please see below for the new home learning tasks for this term. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. We hope you enjoy sharing and exploring these learning activities with your child at home.

Finally, please continue to support your child with regular reading at home and by updating their Boom Reader account whenever possible. Your support makes a real difference to their confidence and progress. Please also ensure your child brings their reading book into school every day.

Finally, we are continuing to learn our times tables with some fun songs! Practising for just 15 minutes a week on the recommended website will make a huge difference in building strong multiplication and division skills, which are essential throughout Key Stage 2 and beyond. We have been learning our eight timetables - here is our new song for you to practise at home - 

Eight Times Table Song (Cover of All About That Bass by Meghan Trainor)

3 Times Tables - Have Fun Learning!

4 Times table song (A Whole New World from Disney's Aladdin)

4 Times Table Song (APT be Rosé and Bruno Mars)

Counting By Sixes Song

7 Times Table Song | Skip Counting by 7 Song with Multiplication

Seven Times Table Song (Cups by Anna Kendrick Cover) with Classroom Instruments

The 12 Times Table Song | Skip Counting by 12 for Kids

Spellings

Our first spelling test of the term will be on Wednesday 14th January. The words listed below will not change until after that test.

Mrs Hughes' /Mr Grimes'/ Mrs Strudwick's groups

Words beginning with a silent k

knew

knock

knot

knight

knit

knife

kneel

knee

Mrs Smith's group -

Words with the c sound spelt ch.

Chorus

Stomach

Echo

Chaos

School

Chemist

Anchor

Ache

Mrs Georgiades' Group

Words with the sh sound spelt ch.

Chalet

Chef

Chute

Machine

Chandelier

pistachio

Mrs Lambert's group 

bay

may

play

say

today

day

pay

way

Thank you for your continued support!

All of the children will have an investigative topic-linked learning task to complete, which is rotated over a three-week cycle. The children will focus on one of their three current foundation subjects each week.  
To support this, the children are split into 3 groups, which you can see above. 

This will be set on a Thursday and due by the following Tuesday. 

In class on a Tuesday or Wednesday, the children will then share the outcomes of their research, and the knowledge they have retrieved, within their own group. 

S3 Usual weekly timetable (please note that there may be changes to this at times).

Home Learning

Times Tables Rockstars! 

To keep practising the multiplication taught in class, and challenging yourself to keep the ones you already know fresh, don’t forget to log into your Times Tables Rockstars account. 

https://play.ttrockstars.com/

Challenge yourself to beat your score and build your knowledge as you become a Rockstar!

Please ask your class teacher if you need replacement log in details.

Reading

Children should bring their Accelerated Reading Book to and from school each day. When they have finished reading, children are asked to complete a quiz before changing their book. 

https://global-zone61.renaissance-go.com/welcomeportal/6704864

Parents please log your child's reading on the BOOM reader Parent Portal or by using the BOOM reader parent app on your tablet/mobile no more than once a week.

boomreader.co.uk/parents

Below is a list of the 100 most common words that your child is expected to know how to spell by the end of Year 4 (please see attachment).

The spelling strategies document below shows what strategies are used in class, and can be used at home to aid learning new words: 

Spelling strategies

• Spelling strategies to use at home (2).pdf
• spellingwordlist_y3-4.pdf