Year 3

Autumn Term - Literacy

This half term we have been looking at a wonderful Anthony Browne book called 'Into the Forest'. We have looked at playscripts, written our own stories using a text map and used role play to help us understand the book. The children have thoroughly enjoyed this book and have managed to link it to a number of other traditional fairytale stories. 

Autumn Term - Maths

At the start of Year 3, we have been looking at place value. This is really helpful for all of our maths learning because it tells us what the numbers are worth. This then helps us when we are adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. We have also started to look at shapes and what properties they have. This helps us to understand the world around us. Finally this half term, we have been looking at data handling; using bar charts, pictograms, Venn diagrams and Carroll diagrams. Nextr half term, we will be looking at financial literacy and an enterprise topic of how to make and sell a product for the Christmas Fayre.

Autumn Term - Science

This term, we have been looking rocks and soils. The children have thoroughly enjoyed looking at the 3 different types of rock - igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. We learnt about the process of how the rocks change from one type to another through the rock cycle. This process happens over millions of years. We enjoyed acting out the rock cycle, it really helped us to consolidate our learning. We also investigated whether rocks were limestone or chalk through an experiment.

Then we learnt about soils and the different layers or horizons. It was interesting to learn together how the different horizons are formed and what they consist of. We then made our own soil levels.

Autumn Term - Other

This term in history we have been looking at the ages. We have looked at the Stone Age, incorporating the Palaeolithic Age, Mesolithic Age and Neolithic Age. We have learnt how they lived, what tools they made and used and how they functioned as a community. We also learnt about the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. We were then able to place all of these prehistoric Ages onto a timeline.

In art, we have looked at tones, this is how light or dark a colour is. We have also looked at tint (adding white to lighten a colour) and shade (adding black to darken a colour). Then we were able to create a picture using tint and shade. They looked really effective.

In PE, we have been working on invasion games for outdoor PE and active literacy for indoor PE. In pour invasion games, we have been learning about throwing and catching, attacking and defending and how to 'invade' our oppositions zone to score. In active literacy, we have been looking at a book called 'The First Hippo on the Moon'. We have been learning to retell the story using our bodies. This has linked well into our Fundamanetal Movement Skills, which are vital to our everyday movements.

We have also been sea swimming, which was a wonderful experience. We are looking forward to going again in the summer term.

In PSHE, we have learned about personal boundaries, healthy relationships, collaboration and how our actions affect other people. We have been using role play and exciting activities to help us learn about these topics. We have also spent time being respectful to everyone's views and beliefs and our right to share in a safe and nurturing environment.

Spring Term - Literacy

This term, we have been looking at a non-fiction text called 'Until I met Dudley'. This book is a great mix of facts and fantasy. As we travelled through the book, we heard the fantasy imagination of how inventions like the toaster worked, followed by the actual way that the toaster worked. We learnt the technical vocabulary of a number of items. We created our own fantasy ideas of how everyday items around the home work. We also used talk for writing to demonstrate how they technically worked. 

We have also been reading 'Oliver and the Seawigs', which is a great fiction book where Oliver goes on an adventure to find his parents who went looking for adventure themselves. Along the way, Oliver meets some incredible friends, including Iris the mermaid, who had so much to offer as a friend for Oliver. They travelled on a wandering Isle, Cliff. We visualised what some of the places they visited looked like and used this in our writing.

Spring Term - Numeracy

This term, we have recapped on our place value. We have looked at what the numbers are worth, we have partitioned them into their places and we have used this to help us order. We have also used our place value to learn about money in pounds and pence. We have used this knowlegde to help us to measure a variety of items include length and weight. We have also learned about time through digital and analogue clocks. We have been learning abour hours and minutes and how we use these hands to tell the time.

Finally, we have been learning about fractions. We learned that a fraction is a part of a whole and we have learned what fractions look like. We were able to shade in fractions of shapes and we even created our own fraction shapes. We also began to look at equivalent fractions. We have had great fun with all of our maths topics this term!

Spring Term - Science

This term, we have learned about forces and magnets. We learned about pull and push forces. We learned which of these were contact forces and which were non-contact forces. We experimented with these to see what happened when we exerted forces upon different objects. We also learned about friction and the effect that this has on movement and on different objects. Finally, we learned about magnetism. We had great fun exploring what materials were magnetic and what effect a magnet had when it entered the magnetic field.

We have also learned about animals and humans. We carried on our learning from Year 2 where we looked more at animals. This year we were learning more about humans. We learned about the main systems that the body needs to survive. We also learned about the nutrients that the body needs to survive and what these nutrients do to help our body survive and thrive. In particular, we learned about the skeleton, where we found our that we had 206 bones. We learned about the muscles and that we have over 600 muscles in the body. We also learned about the three different types of muscles in the body and their function.

Spring Term - Other

This term in Geography, we have learned how to use maps as part of a UK study. We also learned the 4 cardinal and 4 intercardinal compass directions. This helped us to navigate a map successfully. It also helped us to determine the topology of the UK. This showed us mountains, rivers, seas and low lying areas particularly. We also found landmarks in the 4 countries of the UK. We learned that a landmark was a permanent feature of a place. We used Google Earth to look at some of these landmarks, which helped us to decide whether they were physical or human features.

In geography, we also learned about India and how this was similar and different to Guernsey. We used our compass directions knowledge to help us. We also learned about the different types of locations in Guernsey and India and whether they were rural or urban. We then learned that within this, there were different areas; like towns, villages, cities, mega-cities and slums. We learned about how people in India lived and we were able to look at some of their landmarks. We learned a lot about the Taj Mahal and why it was built.

In art we learned about some formal elements of sketching, We practised using sketching lightly, then adding detail and shade to add to our drawings. We used real life objects to help us. We also used 2D and 3D shapes to help form our sketches before going over it more clearly when we were happy with the base shape. We learned that shapes are vital for any budding artist. 

In design and technology, we  learned about static electricity. Our learning during science and using forces and magnets helped us greatly here. We were able to use our knowledge and practical experience to design and create our own static electricity game. The games were great fun to make and even more fun to play afterwards.

We learned more about coding this term. We started using code in Year 2 and we were able to use this coding knowledge to help us explore a new programme. We predicted what would happen, then we tested it and finally we reviewed it to see whether the code we used did what we expected it to. We were able to create our own animation by the end of the week.

Finally this term, we had outdoor learning. We learned how to tie knots to help us with building various objects, including a shelter and a small raft. We also made stick people using the skills wev had learned. We enjoyed a number of outdoor learning stories, which helped us with our creativity. 'Stick Man' was really helpful when we made our own examples. We learned so many new skills and we had an enormous amount of fun outside!