Gwyn Jones Primary School

It is with great pleasure and excitement that we welcome you and your child into Year 3 at Gwyn Jones. The Teachers in Year 3 are: Mrs Rochester- Bergamini and Miss Hylton, our teaching assistants are Ms Voges, Ms Ifill, Ms Mahmood and Ms Sarwar who all work to support your child’s learning. We are all here to help your children develop even further, as they make the transition from Key Stage one into Key Stage two.

We look forward to working in partnership with you, to bring out the best in your children’s learning and development.

Important information:

PE day: 3S Monday and Tuesday

3M Tuesday and Thursday

Year 3 Key Dates:

Diwali assembly- 3M Monday 4^th November

3S Tuesday 5^th November

Our core question is “Was life easy in the Stone Age?” and our core book is “Ug: Boy Genius of The Stone Age and His Search for Soft Trousers” by Raymond Briggs.

Science topic: Rocks

Throughout this topic, you can help your child by going for short walks or building a small rock collection. Encourage your child to observe the differences and/or similarities between the rocks, paying particular interest to how they look and feel. Think about the different places we find rocks and the range of uses they have. You could look at different buildings and think about the ways they have changed over time

Computing: We are Programmers

The children will be creating an animated cartoon using characters they design. They use a paint tool to create characters and backgrounds in the form of an animation. You can help by getting your child to think about a brand new character they would like to create- what would it look like? How would it move? This could be a Stone Age character. Encourage them to think about what they would like their character to do. How will they make it do this? You can visit the Scratch website to create animations:

https://scratch.mit.edu/

We cannot emphasise enough, the importance of e-safety. The children have already has some teaching in this area, and will continue to do so. Please help us to ensure that our children are safe when using the internet.

History:

In History, the children will be researching the past and exploring what life was like in The Stone Age. You can help your child by visiting a local library, where they may be able to find books based on this period of time. Your child will have the opportunity to share their creative curriculum project with the rest of the class.

There are relevant exhibitions you can visit in the following museums: The British Museum, The Museum of London and The Natural History Museum. You might also explore their websites.

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/

Art/DT:

Your child will be learning about cave paintings used in The Stone Age. You can help your child by doing some research on cave paintings and the materials/tools used to create them. As well as this, you could help your child to create some Stone Age artefacts using various junk materials.

Homework

In Year 3, homework is project based. The projects can take on a number of different forms e.g. a powerpoint or 3D model. The aim of the homework is for you and your child to share and enjoy learning together.

Your child will also take a spelling activity or words home to learn. We recognise that some children find spelling very tricky. The aim of this part of the homework is to allow them to become familiar with the spelling rules and patterns they are studying in school so they can feel confident using them in their writing. If you have any concerns about the spellings or spelling activities sent home, please see your class teacher. They will also be given multiplication tables to learn weekly.

If you would like to do additional Maths and English work with your child, these are the main objectives we are covering this half term:

English:

• Focus on joined hand-writing.
• Practise using a range of punctuation (capital letters, full stops, commas, question marks, exclamation marks, speech marks and apostrophes for contraction and possession).
• Suggest keeping a daily journal or diary of events, thoughts and feelings.

Maths:

During the course of the term, the children will be introduced to the Year 3 curriculum as well as revision of the work done in Year 2 including: money, time, shape and fractions.

Your child should continue to practise their 2, 5 and 10 times tables and their inverses. Once they know these, they should move on to learn their 3, 4 and 8 times tables and their inverse.

Reading:

One of the things we are working on this year is trying to get our children to love reading by recognising that the key to reading is:

Practice, Perseverance and Pleasure

Reading of any kind to and with your child is invaluable. It could be a sports website, a cookery book, labels in the supermarket, a favourite picture book, newspapers or their reading book. It should not be a chore but a lovely thing to do and we recognise that this may not always be their school reading book. We may send home books your child really loves to look at even though it might be too hard to read independently. It is also great if your child would prefer to bring in a book from home or from the library as their reading book.

The orange reading record plays an important part in this. Please write in your child’s reading record about what reading you have been doing with them or what they have read to you. The adults in class will write you a comment after listening to your child read.

If you have any more questions, please do not hesitate to speak to your child’s class teacher.

Yours sincerely,

The Year 3 Team

Mrs Rochester- Bergamini, Miss Hylton, Ms Voges, Ms Ifill, Ms Mahmood and Ms Sarwar