Year 3 The Outdoor Types

CURRICULUM NEWS

April – May 2008

NUMERACY

Numeracy concentrates on consolidating addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, using bigger numbers, and also beginning to use pencil and paper methods as opposed to only mental strategies. Practice at home counting in 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10’s would greatly help here.

Some of Y3 are still struggling with telling the time. It is always useful to get children to do this often at home.

LITERACY

This half term Literacy centres on letter writing for different purposes. We will also be looking at the novels of Roald Dahl, considering if there is some similarity between his characters and settings. We are also going to make an exciting visit to Treasure Island.

Our word level work concerns pronouns and their use. We will also be learning to recognise, then be writing in the 1^st and 3^rd person.

SCIENCE

Our Science topic is entitled ‘Light and Shadows’ in which we will look at how shadows are formed by a light source being blocked. We will also look at how shadows are formed by the sun and lengthen and shorten according to the time of day. We will hopefully make a sundial in the playground (we need a sunny day for this!). Look out for our shadows being chalked on the playground!

GEOGRAPHY

Speaking and Listening and Geography have the same location – The Caribbean! In the first we will be debating the issues of building a hotel on an idyllic beach, with the environmental problems this could cause. In Geography we will focus on the landscape, climate and people of Jamaica to see how the islands differ from our own.

HISTORY

In history we will be covering a modern topic ‘How World War II affected the Children Living Then’. This is part of a wider topic called ‘Britain Since the 1930’s’. We will begin with pre-war Britain concentrating on housing, people and employment. We will be comparing family life then and now. Watch out for a questionnaire coming home. Please could you help your child find someone at least in their 70’s to fill it in and discuss with the children what it was like to be a child in the 1930’s.

Click here to find out more about Year 4