Year 3 Spring Newsletter
A Note From the Year Three Team
Important Dates for your Diary
Year 3 have had a great start to 2016. The
children came back to school after
Christmas full of energy and with an
eagerness to learn!
3DL Class Assembly
Thursday 21st January - 9.10am
One of our class reader books this term will
be The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis.
We are all really looking forward to it!
3A Class Assembly
Friday 22nd January - 9.10am
Islam Celebration Day (date tbc)
Please remember that our doors are always
open, so if you have any worries, questions,
or simply want to pop in to touch base at
the end of the day, please do so and we
will do our best to help!
Parents’ Evening - Tuesday 22nd March
& Wednesday 23rd March
(details to follow)
What’s going on in our Curriculum sessions
We have begun the year by rehearsing for our class assemblies. What a talented bunch of
children we have in Year 3! Our assemblies will focus on our Curriculum learning about Kings
and Queens from last term.
Later this term we plan to have an Islam Celebration Day, where we will spend the whole
day learning about the traditional customs associated with ‘Eid’ celebrations. This will
include food tasting, making lanterns and learning about mosques.
The children in Year 3 now have access to a class set of iPads. There are proving very
popular and the children have, so far, enjoyed using them in curriculum time to carry out
research. They are also being used to support Mathematics learning too.
2
Maths – Key Instant Recall Facts
Key Mathematics skills to practise this term:
To recall facts about durations of time.
By the end of this half term, children should know the following facts. The aim is for
them to recall these facts instantly:
There are 60 seconds in a minute.
There are 60 minutes in an hour.
There are 24 hours in a day.
There are 7 days in a week.
There are 12 months in a year.
There are 365 days in a year.
There are 366 in a leap year.
Numbers of days in each
month:
January
31
February 28/29
March
31
April
30
May
31
June
30
July
August
September
October
November
December
31
31
30
31
30
31
Children also need to;
 Know the number of days in each month, year and leap year
 Compare time in terms of seconds, minutes and hours.
Top Tips: Learn the rhyme, ‘Thirty days hath September, April, June and November....
Calculate comparative times by using the information you know.
For example: using the knowledge that there are 60 minutes in 1 hour, calculate how
many minutes in 3 hours, 60 x 3 = or 60 + 60 + 60 =
Or knowing that there are 60 seconds in 1 minute, how many seconds are there in 5 ½
minutes?
Use clocks, calendars and daily timetables to record daily, weekly and yearly events.
Make up your own poems to help you remember key facts such as how many days in each
month, as well as other key facts involving; hours, minutes and seconds.
Use rhymes and memory games– The rhyme, Thirty days hath September, can help
children remember which months have 30 days. There are poems describing the months
of the year in order.
Use calendars – If you have a calendar for 2016, your child could be responsible for
recording the birthdays of friends and family members on it. Your child could even make
their own calendar.
How long is a minute? – Ask your child to sit with their eyes closed for exactly one
minute while you time them. Can they guess the length of a minute? Carry out different
activities for one minute. How many times can they jump in sixty seconds?
Key elements of SPAG
This term we will be focusing our PAG learning on using a wide range of conjunctions in our
sentences. We will look at how conjunctions can be used to open sentences as well as used
to join ideas together in the middle of sentences. We are also working hard to ensure that
we punctuate all our sentences accurately with capital letters, full stops, exclamation and
questions marks, commas and speech marks.
Taught spelling patterns and corresponding words will continue to be issued every Friday.
These spellings will be tested the following Friday. Please help your child to investigate and
learn these patterns so that they can independently apply them when required.
Reading
In school, the children have many opportunities to develop their reading and comprehension
skills through modelled, shared and guided reading sessions. Slipper Time, at the end of the
day continues to be an activity that the children look forward to. The biggest thing that you
can do to help your child in reading, is to read with them regularly and encourage them to
read independently at least 5 times a week. Reading does not have to be limited to their
school reading books; books from the library, comics or their own texts would be great too.
Writing
A reminder of the mnemonic we use in Year 3 to help the children remember what to
include in every piece of writing.
Punctuation: CL. , ! ? “” ‘
Person: maintain 1st or 3rd person
Conjunctions: and but so because however when if that although meanwhile
Openers: vary the way you start a sentence (adjective opener, preposition
opener, -ing opener, time opener, adverb opener –ly, person opener)
Tense: maintain tense throughout your writing
Sentences: vary your sentence length and structure using simple, compound
and complex sentences
Preston Pirates Tackle
Crew Onboard Ships!
Pirate Pete cruises
over the seas!
PE Kits
A reminder that children need to have a suitable PE kit in school everyday. Earrings must be
removed and long hair tied back for all PE activities. When weather permits, PE will continue
to be taught outside, therefore please can you ensure that your child has a tracksuit or
similar clothing as well as their indoor PE kit. Please include a plastic carrier bag with their PE
kit for any dirty/muddy trainers.
Water bottles and inhalers (if required) also need to be in school.