Year 3

In English, we will be reading the text, A Place for Plastic. The story will inform us about the journey of a plastic bag and the impact that we have on plastic in the oceans. We will be therefore having a closer look at David Attenborough and all the work he has done around our world to help the animals and environment. We will begin by focusing on Grammar skills in English and will then move onto writing a Biography about David Attenborough.

In Maths, we are going to focus on arithmetic and times tables to consolidate mathematic skills that have been taught in Year 3. We will recap the strategies that we need to use in order to complete simple and complex addition, subtraction, multiplication and division questions before including reasoning into our lessons too.

In Science, we are going to be exploring the uses of plastic and the properties of plastic (structure, waterproof, shape). Our challenge will be to explore which other, environmentally friendly materials, give us the same properties. In Geography, we are going to be studying the journey of a plastic bag. We are going to make this relatable to the children by going on a ’Litter Walk’ around Meir and then, we will look at the river systems from Meir, to the oceans so that they understand that what they do here has an impact too!

Our topic this half term is The Bronze Age and The Iron Age. In this unit, the children will explore the key features of the Bronze and Iron Ages, and come to conclusions about the developments within the periods. Links will be made to the Stone Age period, which they have previously studied. Throughout the unit, the children will use a variety of sources of evidence to investigate the period, including archaeological evidence with a focus on the Amesbury Archer, the Lindow Man, Roman written accounts of the Celts and reconstruction drawings of both periods.

Our topic this half term is 'Our World'. In Geography, the children are identifying the link between 2d maps and 3d globes as representations of our world. Children will be creating their own paper mache globes and drawing their own 2d picture maps! They will use these within their Geography lessons to mark the Northern and Southern hemispheres, as well as the lines of longitude and latitude.

The children will go from learning about ‘Our world’ to learning about the fantasy world in the text 'Alice in Wonderland'. They be exploring the characters and setting from the text, take part in lots of drama activities, write a delicious afternoon tea menu and produce instructions on how to make a jam tart! The children will also be preparing to hold their own Mad Hatter’s tea party on the last day of half term and will be designing invitations and menus following up to this. In PE, children will be creating dances inspired by the book. In Science, we will be researching light and how light travels and is reflected. Children will also be exploring how shadows are formed and changed in their science lessons.

This half term, year 3 will travel far back in time to study the Stone Age.  This Learning Journey sets the scene for many other journeys with its focus on the beginnings of modern humans and how life was for people before the modern era. Children will learn all about the 3 different periods of the stone age; The Paeleolithic (Old) Stone age, The Mesolithic (Middle) Stone Age and the Neolithic (New) Stone Age. Our class text this half term is ‘Stig of the Dump’ which tells the story of a young boy called Barney who meets Stig, a wild looking man who Barney assumes must be from the Stone Age. As well as a very strong history element, there is also a science focus on rocks, soils and fossils. We will cover the properties and uses of rocks, the rock family, soils and finally fossils. Finally, in Art, we will be doing Stone Age cave sketching, painting and printing! 

Our topic this half term is Why is the climate so important? We are looking at climates around the world and locating some of the world’s climate zones on a globe or map. We will be identifying the world’s hottest, coldest, wettest and driest locations. We will extract geographical data (e.g. rainfall, temperature, weather, climate/ vegetation zones) from pictorial/ graphical representations. With this being current issue it is important for the children to know some of the factors that affect our climate and how look after our planet.

This half term, our topic is ‘Why is our local area important?’. Children will learn all about the history of Stoke-on-Trent and what it is famous for. Each classroom has its own bottle kiln role-play area where children can explore old pottery made in old Stoke-on-Trent factories. Children will also be looking at different listed buildings in Stoke-on-Trent and will even create their own campaign to make the Bet365 stadium a listed building! Because of this, our class text is ‘Football Academy-Reading the Game’; the story about a young boy who is a magnificent footballer who is unable to read. In Science, we will be looking at bones and skeletons and how to protect them. In Art & Design, children will be designing and decorating a plate inspired by Clarice Cliff, as well as creating drawings of Stoke on Trent inspired by local Artist Sid Kirkham.