Year 3
What’s New In Year 3?
This Year comes with big and exciting changes for the children as they move from Key Stage 1 up to Key Stage 2. Moving up to KS2 from KS1 can be a daunting prospect, however here at CGPS we do all we can to ensure that the transition is as smooth and worry-free as possible. We work closely with our KS1 staff so that transition is an exciting time full of new possibilities. We want children to embrace the change and be excited about the new learning opportunities, development and the independence they will experience entering our Year 3 family.
At Catton Grove Primary School we recognise that the personal as well as educational development of children, plays a significant part in their ability to learn and achieve.
We therefore aim to provide an education that provides children with opportunities to explore and develop our core values, promotes high expectations of personal behaviour, caring attitudes towards other people, an understanding of the diversity and traditions in their local and wider area and an excitement of learning.
PE
In Year 3, we start getting changed in the changing rooms instead of our classrooms. This is an exciting opportunity for our children to begin the process of growing up and recognising changes that start to happen in our bodies as well as building independence.
Phonics
RWI (Read, Write Inc.) is an exciting phonics program which all children in CGPS from Nursery up to Year 3 are part of as their journey through learning to use and apply their learning of phonics continues. THe children are assessed and placed in groups according to their knowledge and application of phonics. (sounds)
Accelerated Reader
In Year 3, many children will start their journey on Accelerated Reader. Children are assessed and placed in the ZPD (zone of proximal development) This means the children will choose appropriate books to read based on their current decoding and comprehension abilities. The children love being part of this program and enjoy earning rewards and dojos for the efforts on reading and quizzing on the books. If they regularly read books at a suitable level, they will make accelerated progress and become even more confident readers. Children must take their reading record and reading book home each day. They will be rewarded and celebrated for doing so.
Times Table Rockstars
At the end of Year 4, pupils will take a Multiplication Table Check which assesses their knowledge of their times tables all the way up to 12x12! To support this process in Year 3, we have our very own challenges and displays to encourage children to participate and practice as much as possible.
In Year 3,most of us will start to use Times Table Rockstars to help lock these important facts in our memory. If children are able to, we recommend playing for 5-10 minutes each day at home to help.
We even have mini competitions in class to earn dojos and show our growing skills.
|
Year 1 |
Year 2 |
Year 3 |
Year 4 |
|
10x |
5x, 2x |
4x, 8x, 11x |
3x, 6x, 9x, 7x, 12x |
Spanish
During our time in Year 3, we have the exciting opportunity to start learning Spanish. At CGPS we use a program called Primary Languages Network which provides us with everything we need to learn to speak, write and understand Spanish. Please see our first unit tracker below which tells you all the exciting things we start doing at the beginning of Year 3.
Year 3 Timetables
Our week is packed full of important and exciting lessons. Here are our Year 3 timetables of what our week looks like in terms of subjects and length of time studying. Please note each class has a slightly different timetable and sometimes there are changes that happen within the week.
Expectations in Maths, Reading and Writing
Pupils work really hard in Year 3 and begin developing their independence from the very start of the school year. By the end of the year, we are proud to show off how we have grown, developed and embraced being independent learners.
Maths: Children will be expected to understand and recall key knowledge and apply their understanding in a range of problems. In Year 3, children will explore a range of units seen in the table below. Each unit is broken down into small steps which helps build on the children’s understanding of number sense and problem solving.
Children complete a unit assessment at the beginning and the end of each unit to show them and us how much they have learned.
Writing:
In CGPS, we embrace Talk 4 Writing. Talk 4 Writing is split up into 3 parts; Imitation, Innovation and invention.
Children start by learning to retell (Imitation) a model text or story, earning dojos and becoming queens and kings when they show us how to retell using expression and actions.
Then we move on to making changes (Innovation) and writing our own version of our model text. Finally, we get the opportunity to become authors and invent (Invention) our own using our learning and incorporating it into our inventions.
Children will write for a range of purposes including fiction and non-fiction. They will learn about key areas of writing including: language choices, structural choices, handwriting, spelling, punctuation and grammar.
Reading:
We love reading at CGPS and understand the importance of enjoying reading and teaching the children to enjoy reading as well. We embed a love of reading through whole class novels which we read with and to the children. Children are taught to use a range of symbols through our reading to demonstrate questions, thoughts or predictions they have about the text/story. Each week is structured as seen in the structure below.
Please explore our school website page to find more information on all our foundation subjects. This includes some exciting History, Geography, Science, Computing, Art, Healthy Bodies & Healthy Minds and Spanish.
If you have concerns about your child’s transition /progress or have further questions about Year 3, please contact us via Class DOJO.
Please note that some children will be set more personalised targets, broken into smaller steps, to enable them to succeed and make progress from their starting point.