Catton Grove Primary School
Year Three
Welcome
Year 3 is a big year for our children as they progress from Key Stage 1 into Key Stage 2. They move to a different part of the building - turn left at the office, rather than right! Their routines are different and the adults they work with are different too. We know how daunting that can be for our children so we strive to make sure they feel safe, content and look forward to their next chapter at Catton Grove!
Please find our Year group Curriculum Overview at the bottom of the page.
Maths
We use the Maths Mastery approach when teaching maths. Mastering maths means pupils acquiring a deep, long-term, secure and adaptable understanding of the subject.
We teach children to solve problems using what they know, and as they learn new skills. We teach the written methods for the 4 operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) as well as how to read the time on an analogue clock and spend a significant time in the second part of the year on Fractions.
We use Times Tables Rockstars (TTRockstars) to encourage pupils to learn and practise their multiplication facts, particularly the 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9, in order to prepare them for the ‘MTC’ (Multiplication Table Check) which is a requirement for all Year 4 children across the country.
Independence
Year 3 really is the start of children learning to be more independent: they use the changing rooms to change for PE and have music lessons with our award-winning Music Department, in the Music Room.
They can decide whether to bring a home-packed lunch or order one of the options available to them from our canteen: a hot dinner or school packed-lunch (a vegetarian option is available for both).
Core Values
At Catton Grove Primary School, we have eleven Core Values that underpin our curriculum and ethos. Each month represents a Core Value that is practised by the whole school.
We discuss, model and celebrate these values as we want our children to be the best they can be by the time they leave our care and move into the next phase of their lives in education.
We look forward to working with you to give your child the best possible childhood!
Reading & Writing
We believe that reading is a crucial life skill and a love of reading is something that we aim to foster in Year 3. For most children, this will be the first time they are enrolled onto our Accelerated Reader program, a computer-based program that we use to monitor reading practice and progress.
Accelerated Reader helps us guide our children to books that are on their individual reading levels. They then take short quizzes after reading a book to check if they’ve understood what they’ve read.
In addition, each child receives a Reading Record to take home with their reading book and we ask that parents read with their child every night for at least 10 minutes - this has a significant impact on their fluency and allows us to develop their inference, prediction, summarising and sequence skills at school.
We have Guided Reading sessions 4 times a week to teach them how to ‘Read as a Reader’ and ‘Read as a Writer’. We share short stories with the children whenever we can and listen to the children read as frequently as possible.
By the time your child joins us in Year 3, they will be very familiar with Talk for Writing which is the medium through which we teach our writing.
This methodology enables children to imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally, before reading and analysing it, and then writing their own version. We use this method to teach children how to write both fiction and non- fiction texts.
We also teach children grammar rules as well as how to punctuate sentences with commas after fronted adverbials and inverted commas (speech marks, as we used to call them!). We spend each morning in the first term concentrating on letter formation and neat, consistent handwriting as we believe this is an important skill to master at an early age, despite living in a more digital world!
Year 3 poetry performances on National poetry Day