Friday 26th April

Welcome to Class 3.

Summer term

Our new topic is: UK Detectives

Maths:

Year 3’s will learn about: fractions of quantities and amounts; measuring time and being able to tell the time on a digital or analogue clock; geometry (including the properties of shape); measurement (including mass and capacity).

Year 4’s will learn about: decimals; measuring money and being able to solve problems involving money; measuring time and being able to tell the time on a digital or analogue clock; statistics; geometry (including the properties of shape and position and direction).

Times Tables Rock Stars

One of the things that most pleased me about the Spring term just gone, is how much children in Class 3 embraced ‘Times Tables Rock Stars’! The speed that some children are now able to answer any times tables up to 12x12 is nothing short of incredible. And thank you so much to parents who have also embraced this effort to get all children knowing their times tables. Now, as we enter the summer term, I hope that we can continue to work together to keep this enthusiasm going. Rock on!

English

Grammar and Writing: Year 3’s will learn about: inverted commas (speech marks); using paragraphs; expressing time place and cause using conjunctions, adverbs and prepositions; prefixes and suffixes; homophones; possesive apostrophes and using a dictionary.

On top of including the Year 3 Grammar listed above in their writing, Year 4’s will be challenged to: use fronted adverbials (remembering the comma); use pronouns to avoid repetition and use expanded noun phrases showing a broader vocabulary of adjectives and prepositional phrases.

Reading/ Speaking and listening: Guided reading is something we do every day in Class 3 and in these sessions we put a heavy focus on comprehension, where we talk through what we’ve read and work on understanding what it means. Children are also encouraged to discuss their  own writing with a classmate or a teacher before they begin and when they produce good work they are given the chance to read it out loud to the class. Summarising, predicting and questioning are all important skills that we continually work on in both class and group discussions.

The Power of Reading (POR): The POR initiative is something that we are embracing at Wenhaston Primary and it works on the idea that children shouldn’t just be taught to read but should also learn to love reading. In Class 3 we will be reading some highly recommended children books together as a class and through drama, art and other cross-curricular techniques our aim will be to get all children feeling enthusiastic about reading.

Science:

Summer 1 – States of Matter

Children will learn to: compare and group materials together, according to whether they are solids, liquids or gases; observe that some materials change state when they are heated or cooled, and measure or research the temperature at which this happens in degrees Celsius (°C); identify the part played by evaporation and condensation in the water cycle and associate the rate of evaporation with temperature.

Summer 2 – Electricity

Children will learn to: identify common appliances that run on electricity; construct a simple series electrical circuits, identifying and naming the basic parts; identify whether or not a lamp will light in a simple series circuit, based on whether or not the lamp is part of a complete loop with a battery; recognise that a switch opens and closes a circuit; recognise some common conductors and insulators, and associate metals with being good conductors.

PE/ICT/French/Music/RE/PSHE: 

P.E for the whole of the term will be on Thursdays. Please make sure P.E kits are in school on Thursdays. In ICT the children will complete the Discovery Education Coding scheme of work for their year group, one lesson at a time. Discovery Education will also be a source of learning during the children’s French lessons. In Music children will learn about tempo, pitch and rhythm while learning popular songs, both old and new, using Charanga. Also, starting this term, we have invested in schemes of work for both RE (Discovery RE) and PSHE (Jigsaw).

UK Detectives:

Children will focus on the questions: … ‘How and why is my local environment changing?’ and ‘How can we live more sustainably?’ Our Great British Geography topic is also the focus of the home learning this term, as you will be able to see on the home learning activities list that all Class 3 children will be given. History, Art and DT will very much be subjects which are dominated by a UK theme as this term we aim to help the children learn about things a little closer to home.