Badgers class

Life in Year 3

At Trinity, Year 3 marks the journey upstairs in the school! Foxes and Badgers are the Year 3 classrooms. In KS2, we build on the excellent foundation children have had in the early years and KS1 by keeping some things familiar while introducing new ways of working which help the children manage the step up in the curriculum.

The timetable for KS2 looks slightly different with the majority of the core subject learning happening in the morning and the foundation subject learning happening after lunch. Our carefully planned topics have been created to inspire and challenge the children. The topics encourage the children to work in a cross-curricular way, allowing them to apply their learning across several subjects throughout the day. This year’s topics include “Who are our oldest ancestors?” and “What are mountains and where can I find them?”. Visitors and trips are planned in throughout the year to further enhance this learning. Year 3 also marks the introduction to modern foreign language sessions in which the children will learn French. This learning will be built upon each year in KS2.

In English, we teach many genres throughout the year and have dedicated time for spelling, punctuation and grammar teaching as well. Our new handwriting scheme will be introduced this year with the children learning to write in clear, joined handwriting. In maths, White Rose will be used to allow the children to learn many new concepts in a variety of ways to ensure the learning is embedded. Times Tables Rock Stars will also be used to improve the children’s recall of their times tables. Additionally, Doodlemaths is encouraged as a learning tool at home.

Reading is still of huge priority with Accelerated Reader (AR) tracking text preferences and comprehension skills. Our KS2 library is well stocked with a broad range of AR books and the children submit book requests which our librarian sources for us. For those not quite ready to move to AR we support through the Little Wandle keep ups, giving children specific books for their phonetic stage. These are also stocked in our KS2 library. We have a guided reading session every day, one of which is a trip to the main library. We also have a dedicated reading slot each day, after lunch. In this time, the children will be heard read at least once a fortnight. As a class, we have chosen our class read which we enjoy at the end of each day.

PE will continue to take place twice a week, once with a PE coach and once with the class teacher. Forest School will now be accessed at different points throughout the year to enhance our in-class learning.

Updates on our learning are posted fortnightly on the newsletter and each week an ‘upcoming focus’ post is sent out on Tapestry.

Moving up to Year 3 is a big step which comes with many different emotions so please do ask if you are ever unsure about anything. Our team has a wealth of experience and we are on hand to help make you and your child feel at home.

We cannot wait to get started!

Miss Bott & Mrs Searle

Useful links

Times Tables Rock Stars - https://ttrockstars.com/

DoodleMaths - https://doodlelearning.com/

White Rose’s 1-minute maths app

Epic Books - https://kids.getepic.com/