Year 3 Summer Term 1

We will be starting the topic ‘Flow’ this half term. This looks at and compares rivers around the world. This will involve geographical skills, using maps and identifying differences and similarities between the countries, weather, plants and animals found there.

In English, we will be continuing with the Book ‘The Great Kapok Tree’. This is a colourful book all about the Amazon rainforest and its destruction. It tells the story of a man who comes to chop down a tree in the rainforest. In the patterned poetic story, we meet the animals that live in the tree and hear their reasons to save it.

We will then move onto a story based on an African folk tale, ‘Fly, Eagle, Fly!’ by Christopher Gregorowski. We will be working on telling stories, thinking about characters and settings but also about ourselves. The story is linked to self-belief and reaching for the sky so we will be encouraging the children to rise to the challenge and believe in themselves!  This book will continue after the May half term and is a good story for thinking about the future and moving onto Year 4.

We will begin Maths this term looking at Money and then move onto time. Working on this at home would be great. These are real life skills which children often find a bit tricky. As always, number facts including timetables are important and the children should be encouraged to get to know their tables and corresponding division facts.  

In Science, we will be looking at ‘Light and Shadows’, this will help to further develop skills to carry out investigations. We will be looking at light sources and the absence of light. We will investigate shadows, observing and recording findings as well as drawing conclusions.  

In French, the children will be working on different types of transport. They will be singing songs, writing words and sentences as well as working on their pronunciation.

The Music unit will be about Rivers too which fits in well with our topic. The children will be thinking about musical language such as tempo, dynamics and pitch. The children will find ways to represent the journey of a river in musical form.

Our Jigsaw theme for the half term is ‘Relationships’. In this unit we will be looking at different relationships within families and how to negotiate and solve problems. The children will look at relationships online and ways in which they can stay safe. As they move through the unit, they will think about different places around the world and their role as a global citizen. They will think about how their lives and relationships are very different to those of other children around the world.  

In PE the children will start the term by continuing to learn about the sports of Netball and Hockey. They will then begin to learn about Athletics in their PE lessons. They will develop their running, jumping and throwing techniques across a variety of track and field events over the term. In their second lesson, the children will be taking part in learning about Tennis. They will learn a variety of shots and how to score correctly. They will be developing their ability to adjust their technique after a shot to improve.