Welcome back to Year 3! As the mornings lighten, it gets a little easier to wake up ready to face the day ahead! During the Spring Term, children will be building on the skills they've learnt so far. They will become experts in all that Birmingham has to offer a visitor, the land use and changes around Longbridge and create ideas to make our local area truly spectacular. The main focus will be geography, which is always fun as the children are introduced to a variety of maps (for many, this will be their first experience with paper maps). We encourage you to look at maps (local and national); atlases (can you find examples that show population or climate?); and of course...get out and about! Take a walk around Longbridge, visit the marvellous architecture around the city centre or explore the beautiful sights of the Lickey Hills. We really do live in a fantastic city.

First we would like to introduce ourselves and our roles in Year 3. 

Mrs Bedford (3B)

Miss Powell (3P)

Maths: We use a mastery approach that will continue to develop the skills in solving calculations efficiently. To make sure children fully understand, we are going to continue to use practical resources such as Base Ten, counters and unifix cubes, before moving onto written methods. Along with your support, we will be teaching your child to be fluent in the key areas of maths through frequent and varied practise. This will develop their confidence with numbers and help to recall facts accurately and rapidly. We are also continuing to use Mathletics to support your child (see link on homepage).  Tasks will be set up to three times a week, but children can also access games and take part in challenges.

Reading and English: We explore a wide variation of text types by looking at language and features used before planning, writing and editing. This term we are using a picture book by Anthony Browne, called "The Tunnel". Children will plan and write their own adventure stories before writing information and persuasive text to encourage visitors to Birmingham. During our reading lessons, children are exposed to a variety of different text extracts. They will unpick what new vocabulary means, decide what the text shows about the characters and explain their own ideas using evidence to support this. 

A few things to remember:  

PE: children will need to wear their PE kit to school on that day. Please make sure your child wears suitable footwear for active play.

Both classes have PE every Wednesday. 

This is a change to the schedule last term.

Homework:

Spellings will be sent home and children will have one week to learn them. They will be tested each Friday.

Reading should be completed daily and signed by an adult.

Mathletics should be used daily (5-10mins).

Please make sure all clothing items are named, especially jumpers, cardigans and coats. As the weather seems to change each day, it is vital that children are able to claim their own jumpers and coats if they've been removed - especially during breaks.

If you have any queries or concerns please do not hesitate to book in with your class teacher, who will be happy to help.

We've had a wonderful start to the year and the children are already WOWING us with their learning.  It's great to watch them settle back into routines so quickly.

This term we kick off with the awesome ancient Egyptians. It's always a crowds pleaser - so many of the children have already gone away and began their own research on the topic. As the term progresses, we head into the dark, gruesome mummification process.

Thank you for getting straight back into the habits of reading every day with your child; we know life is busy but we also know that regular reading really does boost children's progress. Please make sure you build in 30 minutes each week of Mathletics. This is the children's maths homework. We set 2 or 3 new activities each week, once these are complete they can explore the other games available on the site.

Questions to ask:

Each week, we try to offer a few suggestions to start the children talking about their week at school. We know that they don't ways feel like telling you..."It was fine....dunno...we did stuff"! So hopefully these weekly questions get them going ;)

*Who was Howard Carter and what did he do 100 years ago?

*Why did the ancient Egyptians wear loose, white clothes?

*What happened to Flat Stanley?

*Which new adjectives have you tried out in English this week?

*What happens to the digits when you add 10 or 100?

*What is the value of the digit in the ones/tens/hundreds: 387, 409?