Year 3 Curriculum

Please click on the links below to view the Manor Hill Curriculum Units for Year 3

	Autumn Term	Spring Term	Summer Term
Year 3	Y3 Extreme Earth	Y3 Iron Giants	Y3 Raiders and Invaders

 

English

Reading

• Reading fluently is increasingly important however understanding what he/she is reading is also very important.
• Children in Year 3 may listen to and discuss a variety of stories, non-fiction texts, poetry, plays and textbooks in order to understand that texts are structured in different ways and written for different purposes.
• Year 3 students should be encouraged to use a dictionary to understand meaning of words they don’t know.
• Children might be expected to retell traditional and fairy stories, also myths or fables, in detail.
• They may also work on writing poems and plays to read aloud and perform using the correct intonation and volume.
• When reading poetry, children will be encouraged to recognise different types of poetry, e.g tongue twisters or riddles.
• As well as understanding books they listen to, children will hopefully be understanding books they can read independently by checking that their reading makes sense, asking questions, inferring character feelings, thoughts and actions and justifying with evidence. They will also be asked to make predictions and summarise the main ideas within a section of text.
• Inference involves using the clues in the story or picture to make a good guess. It involves figuring something out which isn’t fully explained and draws on a child’s existing knowledge of the world. Children will also be encouraged to look back in the text so they can find the answer to a question.

Writing and Spelling

• Your child may learn to use a wide range of prefixes (a group of letters added to the beginning of a word to change its meaning) such as in-, re-, sub-, dis- and mis- and suffixes (a letter or group of letters added to the end of a word to change its meaning) such as –ation and –ous.
• In addition to this, children in Year 3 may also learn how to spell a wider range of homophones (words which sound the same but are spelt differently such as hear/here, some/sum)
• Children will also learn to place the possessive apostrophe in the right place (e.g the lady’s bag, Lewis’ jumper).

Writing – Composition

• Planning writing – In order to fully understand the structure and style of the text that they are writing in, they may be exposed to different texts of that type.
• Drafting and writing – Year 3 Children may practise planning the sentences in their heads before writing them down, consciously including an interesting range of vocabulary. Children might also learn how to write in paragraphs and structure content well including all the necessary features of that writing style.
• Evaluate and edit – Children will be encouraged to regularly assess the effectiveness of their own and other’s writing, suggesting improvements and proof reading for grammar, spelling or punctuation errors. Children will keep in mind the level they are writing at and what they can do to achieve the next level.
• Finally, children will be taught how to use intonation when reading their writing out loud and vary the volume so what they are reading is clearly heard.

Writing – Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation

• In Year 3, your child may work on accurate punctuation including speech punctuation (e.g. start writing speech for a new speaker on a new line and ending speech with a form of punctuation mark before closing speech marks).
• They may also practise when to use ‘a’ or ‘an’ depending on whether the next word begins with a consonant or vowel (an + vowel as first letter of the word).
• Within text, children will be encouraged to use appropriate headings and sub-headings, using the correct tense throughout.
• Finally, children will be taught different ways of starting sentences and joining sentences with words such as next, soon, however, although, after, so, while, before.

Handwriting

• Generally, children in Year 3 will continue to work on joining letters together so that they are always joining up their handwriting. Emphasis should be on the quality and consistency of the handwriting.

Maths

Number – Number and Place Value (Hundreds, Tens and Ones)

• Your child may learn to count in jumps of 4, 8, 50 and 100 and practise finding 10 or 100 more or less than another number. Children might extend their knowledge of place value to hundreds; tens and ones in order compare and order numbers to 1000.
• Year 3 Children may practise reading and writing numbers up to 1000 in digits and words and solve number problems.

Number – Addition and subtraction

• In Year 3, your child may be taught to mentally add and subtract, including a three digit number and ones, a three digit number and tens and a three digit number and hundreds.
• They might also be introduced to adding and subtracting numbers up to three digits using formal written methods of column addition and subtraction (the methods and the order in which they are taught can vary between schools, we have a calculation policy that we will share with you).
• Children in this year group are likely to be encouraged to estimate the answer to a calculation and use inverse operations to check their final answer.
• They will solve addition and subtraction missing number problems using their knowledge of number bonds and place value.

Number – Multiplication and Division

• Your child may already be confident with their times tables however the national expectation by the end of year 3 is that children will be able to recall and use multiplication and division facts for the 3, 4 and 8 times tables, e.g 4 x 3 = 12, 12 ÷ 4 = 3.
• They will also begin to use written calculation methods alongside their own times table knowledge to calculate sums involving a two and one digit number.
• They will also use their knowledge to solve problems.

Number – Fraction

• Your child may be taught to count in fractions such as tenths (1/10) up to one in order to aid their understanding that fractions are part of a whole.
• They may also begin to connect their understanding of the fraction with the decimal (1 divided by 10 = 0.1).
• They may continue to find different fractions of a number or set and recognise equivalent fractions, also understanding how to add and subtract fractions.
• Finally, they might compare and order fractions, using them to solve problems too.

 

Measurement

• Children might learn how to add and subtract larger amounts of money and be able to give change.
• Children in Year 3 are likely to work on being able to tell and write the time from an analogue clock (with hands), including a clock using Roman numerals, to the nearest minute.
• They may work on writing the time in both 12 and 24 hour clock.
• Other helpful information includes children learning the number of seconds in a minute, the number of days in each month, year and leap year.
• Your child is likely to be solving time problems including finding the difference between two different times.
• Regarding other measures, children may experience measuring, adding, subtracting and comparing volume/capacity, length/height and mass/weight.
• Children will be taught how to measure the perimeter of a shape (the distance around the 2D shape).

 

Geometry – Properties of shape

• Your child may practise drawing 2D shapes, making 3D shapes and recognising all shapes in different orientations.
• Children will also learn how to measure angles and identify vertical and horizontal lines including pairs or perpendicular (two or more lines that intersect at a 90-degree angle) and parallel lines (two lines that never meet, they are always the same distance apart).

 

Statistics

• Children are likely to interpret and present data using tables, pictograms and bar graphs.
• They will solve both one and two step problems relating to the data.

Science

Working Scientifically

• Science is a great way to find out about the world around us.
• Your child will be encouraged to raise questions, set up fair tests, make careful observations and take readings.
• Your child will then decide how to best present their data clearly, report on their findings and draw conclusions based on their initial question.
• All of the following topics are taught through the ‘working scientifically’ science strand.

 

Plants

• Children may learn about the different parts of a flowering plant, using vocabulary such as roots, stem, leaves and flowers, and the job each part has to keep the plant healthy.
• They will investigate what a plant needs to grow but how this can vary from one plant to another.
• Children might investigate how water is transported within a plant and look at the life cycle of flowering plants.

Animals, including humans

• Children may learn to understand the right type of nutrition and which animals have skeletons, and why.

Light

• Your child is likely to learn what light actually is and why it is so important in our lives.
• They may also learn about the dangers of the sun, how shadows are made and how they can change.

Rocks

• Most kids love getting their hands dirty and this topic is perfect if your child does too!
• They may learn about where soil comes from, how fossils are formed and compare and group different types of rocks.

 

Forces and Magnets

• Your child is likely to learn about forces and magnets in Year 3.
• They may compare how different things move on different surfaces (friction) and learn about how magnets repel and attract each other and other materials.