Wye
Year 3

English and Topic

Our main topic this term will be learning about the Romans as settlers and the involvement and impact they had on our country and lives today. In English, we will be researching facts from the Roman Empire and will be writing mainly non-fiction texts. This will include a non-chronological report of an interest your child has in this exciting era of history. In addition, we will be writing a diary report of Roman life, investigating the gods which they worshipped and writing a newspaper report on Boudicca’s revolt. The children and I are very excited about a class trip which I have booked to Caerleon Museum after half term, which is a fabulous museum and brings all the features we will be learning about in the classroom to real life experiences. Finally, we will be looking at different forms of language poetry and writing a limerick poem to include alliteration.

Maths

This half term, we will be focusing mainly on place value, addition and subtraction work and heavily on our times tables. The National Curriculum states by the end of Year 3 pupils should have memorised their multiplication table and division facts for 2, 10, 5, 3, 4 and 8. With this in mind, we are using the ‘Frog Maths’ challenge to encourage your child to learn their tables and number facts in a fun and easy way. It is a challenge which will be given to them each week to improve their number bonds, complements to 100, multiplication and division facts. ‘Frog Maths’ aims to encourage children to become more fluent through varied and frequent practice, to recall and apply their knowledge of fundamental Maths skills.

Science

In Science this half term we will be investigating rocks and soils, learning about the different types of rock formations and comparing and grouping different kinds of rocks on their appearance and properties. We will discover how fossils are formed and trapped within sedimentary rocks. In addition, we will be looking at different soils to recognise that they are made from rocks and organic matter. With this in mind, if anyone can provide some different soil samples from various locations for us to test, I would be most grateful.

Following half term, we will be learning about magnets and forces. We will be investigating different forces, magnetic and non-magnetic materials and the magnetic field surrounding a magnet. The children are always excited and keen to use magnets!

Art and Design

In art and design, the children will use the natural environment and works of famous artists as inspiration for their autumnal artwork. They will learn about how to use pencil, colour, paint, print, collage and paper to create nature and leaf inspired artwork. We will be looking at Roman mosaics and making some Roman food to enjoy!

Spellings will be given every Monday to be tested on Friday. Please encourage your child to learn these at home in readiness for their Friday spelling tests.