Class Webpage - Year
3
Click here for the
Bears visit to Monkton Elm Garden Centre January 2010
Click here for the latest Bears Newsletter November 2009
Dear Parents,
Welcome
to what I hope will be a successful term for your child in
Meerkats class. It is a real pleasure to have the opportunity
to teach your children and I hope we will have a great year
together.
I firmly
believe that children learn best when they are happy. With
this in mind if you or they have any problems at all please
let me know so that we can hopefully deal with small problems
before they have a chance to become big ones.
We will
of course be covering all of the subjects of the National
Curriculum this term and adopting a cross-curricular approach
whenever possible. Our topics in Religious Education for this
term are explained in the accompanying leaflet.
In Literacy
we will continue to build on the reading and writing skills
already learned, developing independent writing, extending
use of grammar and continuing to work on handwriting skills.
The children will bring home individual lists of words to
be learned each week based on the key words that should be
known by the end of Key Stage 1/Year 3 and word families,
groups of words using the same spelling pattern. The test
of whether the children retain and understand these new words
is whether they can use and adapt the knowledge when writing
in class. We will be enjoying a variety of books and stories
and the children will have a Reading book to take home with
them. I know it is difficult and we all lead busy lives but
it does make a real difference if the children have the opportunity
to enjoy and share their books with their parents. Even when
a child can apparently 'read' there is still a range of skills
still to be developed. Spellings will be tested every Friday.
In Numeracy we will consolidate previous work and will then
cover
i) Number - reading, writing and ordering numbers to 100 and
then 1000, tens and units place value, simple fractions, addition
and subtraction to 20 mentally, repeated addition and early
multiplication.
ii) Shape, Space and Measures - recognizing hexagons, pentagons,
cubes, cuboids, cylinders and spheres and describing them
in terms of vertices, sides/edges and faces; recognizing right-angled
corners in 2D and 3D shapes; understanding rotation of angle;
turning through right angles ¼, ½ and whole
turns; recognizing different types of movement including translation,
rotation and reflection.
The children will be learning their 2,5 and 10 times tables.
In History our topic looks at the life of Tutankhamen We will
be looking at what we can discover about Ancient Egypt and
covering such areas as the Pharaohs, pyramids and Cleopatra
. I plan to take the children on a day trip later in the term
to Dorchester Museum. Details to follow. Our Geography topics
'Investigating our local area' and 'Where in the world is
Barnaby Bear?' lend themselves perfectly to our Welly walks
in the school grounds.
In Science
we will be studying 'Magnets and springs'. We will also be
doing lots of investigations. In Art and Design we will be
designing and making puppets, looking at packaging, painting
and drawing from pictures taken with the digital camera looking
at a range of buildings and recording them using a variety
of media. In ICT we will continue to develop keyboard and
control skills.
A few practical requests! Please ensure that your children's
clothing is clearly marked. P.E kit will be needed on Monday
and Tuesday, Swimming kit on Wednesday for the next few weeks.
Wellington boots will be needed for our walks If you have
any old comics you don't need they would be useful for wet
playtimes.
Mrs Ballentine,Mrs Monaghan,and Mrs Rossiter will be working
in class with the children. The class will be doing PE with
a sports coach from S.A.S.P. and Music with a specialist Music
teacher Helen Coombes.Which they will enjoy.
I hope we will all have a very good term. Please do not hesitate
to contact me if you have any queries at all.
Tom Doyle
