Lower Key Stage 2

Welcome to Year 3

Creative Curriculum.

This half term in Year 3 we will be learning about The Stone Age in our topic: Who Rules The Tribe? We will be looking at Stone Age houses and clothing, how they survived and to compare and discuss how Britain has changed from The Stone Age to modern times. Children will have the opportunity to visit Creswell Crags and see how Stone Age people lived, including seeing the only known cave art n Britain. This topic has a history focus and children will be learning to ask insightful and challenging historical questions, looking at evidence and evaluating the impact of both these crucial stages in Britain’s history. As well as learning about history this topic will enable them to look at key aspects of geography, maths and D&T. We hope that the children will enjoy this topic and share as much of their learning as they can at home with you.

Topic

Our topic this half term will be Were the Greeks Civilized? We will be undertaking many areas of investigation, such as the history of Greece, where it is, the gods and goddesses they worshipped and the Trojan Horse. Next half term, we will change topic to Do All Animals Bite? During this term, we are going to look at lots of different areas, such as animals in their natural habitats, how they have evolved and adapted to their environments, what they eat and why and how animals defend themselves.

English

Children in Year 3 at Park will continue to develop and improve the skills that they began to learn in Year 2. Much of this half term will be spent encouraging children to engage with and develop their use of vocabulary to become more sophisticated writers. This will include adjectives, identifying and applying expanded noun phrases and looking at extending and developing sentences using varied conjunctions, adverbs and fronted adverbials. We will also be revisiting basic skills such as sentence structure, punctuation and the use of adjectives and adverbs in sentences. In addition, children will be set weekly spelling homework taken from the Year 3 spelling list. We will be funnelling all of these skills into long piece of writing, such as a character description and story recount.

Maths

This term in maths we will be looking at many areas such as ones, tens, hundreds and thousands, using number lines, comparing objects and numbers and ordering numbers. Also, we will focus on many different aspects of adding and subtracting, including adding and subtracting 2-digit, 1-digit and 3-digit numbers both crossing and not crossing ten and one hundred for example. Finally, we will begin to investigate different aspects of multiplications.

P.E

P.E. will take place on Friday morning. Please ensure that your child brings their P.E. kit to school in a bag as they will get changed at school. Also, please remove any earrings before coming to school and tie any long hair up so it is safe and out of the way.

Homework

Children should read at least 3 times per week and bring their reading record and book to school with them every day.

Children will need to practise their Times Tables Rockstars weekly.

Spellings will be given out to practice every Thursday, with children being tested and given new spellings to learn the following Thursday.

Welcome to Year 4

Why did they invade and what made them stay?

This history based topic focusses on the Anglo Saxon and Scot settlement and the later invasion and settlement of the Vikings up to 1066. It allows the children to build on their knowledge from Year 3 when they looked at the Romans in Britain and allows them to continue the chronological journey to see what happened to Britain when the Romans left. It offers a variety of cross curricular learning opportunities and includes a Viking Experience Day, when the children can study artefacts and understand daily life for the Vikings in Britain.

Please see the Year 4 Curriculum Map for further details.

English

As part of our English lessons this term we will be looking at writing for different purposes and extending our understanding of different writing genres.

Our first piece of work will be a narrative based on the journey of a Viking Invader. In addition, there will be a study of dragons and the children will use the book ‘Tell me a Dragon’ by Jackie Morris to write a dragon description. This will also be linked to their art work where they will design and make a clay dragon’s eye.

Maths

Year 4 Overview WRM.

In Maths, we continue to look at our 4 key operations as part of arithmetic. We do an arithmetic task each morning and the children continue to work on their skills of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

We are following the White Rose Maths scheme for Year 4.

This term we have focused on Place Value. The White Rose Maths scheme enables children to practice their fluency skills and then embed and deepen their learning through mastery and reasoning and problem-solving skills.

Science

In science we have been studying Animals including Humans. We have looked at teeth and their uses and compared animal and human digestive systems. We have also been looking at food chains and food webs as part of this topic.

Music

This year in music we are using Charanga to build our musical skills of listening, responding, singing and composing.

We are also learning to play the recorder.

Art

In Art we have been looking at using charcoal to draw with. We have been looking at how we can use charcoal in different ways and how we can apply detail using it. We are also starting our art project on dragons which we will do alongside our English descriptions.

PE

See below for the Year 4 PE Curriculum

PE takes place on a Friday for Year 4.

Please wear PE Kit:

• Dark bottoms, white t shirt and trainers.
• Hair should be tied up
• Earrings and watches removed prior to coming to school.

This half term some children are taking part in the Sports After School Sports Club, this is on a Monday.