Year 3 Curriculum Overview (Autumn Term)
Our focus for this term in RE lessons will be Belonging, Listening to God’s Word at Mass and Prayer. The children will have opportunities to examine the role they play in God’s family and during the Mass. Through exploration of bible stories, they will understand how people are called to do God’s work and will understanding how people can become closer to the Lord through quiet moments of prayer and reflection. In addition, the children will explore different sacraments examining the sign and symbols that are found within them.
This will lead the children up to the Advent Season and Christmas period.
During the autumn term Year 3 will be focussing on Folk Tales and then Fables as part of their study in fiction texts. They will explore a range of popular examples of these types of stories and will focus on their structure, characters and common plots. Through their writing, they will be applying a range of language choices and sentence type to create their own imaginative examples considering its impact on their audience.
As part of their non-fiction work, we will be focussing on Biography and then Persuasion through Letters. The children will learn how to write using formal language types and how these texts are structured differently to fiction. Through their writing, they will be presented with opportunities to look at current issues and comment on them from both a personal and neutral point of view.
Over the first half of the autumn term, Year 3 will be looking at the structure of number through place value enabling the children to build up fluency in their application of mental and written strategies to add and subtract. Also, the children will explore properties of 2D shapes whilst developing their accuracy in measuring both length and perimeter.
In the second half term, the children will be developing their confidence in the rules and patterns found in the 3 and 4 times tables, applying them to both mental and written multiplication and division. Towards the end of the term, the children will be revisiting shape but with a greater focus on 3D shapes. Finally, we will be developing our skills in the measurement of time.
During our Science lessons, we will be explore Rocks (Autumn 1) and Animals including Humans (Autumn 1)
In the first half term, the children will discover the different types of rock found on Earth, how they are formed and common examples of each. They will also explore their properties, classify different rocks and discuss their uses. Additionally, will learn about how fossils are created and the structure of soil.
In the second half term, the children will be focussing on the importance of nutrition and living a healthy lifestyle. This will include, what essential things humans and animals require, healthy diets and the importance and effects of exercise on the body.
Our first topic for autumn is called, ‘There’s No Place Like Home’ where Year 3 will explore the features of their local environment and their school. Through research and exploring maps both past and present and other historical sources they will gain a greater understanding about the history and geography of both Harborne and Birmingham as a whole.
After half term, our next topic is called ‘Healthy Humans’ and links closely with our Science lessons. During this time, we will be developing our skills in reading and writing musical notations to create our own pieces through our Music lessons whilst researching, planning, constructing and evaluating our own ‘Eat Well Plate’ in Design and Technology.
During the first half term, Year 3 will be developing their balances, jumps and rolls through Gymnastics building up to constructing their own routines with greater independence and confidence.
In our Computing lesson, Year 3 will be focussing on two different areas. Our first area will be centred on developing our own computer programs through animations. As the term progresses, the children will develop the skills and confidence in locating and fixing bugs in these programs.