Welcome to Year 3

September 2023

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back to the new school year. We are starting to settle in to our time in Year 3 and have been very busy. Here is some information for the start of the year.

Book Bags and Equipment

Your child has a tray in their class where they can keep their things. Please ensure your child has a book bag (designed to fit inside their trays – not a rucksack), so that they can bring their reading books to school each day. They also have a peg for their coat. Please ensure your child has a named water bottle with them every day, which is not placed in their book bags due to water damage on the books. Please note that free fruit snacks are not provided by the government in KS2. Children should bring a clearly labelled fresh fruit or vegetable snack in accordance with school policy.

PE

PE activities may be indoors or outdoors, depending on the weather. Children should come to school wearing their PE kit (black shorts and a house coloured T-shirt) with appropriate outdoor clothing when the weather cools down (black jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt/tracksuit). They should wear trainers or pumps which are suitable for outdoor PE. Please ensure that all uniform and kit is labelled.

Penguin PE Days: Tuesday and Wednesday

Robin PE Days: Wednesday and Thursday

For health and safety, children who wear earrings should have these removed on PE days or must be able to remove them for the lesson themselves. Staff are not allowed to remove children’s earrings.

Drop-off and Pick-up

In the morning, children need to be dropped off outside the classroom between 8:50am and 9am. At the end of the day, children should be collected from outside the classrooms at 3:15pm. Please let us know of any changes to normal pick up arrangements.

OPAL

We have been enjoying lots of activities at lunch time as part of OPAL play. The children have the opportunity to use and play with a wide variety of toys and activities. It is very important that children are prepared for the weather as they will be outside no matter what the weather is like. As such, please remember to ensure your child has a waterproof coat and a pair of wellies in school at all times. Also, if you have any equipment that might be interesting for the children as part of their play, please feel free to bring it in. 

Curriculum

To kick-start the term, we had a ‘mini-topic’ all about the brain, how we learn, and our emotions and feelings.

Our main topic this term is Stone Age to Iron Age: Are we more the same or more different from Stone Age human? We will be learning about how people used to live in the Stone Age to the Iron Age. We will also be learning about rocks and soil in Science, completing a variety of interesting investigations.

For homework, we ask that the children read for at least 15 minutes every night, and talk about the books they are reading as this will support enjoyment, fluency and understanding. As well as books being changed regularly in school, children still have access to Bug Club, which is a great resource for home reading. Diaries will be checked in school on Monday mornings.

Children also have access to Times Table Rock Stars Challenges, Spelling Shed activities and will be beginning to send home a choice of topic based homework projects. All logins for these can be found in your child's reading diary.

We have a great team of adults supporting in Year 3, and Mrs Arthur, Miss Cole and Miss Eaton will be working with groups and individuals across the year group.

If you need to contact us for any reason, please either catch us on the door before or after school, or speak to the school office. 

Many thanks,

Mrs Griffiths, Mrs O’Donnell and Miss Thomason