Year 3
Head of Year
Mrs K Farrington (AHT)
Teachers
Miss R Chappell (3C)
Miss L Quarmby (3Q)
Mrs H Mitchell (3M)
Miss L Gledhill (3G)
Mr H Ali (3A)
Miss J Gallagher (3M/SENCO)
Teaching Assistants
Miss E Mosefield (3G)
Mrs N Akhtar (3A)
Mrs S Akhtar (3M)
Miss A Watson (3Q)
Miss H Inman (3C)
Year 3 Spring Term 2025
Welcome Back Year 3! We hope you had a restful break and are looking forward to a Spring Term of exciting learning now that you have settled into life at Birkby Junior School.
This term the focus of our Geography and History lessons will be exploring our Local area. Year 3 will have the opportunity to learn about what makes the local area of Birkby and Huddersfield special by learning all about the textile industry and what made it so successful back in the 19th century. The children will go out on a local walk trip to investigate Huddersfield and Birkby in more detail to further develop their understanding of the history and geography of their surrounding area. We will compare the features of our urban environment with the rural village of Marsden a few miles away and study geographical features of these areas such as rivers, canal and architecture.
To help our children to make links with the knowledge gained in History some of our Art work will explore the work of DS Lowry who was famous for depicting scenes from the Industrial Revolution. The development of important painting skills will be at the centre of this unit of work as Year 3 will practise mixing colours to create art work in the style of DS Lowry. Through our unit of work on Yayoi Kasama, will study the importance of colour and repeating patterns in art; using what we have learnt to develop our skills in collaging and use of colour.
In English, we will be reading and exploring two texts: The Iron Man and Pebble in my Pocket. The Iron Man is a science fiction novel written by Ted Hughes who was born not far away, in Mytholmroyd. The story involves the unexpected arrival of a giant metal man who causes destruction and havoc. We will be using this text as a basis for descriptive writing, exploring how figurative language can be used to engage the reader. Pebble in my Pocket is an exciting and interesting text which has elements of fiction and non-fiction; the text takes the reader on a journey of a pebble over millions of years and teaches children about the processes of rock formation and erosion. This will then support year 3 with different types of non-fiction writing such as explanation texts and non-chronological reports. Both texts have been chosen carefully to support different areas of the Year 3 curriculum and Pebble in my Pocket, in particular will help the children to revisit their prior learning on the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. Reading focused lessons will continue to take place as part of our English lessons; these will support the development and progress of important reading skills e.g. text retrieval, inference and understanding key vocabulary. Further decoding and comprehension of texts will be covered in Cracking Comprehension lessons and our ‘Fluent in Five’ reading sessions. Please don’t forget to read as often as possible at home, every week your child will bring home their home reading books to share and read together. Reading together provides the perfect opportunity to develop your children knowledge and understanding of the world; helps them to become better writers; improves their language skills and is proven to help children succeed in life when they become adults!
In Maths, the children will revisit multiplication and division skills to ensure they have mastered the written skills needed in preparation for complex problem solving. We will be exploring measurements, in particular length and perimeter, before finishing the term, with a focus on fractions. In all lessons your child will have the opportunity to improve their fluency and reasoning skills. There will also be continued emphasis on improving recall of multiplication facts and learning the 4 and 8 times tables so make sure you practice at home as these fact underpin a lot of mathematical concepts and learning e.g. fractions! Every day we will continue to work on our Fluent in Five tasks to further improve fluency skills in Maths and we also hope you carry on using Mathletics and TT Rockstars at home as a fun way to improve your mental maths skills.
Our Science learning in the first half of the Spring Term will link to the book ‘Pebble in my Pocket’ as our unit will be rocks and soils. This is usually a very popular chemistry unit in Year 3 so we are looking forward to teaching them all about different types of rocks, how they are created and how these link to soils. Physics will be the focus of science learning in the second half of the term as we will learn all about Forces. Lessons will develop pupils’ knowledge of different types of force and help them to understand whether they are pushing or pulling forces. Investigative work will give the children the opportunity to explore certain forces such as Friction.
PE lessons will involve learning manipulative fundamental skills (such as catching, dribbling, passing); gymnastics; yoga and Games so make sure your child comes to school in the correct PE kit on their PE days – we will send text messages to remind you which day each class has PE. Striking and fielding will be the focus of our ‘Games’ lessons; we will be learning skills specific to games which involve striking and fielding e.g. games which involve stricking balls with our hands, feet and equipment such as bats. We will encourage Year 3 to draw upon skills they developed in earlier units of work e.g. team games so that they can refine and improve their skills. In our gymnastics unit we will practise skills such as balancing, turning and landing when putting together sequences of movements and in our Yoga lessons we will learn Yoga positions to help build strength, balance and flexibility.
What a busy and exciting term we have in store!