At St Michael’s our aim is to provide a rich curriculum and a wide range of opportunities that will build the habits of ambitious, capable learners.
They have transitioned so well to the junior site and are really getting accustomed to their new surroundings. Here is an outline of what the Year 3s will be learning during the Autumn Term.
Literacy
We will be developing the children’s reading comprehension skills by using a whole class reading approach. The two books that we will cover this term are: ‘Mouse, Bird, Snake, Wolf‘ (by David Almond) and ‘The Twits‘ (by Roald Dahl).
In writing, the children will be writing a fictional ‘journey tale’ (based on the Freedom Bird), non-chronological reports (based on the ‘Time Travelling Elephant‘).
Numeracy
In addition to embedding the children’s mental maths skills, through our daily CLIC programme and BMBT (Big Maths Beat That), we are following the White Rose Maths curriculum, which covers the whole content of the National Curriculum. This term the focus will be:
- Place Value
- Addition & Subtraction
- Multiplication & Division.
This term, the children must learn the x3 times table so that they know it off by heart. They should also know their x2, x5 and x10 off by heart.
TOPIC (History/Geography)
In Geography, as part of our whole school theme of ’Seven worlds, one planet’, Year 3 will study of the continent Oceania. Our starting point will be to learn, and locate on a map, the 7 continents and the 5 oceans in the world – please reinforce this learning at home. Over the term, we will use different types of maps to focus on key physical and human characteristics, countries and major cities. Ultimately, our aim is to develop a better world view and to foster an appreciation for the complexity of our world as well as the diversity of cultures across continents.
Science: ‘Light’
We want the children to learn about light, reflections and shadows, about different sources of light and that we need light to see. When investigating reflective materials, the children will also have the opportunity to develop their scientific enquiry skills by making observations, predictions and drawing conclusions. They will be testing which objects are opaque and finding out how shadows change when the distance between the object and light source changes.
Religious Education
In RE, we learn about the 6 main religions in the world, and this term our focus is on Christianity. As part of our topic, our learning will include
- Main beliefs
- Special places
- Special friends
- Holy book (the Bible)
- Symbols and meaning.
We will also be dedicating some time to deepen our understanding of our school values of ‘Respect’, ‘Love’ and in the second half term ‘Peace‘.
PE
As the children will not be swimming this term, they will have two ‘socially distanced’ PE sessions, which will be on Tuesdays and Fridays. This term the children will be focusing on multi-skills, which involve the fundamental movement skills of agility, balance and co-ordination: the key building blocks in a child’s physical development. Please ensure your child comes to school in their PE kit, tracksuit and trainers on Tuesdays and Fridays.
CREATIVE CURRICULUM
In addition to all the learning already outlined, the children will also be given ample opportunity to do Art and DT (linked to their topic, but also a whole school art project), to participate in Music lessons, to take part in drama & dance activities, to develop their personal, social, citizenship and health education (PSCHE), to learn computing skills, including online safety and to learn a language other than English, which will be Spanish. As the children enjoyed the Spanish lessons during lockdown so much and as it is the second most spoken language in the world, we have decided to continue with the teaching of Spanish as our Modern Foreign Language at St Michael’s.
HOME learning
Following the positive feedback from using CLASSDOJO during lockdown, we will continue to set homework via our dojo platform.
Your child will be sent home with their log in details for classdojo; the log in is in the form of a QR code. Past experience has taught us that it is easier to scan the QR code for tablets and smartphones, but if using a laptop, typing the log in details are a better option. If you would prefer this option, please contact us via our school email, schoolmail@stmichaels.lewisham.sch.uk so we can send this to you. Please note that their existing log in details, given during our period of lockdown provide access to your child’s former year group class dojos. Therefore if you already have this set up on a device, you will need to repeat the process for your child’s current class .
Can we also remind you that in order to refresh the screen and see additions to the page, your child must log out at the end of each session and then log in again when required.
Home learning will include:
- Mathletics (login and password card will be given to them)
- Weekly spelling words to learn (children will be tested on a Friday)
Children will be awarded DOJOs points for completing their homework.
stay in touch
Despite the current restrictions about entering our school premises, please do not let that stop you from staying in contact with us. If you wish to speak to us, please contact the school office via schoolmail@stmichaels.lewisham.sch.uk and we will be happy to address any concerns you may have.
