Welcome to Year 3

We are delighted to begin the new academic year with you all and can't wait to get to know you as individuals and class groups. We have wonderful topics and exciting learning set throughout the entire year!

Meet the Team for

2023-24

PE Uniform days:

Monday: Outdoor P.E

Wednesday: Indoor P.E

Important Dates

Wednesday 6th September at 2:45- Welcome meeting and meet the teacher

Friday 8th December at 9am - Parent workshop come and join your children to find out about their Talk for Writing journey 

Friday 15th December 9-9.45am - PROUD Assembly in the School Hall

Monday 25^th March 3:00-3:20 - Showcase event for Y3 parents

Friday 10th May Year 3 trip to Attenborough Nature Reserve 

Tuesday 21st May 9am - Parent workshop come and find out how to support your child with their spellings. 

Wednesday 10th July - Year 3 camp at school  

Reading

Year 3 children will all have a colour banded reading book which is appropriate for their level as well as a star reading book that is a book they can read for pleasure.  Please support us by reading and discussing their books at home.  There is an additional sheet stuck in diaries explaining the goals and how to help your child appropriate to the book colour they are on.

Maths

Each child has a Times Table Rock Star account and login details are stuck in diaries.  This can be accessed from home so please encourage your child to have fun and practise their times tables.  Inside diaries there is a copy of the times tables up to 12x and a 'key instant recall facts' (KIRFs).  Each half term, a KIRF will be focussed on.  Autumn 1's focus is ‘I know addition and subtraction facts to 50’.

Half Term Creative Homework Project

Every half term, we set a creative topic homework project linked to the current topic.  It's always a favourite time of the term, when we share these generally in the last week before we break up.

Our new topic this half term is...

It's a wonderful Life

Take a look at the knowledge organiser below to get a taste of what we will be learning about:

Week 2

Science

This week we have been finding out more about the fascinating human body. After learning about the skeleton, we have now studied muscles and how they work. Children have learnt how pairs of muscles work together, how they contract and relax and how they are joined with tendons. We even learnt that the human body has over 600 muscles! The children had fun creating a model to experience how muscles move.

Literacy

We have continued with our story, The Selfish Crocodile and will be writing our own descriptive stories soon! I have attached the story below to share at home.

The Selfish Crocodile By Faustin Charles Illustrated By Michael Terry (youtube.com)

Reading

We have been busy listening to the children read - we are so proud of how well the children are doing. Keep up your hard work and practise at home, it really makes such a difference!

Maths

We have spent lots of time since January learning our times tables. This week, the children have been testing their skills this on Times Tables Rockstars. A child in class 8 has earned 22,000 points- amazing! 

Well done for an amazing week, year 3!

Week 1 - Wow Day

This week started with a bang! During our wow day we looked at the artist Georgia O'Keeffe who was inspired by nature and looked closely at flowers. Interestingly, she wanted to become an artist from the age of 12! Some of our children love to do art work too, take a look at their zoomed in sketches of flowers, they are simply magical! Also, we started an experiment to find out the best conditions to grow plants so we can let Que gardens know. This experiment was inspired by our research on Charles Darwin, one of the best scientists! Look out for updates about the plants over the next couple of weeks.      

Our new topic for Spring 2 is ...

'What makes Britain great'

Take a look at the knowledge organiser below to get a taste of what we will be learning about:

Week 6

Parent's Evening

Thank you to all who attended Parent's evening this week. Having your support makes a huge difference to your child's education. It was lovely to share their successes with you to see your proud responses to their hard work this year. 

OPAL Play

This week we were lucky enough to have an afternoon dedicated to OPAL play. All children from F2 - Year 6 engaged in extended play together. It was fantastic to see such imagination, communication and team work from the children. Some of the incredible play I saw involved a playground -long ball run, forts, boats and even a chip shop! We are proud to provide children with the opportunity for quality, extended play,

Farewell, Gail!

This week we also said goodbye to Gail, who has been a part of the Old Basford team for 35 years! We are hugely grateful for her hard work and appreciate all that she has done for thousands of local children throughout that time. We wish her the happiest of retirements and the very best for her new adventure. It was magical to hear the children singing some of her favourite songs in our farewell assembly this week. Thank you, Gail.

Thank you

It was lovely to see so many of you this week for our parent showcase event and our PROUD assembly, the children really do love to share their work with you!

Showing off our work!

Take a look at some of our double page spreads, they are simply incredible!

Week 5 

This week we traveled West to Wales, thankfully it wasn't too wet! We got to climb Snowdon, engage in lots of research about human and physical features including bridges, castles and rivers.  Furthermore, we went fact finding around the playground, using maps and coordinates to locate lots of fascinating puffin facts, the children were incredible!    

Week 4 

This week we went on a coach trip down South to Cornwall, checking out the top 6 things to do! Firstly, we took part in adventure sports including surfing and kayaking, following that we went to view Barbara Hepworth's art work in The Tate museum. We even explored the Eden project and watched an outdoor show at the Minack Theatre that is carved in the cliffs. It was cold but the hot chocolate and scenery were incredible. Ask your children what they enjoyed doing best!

Week 3

On our journey this week we have visited the East coast of England, stopping off in Lincoln, Great Yarmouth and Cambridge. The children were incredible at finding out the key facts about a variety of landmarks in these places. A punt along the River Cam, a visit to the Cathedral or even a donkey ride in Great Yarmouth.

Team this with world book day, they really have had an amazing week!

In maths we are learning all about fractions, see if they can negotiate with you when deciding on what fraction of the pizza, cake or even chocolate bar they would like. However, they will tell you they can't have too much food as we have been learning about balancing our food and exercise in jigsaw.  

Spring 2 - Week 2

What a fantastic start to our topic 'What Makes Britain Great?'. The children have been exploring the Northern counties and Cities of Britain. We have visited Sheffield, Whitby, Newcastle and beautiful Cumbria. We have been fortunate enough to have first-hand experienced shared by Mrs Thomas and Mrs Smyth - so if you hear any Northern dialects in your home, you know where they've heard it! The children have been using directional language, as well as using maps to identify towns, cities, rivers, mountains and coastlines. We are looking forward to finding out more about the East Midlands and East of England next week. 

Homework has been sent home today, we are looking forward to finding out more about your own families traditions, experiences and sharing these with the children.

Spring 2  - Week 1

We kicked off our week with a lovely online visit from the author Stephen Pass, where we enjoyed a whole morning's workshop learning how to be an author. We are also learning all about Shakespeare over the next week and we started off with some orienteering, gathering facts about the man himself! Take a look at some photos below:

Spellings

Each week the children will be given ten spellings, engaging in daily practice using a range of fun and helpful activities. You can support them to practise their weekly spellings as well as the common exception words that you will find stuck in their diaries.

Practising their spellings little and often, making it fun is key to helping your children to become confident and successful spellers.

As a team, we can help the children to become super spellers. 

Thank you for your support.

Please take a look at the spellings for this half term (see below).

Spellings for Spring 2 - Take a look at the overview attached:

Welcome Year Three

Dear Year 3, 

We want to extend you all a huge welcome, we cannot wait to see your smiling faces on Monday morning.  Come and step inside, take a ride on the Year 3 train!  You are about to embark on an incredible journey, where you may gasp with excitement, giggle uncontrollably and make memories that will hopefully last a life time. Are you ready? Of course you are, as we are here to help you on your Year 3 journey.  

From

Mrs Kelly, Mrs Whitehead, Mrs Evans and Miss Watkins

Year 3 Literacy Workshop

Take a look at the parent workshop slides attached the children were really in their element and loved having you there! Take a look at a few of their comments following the workshop below. Thank you for your support. If you want any further help or guidance we are always available to help.

From the Year 3 team 

Feedback from the Children after the Year 3 Parent and Carer Workshop

Jenson – “We got to do writing and different sentence starters.”

Esmae- “I liked if you didn’t have a parent you could sit with a different parent and you got to know them.”

K- “Writing new words and telling my grown-ups, what we’ve been doing in class.”

Jasmine- “I also liked how you got to tell our parents what we have been learning about.”

Isabella- “I liked it because I got to write a story.”

Poppy- “I liked it because I got to see my mum and dad and sit with friends.”

Zoraiz- “I like it because see our family, our family helps us.”

Hector- “I like how we got to show our writing and work.”

Aron- “In my opinion I liked doing the story and siting next to our parents.”

Finlay- “I like that you got to do handwriting and got to write loads.”

Our Topic for this half term is...

Super Science

We will discover magnetism and find out all about light. Amazingly, we will even get to work with some real life scientists!

Week 6

This week has been invention week! Thank you for all of the items that were sent in, the children had so much fun becoming little inventors. They designed, created a prototype and then wrote a text explaining how their invention works. It was lovely to see so much creativity! Take a look at them in action:

Week 5

This week we have been experimenting with magnets and investigating how magnets repel and attract. We used games to explore and investigate. Take a look at some of the children in action.

Shared reading spot light...

This week we have been doing something called 'Reader's Theatre' and we have been text marking and planning our performance. We have been working on our tone, pace and volume alongside working as a team. Take a look at our video clip below. 

Week 4 

This week we have been learning all about algorithms and how to program a sprite to move using simple commands on the ipads. The children had lots of fun with this and even figured out how to add sound to their algorithms. We also had some scientists come and visit from Nottingham University. They will be working with the children every week over the next few weeks.

Week 3- Magnet Fun

This week we have been having lots of fun exploring magnets, investigating what materials are magnetic and non-magnetic and asking our own questions. This half term we will increase our football skills and improving our gymnastic techniques. Excitedly, Year 3 have designed questions to ask a Christian, found out about the five daily Muslim prayers and designed their own Muslim prayer mat. We love R.E!

Week 2 

We kicked off our brand new topic with an exciting wow day. All the children invented their very own scribble-bot. They were very proud of their inventions and showed some unbelievable team-work and resilience. Well done Year 3!

Week 3

This week we have been learning about Muslim Prayer in Religious Education. The children amazed with their interest and questioning. We are also privileged to have some Muslim children in our class who were happy to talk about their experience of being a Muslim. We even had someone share their experience of visiting Mecca!

Well done for your respect and curiosity year 3!

Please see some of our prayer mat designs below. Can you spot the Arabic writing? This reads 'Al Mali' (The King). 

Magnificent Magnets!

Our study of magnets continues, this week we learnt about magnetic force, north and south poles and how they attract and repel. The children also began making their very own magnetic game!

Here is our first completed game - more will be uploaded over the coming weeks. The children are very excited to have an opportunity to play their games together.

Our Topic for this half term is...

Extreme Earth 

Bring your curiosity, your wonder and be prepared to be fascinated by the world’s extremities.

Extreme Earth Homework

Week 7 - Celebrations and fun

The children have been telling the Christmas story in R.E, enjoying making party hats and not forgetting the main event...the Christmas PARTY! 

12 days of Christmas

On the _____ day of Christmas, Old Basford gave to me

A volcano erupting loudly.

Two best friends -2 hold hands and wave

Three grumpy trolls – hold up troll masks

Four rugby tackles – rugby poses

Five proud rules - point

Six rulers a lining – hold rulers up

Seven children singing – signs

Eight teachers marking – hold a stack of books and pull a face

Nine amigos dancing – dance!

Ten fossil hunters – magnifying glasses

Eleven musicians playing – glockenspiels

Twelve grazed knees – paper towels

Week 6

This week we have been rounding up our Extreme Earth topic. We produced some beautiful double page spreads all about what we have learnt. We also wrote our very own information text all about mythical creatures. In dance, we had our final session on representing severe weather conditions through movement, this week it was tornadoes! Take a look at how we got on.

Week 5 - Fossil formation

The children have been learning all about how fossils are formed, they continue to amaze us with their questions, passion and retention of knowledge.   

Week 4 - Volcano Art

This week the children have completed their art project with Mrs Maker. They have created beautiful art using ink to represent lava. 

Well done for your hard work, we think they look fantastic!

Week 3  - The Earth around us...

This week we have been learning all about the layers of soil beneath us and how it is formed. We have also been discovering Tsunamis and creating dance routines linked to their movements. This week was also the end of our writing unit, so we produced some wonderful descriptive stories based on 'The Stone Trolls'. 

Week 2 Tremors... 

We have had an another fantastic week finding out all about earthquakes, we have had a go at recreating the various plate boundaries, making up dance sequences to represent the different severity of earthquakes and the destruction they can cause.  

We have been so impressed with the children's creativity and confidence this week, what super stars!  

Week 1 Wow...

We have had an amazing start to our half term! This week, the children have been learning about volcanoes. Ask your child what they have learned about tectonic plates, hot spots and the inside of a volcano. We have even built volcanoes and watched them explode!

We have been so impressed with the children's attitude and hard work this week - Keep it up year 3! 

All children will now have this half term's spellings in their diary. Please encourage them to practise these at home. Next week we will begin Week 2.

Remember - it is Odd sock day (Monday 13th Nov) and Children in Need (Fri 17th Nov).

Thank you for your continued support.

Our Topic for this half term is...

Stone Age to the Iron Age

Do you love history? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to take a trip back in time? If you're intrigued, then make sure you are the first in line for all our exciting events. The Year 3 team will transport you into the past, trust us you don't want to miss it!

Year 3 Topic Homework

Your child should now have their half termly topic homework stuck into their diary, but a copy can also be found below for your reference.

Thank you,

The Year 3 Team

Week 6: 9.10.23

This week we have started to share our amazing homework with each other, what a talented bunch of children we have! 

Other highlights from this week include; learning to perform a Stone Age poem, finding out about Sacra Brae and reminding ourselves about all the wonderful things we have learnt. Team this with engaging in Black History month, where we sang John Legends thought provoking song 'Glory' which highlights inspirational legends like Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela.  

Black History Month

Class 8 have enriched their learning of Black History Month through songs, assemblies, stories, history and art. To demonstrate their own beliefs around equality, they have created some posters to share their message with others.

Week 5: 2.10.23

This week we are learning all about Stonehenge. The children have been researching, painting, drawing and even building their own mini models. Take a look at some of our pictures of them in action.

Week 4: 25.09.23

Today was the first stage of creating our own stone age dwellings. The children worked collaboratively to create structures that would stand. There was some wonderful team work going on and some tough decision making. We also managed to get outside to do some PE in the sunshine, enjoying practising our chest passes and shooting in basketball.

Week 3: 18.9.23

This week we have been continuing with our Stone Age to Iron Age topic. The children enjoyed looking at dwellings and artifacts from those eras. They produced some lovely sketches of the artifacts and we have had a virtual trip the the Museum of London!

Week 2: 11.9.23

This week we have been introducing the children to our new topic: stone age to iron age. We have  enjoyed a WOW day where we went on an archaeological dig and unearthed some rather interesting artefacts! We also enjoyed some orienteering becoming speleologists (cave investigators), researching cave drawings. The children even created their own cave drawings using traditional symbols and oil pastels. Overall, a great day was had by all!

Week 1: 4.9.23

This week we have been getting to know each other, finding out about our likes, dislikes and dreams for this year and beyond. Take a look at one of the team building exercises below, ask your children to share the goal and the rule we had to follow. We had so much fun!