Ashurst Primary School

Year 3 class 

'Excellence Everyday'

'Learn, Live, Laugh and Love Ashurst'

Learn to be inspiring and make a difference to this world, we know how amazing you are,

Live with understanding and compassion for others, knowing we are all different and special in a community where equality stands tall,

Laugh and listen to the enjoyment of learning and excitement of everyone celebrating their achievements,

Love Ashurst, our special school and the hub of supportive staff, parents and children who aim high to be the best they can be.

 About the Year 3 class 

Staff: Miss Fildes, Miss A. Forshaw and Mrs. E. Kempster

Year 3 is an exciting year as the children learn how to be more independent and practice skills to encourage independent learning such as researching on the internet and using books and dictionaries. They are encouraged to solve problems for themselves and rely less on support for day to day tasks. Presentation and handwriting is very important and as the children move into KS2 they learn how important it is to present their work well. Most children will earn their pen by the end of year 3 – but this can only be achieved once they are joining their writing, spelling accurately and presenting their work neatly.

Learning Environment 

We have a safe, caring learning environment where children’s individual talents and achievements are recognised and built upon. Mental health and well-being are high priority in Year 3.  We work hard to support the children to be happy and free from worry and anxieties.  We promote positive self-talk and resilience and guide children through any difficulties they face.  

What do we learn?

We have daily Maths and English/SPaG lessons.  We also have reading lessons to help us work on year group reading objectives.  In Maths, we use a mastery approach to enable all children to gain a deep understanding of the unit of work. The activities we complete range from practical to written in order to cater for the different learning needs of the children.  

We learn about lots of exciting topics such as the Stone Age, Animals and Humans, Ancient Egypt, Computer Coding, Painting and Sculpture, Spanish, PE, playing the Glockenspiel and different Religions. Click on the Long Term Plan and Topic Web documents for more information on the exciting learning journey that takes place each half term.

Important things to remember:

• Registration takes place promptly at 8:50am and the school day ends at 3:15pm - your child will enter and leave from the glass door, to the left of the main entrance.
• Please provide a healthy snack for your child to eat at 10:25am playtime. Lunch will be at 12:00pm.
• Each child can have their own water bottle on their desk, please provide these with their name on.
• PE for this year is on a TUESDAY and THURSDAY, please ensure that your child comes into school wearing their PE Kit on these days. Children will continue to come into school in PE kits on their days for PE.  On these days children must wear the following PE uniform: Black jogging bottoms or black sports leggings, white PE tops , black hoody tops . Or a Summer PE kit : red shorts and the white PE top.
• Weekly homework will be set on a Friday and needs to be completed by the following Friday. This will usually consist of Math's, Spellings, SPAG.com (online), and Reading Plus (online)  but may at times relate to other subjects. 
• We will begin to send home reading books out as soon as we have read with your child.  Your child will select a new home reading book from the school library when they need to change it.  We encourage the children to read at home every night. This is part of the homework expectations and we appreciate your support with this. Your child has their own personal reading record for you to record their reading journey. We expect these to be completed every time your child reads their school book. 
• Topic webs will be uploaded onto this class page in the first week of each half term. Topic webs will inform you of the learning taking place that half term, you may wish to discuss key learning with your child at home. 
• Children are asked not to bring any other personal items into school; we will provide all necessary stationery.
• And finally, we will continue to use SEESAW to facilitate additional homework tasks. This will enable staff to set work, monitor work and provide feedback online.  

Year 3 Long Term Plan 2022-2023

Year 3 Topic Webs

Take a look at our wonderful learning in 2022-2023

Maths

We now have a deep understanding of the place value of 2 and 3 digit numbers. Here we are using manipulatives to represent the numbers. 

English

 One of our Talk 4 Writing stories was 'The Stone Trolls', an exciting warning story in the village of Vik, set in Iceland. Take a look at our story map, that helps us to imitate the story, and a fantastic, invented warning story written by a talented girl in our class.

Science

We have been learning about 'Animals including Humans' in science, we definitely have some future doctors and vets in year 3. Here the children have led their own experiment to investigate if the length of your leg can make you jump higher. 

Spanish

 To practise numbers in Spanish, we played a fun game of bingo....no English words used!

Music

 There are certainly musicians amongst us - we hope you enjoy us singing 'Let Your Spirit Fly'. We have been learning how to play the glockenspiel and how to listen to and appraise music.

Art

 We designed and created our own sculptures based on two artists that we had been studying, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. 

History 

We thoroughly immersed ourselves into Stone Age life on our trip to Tatton Park.

Christmas 2022

We have had so much fun over the Christmas period - we made cards and crafts, performed a carol concert to our parents and carers, watched a pantomime, made reindeer food to sell at our Christmas Fayre and so much more.

Dance

In PE we are focusing on dance, this improvisation is all about Witches and Wizards. The children were asked to think of how witches and wizards act and move, then they practiced and performed the sequence. We think you will agree...it is magical!

Science Week Competition

 To help celebrate the national initiative, British Science Week, Mrs Hunter ran an art competition, along with five other schools in the St Helens borough. The theme for this competition was “Planets”. Children were asked to complete a painting, drawing, model or digital image. The winning 3 entries from Ashurst Primary will be picked by our pupil Science
Ambassadors and receive a gift voucher. We will also be displaying the winning 3 entries along with the other winning entries from other schools in a local exhibition.

I am sure that you will agree that the Year 3 entries are "out of this world"!!

Design and Technology

Today, we looked at how to cut and fold shapes to make them 3D. We looked at shapes that make up the parts of the castle and even designed our own miniature castle.

World Book Day

 As you can see, Year 3 children made a tremendous effort when dressing up for World Book Day. We watched a live lesson by author Helen Rutter who wrote The Boy Who Made Everyone Laugh. We also entered two competitions, one was designing a World Book Day token and the other was inventing a new trick for The Twits.

Spanish

 This Spanish alphabet song was a great hit in our parents/carers assembly....so much so, that the children had to perform an encore. 

History

After learning about the Bronze Age and Iron Age, we created our own roundhouses from a template. We found out that the walls were made from wattle and daub (interwoven sticks covered in a mixture of clay, dung and straw). In the centre of a roundhouse was a fire which was used for cooking, warmth and light.

Science

 As part of our 'Forces and Magnets' topic we investigated friction of materials by seeing how a toy car moved on it.

Competition Winners 

 Isla won a competition set by Heinz and the prize was fantastic. A number of children from Year 3 were invited to cook with Heinz chef's. They made a variety of recipes to eat in school, all using Heinz beans. They even got to make Miss Fildes a meal for her tea, she said it was scrumptious.

Coronation Street Party

What an afternoon we had in Year 3!! We had so much fun singing, chatting and eating tasty treats together whilst celebrating the Coronation of King Charles III. We truly have had the royal treatment.

Science - What do plants need to grow?

We wanted to test the facts that we had learnt about 'what a plant needs to grow'. We decided to carry out an experiment which involved observing plants in different scenarios:

1 -  Plants received light, heat and water (on the window ledge)  

2 - Plants received light and heat, not watered.

3 - Plants were in a dark, cold cupboard—received water

We were right - look at our results!

Settling in to our new classroom

We have settled in to our new classroom so quickly. We are loving the relaxing environment and our working walls to support us with our learning and well being.