Year 3

Welcome to Year 3!

Below you will find information about our current projects that we are learning about. We hope you will find the information helpful. Check out the knowledge organisers which include all of the important aspects of our learning this term!

Autumn 1:

Hop on the bus and take a trip downtown, where the lights are bright, and every street has a story to tell.

This half term, we’ll visit our local town to look at important buildings. We’ll photograph urban art including graffiti, murals and statues. At school, we’ll write an information leaflet about our town. Using digital mapping tools, we’ll identify the streets and buildings that we saw. We’ll investigate cities around the world and find out how they’ve changed over time. We’ll have questions for you about where you work or places you often visit, and we’ll present the data we have collected. As part of our design work, we’ll build a model urban landscape, create dramatic light effects and find out how light is used to keep people safe at night.

Autumn 2:

In the Rocks, Relics and Rumbles project, your child will learn about the different layers of the Earth, including plate tectonics and their potential effects on the Earth's surface. They will investigate different types of rock to learn about their uses and properties. They will also investigate soil and fossils, including learning about the work of Mary Anning. They will have the opportunity to use maps to learn about the lines of latitude and longitude and a compass to learn about the cardinal and intercardinal points. They will also learn about volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis and the long and short-term consequences that these can have.

Spring 1:

Tuck in and enjoy a yummy journey of discovery, tasting fantastic fruits, venerable vegetables and tantalizing treats. Work up an appetite with delicious stories about food, have fun with a vegetable orchestra or become a fruity sculptor. Find exciting recipes to read – and write your own, too. Then get busy in the kitchen, making tasty dishes from across the world and discover how good food helps you grow fit and strong. Be a whizz and create your own scrumdiddlyumptious smoothie for Squeezy Joe and his team of fruity friends. And here’s food for thought – if you are what you eat, what does that make you?

Spring 2: 

There are so many heroes and villains in the world – who would you like to know more about? Is it someone from the past or the present? Is your hero a famous person or someone you know, like a nurse or a firefighter?

Over this term we will meet many heroes along the way, as well as some villains, to explore their personalities and their good (or bad) deeds along the way. We will explore many different fairy tales, being immersed in different fairytale endings before writing our own. Along the way we will create our own heroes and villains using our newly gained knowledge about what makes a perfect example of each. Throughout the journey, we will also delve into the past as historians to find out and create profiles about different heroes. 

Summer 1:

It’s time to take a walk on the wild side!

This half term, we’ll visit Marwell Zoo to find out lots about different predators, what they look like and what they eat. We’ll also program a toy to move across a grid – will it be caught by a predator? We’ll learn about the different parts of a plant and how some plants are predators! From our investigations about the human skeleton, we’ll find out how muscles make the bones move. We’ll investigate food chains and learn about how animals find their food. Using the internet, we’ll research different predators and find out about them. 

At the end of the project, we’ll create a range of animal fact presentations, make animal collages and learn about the interesting (and disgusting) world of parasites!

Summer 2:

Let’s discover a fantastical world of mythical creatures and heroes!

This half term, we’ll learn about Apollo and the other gods who reign from Mount Olympus and create a 3-D head of our favourite god or goddess. We’ll explore the land of Greece, where the sun scorches the wings of Icarus and Helen of Troy inspires the launch of a thousand ships. In PE, we’ll take part in athletics and practise synchronised battle movements just like the ancient Greeks. Using historical source materials, we’ll research daily life in ancient Greece. We’ll write diaries as Daedalus or Icarus and learn about epic battles. We’ll read Theseus and the Minotaur and create amazing labyrinths, using positional language to guide others around the maze. On maps of Greece, we’ll plot the journeys made by ancient Greek characters.