Spring Term 2025 

English

Children will continue to develop their reading, writing, phonics and grammar and spelling skills by using different texts to inspire them to write using different writing genres. Children will describe characters and settings and write from a viewpoint, using the text “The Great Kapok Tree” by Lynne Cherry as a starting point. They will use other books and their Chrome books, to find out about conservation and learn about persuasive writing by writing persuasive letters to major companies to save this unique and irreplaceable environmental biome. They will also use non-fiction texts and the internet, to research a rainforest animal and write a non-chronological report about it. Children will also investigate kennings and use this poetic genre to write their own kennings.

Grammar

This term Year 3 children will be recognising and using grammatical terms to revise the components of a sentence, for example, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, collective nouns and common nouns, as well as capital letters and full stops. They will explore prefixes and suffixes and how they affect the meaning of a word. They will also identify and write sentences which include subordinating and coordinating conjunctions, adverbs and prepositions, as well as finding out about how to make sentences more interesting through the use of subordinate clauses and expanded noun phrases. Spellings and text work will relate closely to the aims of spelling and grammar in line with the curriculum.

Maths

The children will spend time consolidating their knowledge of addition and subtraction and the inverse relationship between them. They will secure knowledge of some written methods and will become more confident in methods for subtraction to solve more complex number sentences. They will be introduced to the inverse relationship between multiplication and division and begin to understand relevant written methods and how they can check their answers using the inverse operation. They will also be exploring metric measurements and learn how to convert units of measure to solve problems.  The children will find out about fractions of shape and number. They will continue to develop their arithmetic and fluency skills, particularly focussing on learning their times tables and related division facts, in readiness for the national times tables test in Year 4.

Computing

After revisiting the importance of E-Safety and staying safe online (see links with PSHE), our first topic is Desktop publishing. The children will develop graphic and presentation skills, consider careful choices of font size, colour and type to edit and improve documents. They will start to add text and images to create their own pieces of work using publishing software. The children will look at a range of page layouts, thinking carefully about the purpose of these and evaluate how and why publishing is used in the real world.

In the second half of the Spring term the children will develop their understanding branching databases and how to create one. They will use yes/no questions to gain an understanding of how to sort groups of objects. The children will create physical and on-screen branching databases and use an identification tool. They will also consider real-world applications for branching databases

History

We will explore the lives, achievements and the impact that some British historical heroes have had on our modern-day world including William Wilberforce, Mary Seacole, Emmeline Pankhurst and many more. They will be encouraged to review evidence and give their own opinions of these people and their work.

PE

We recognise the importance PE plays in the curriculum and we are committed to providing all children with opportunities to engage in Physical Education. Sessions aim to develop children's basic physical competencies, build confidence in their ability and build the foundations for a lifelong love of sport, physical activity and a healthy lifestyle. PE lessons encourage children to compete against themselves and others whilst being challenged to improve their physical, social, emotional and thinking skills. We are lucky enough to have specialised sports coaches to deliver some of our PE sessions, the children this term will be covering Ball skills, Netball, Handball and Dance.

RE

In the first half term the children will be asking “Is Scripture central to religion? The children will investigate how scripture is used and treated by different people. Using a variety of places of worship, they will act as detectives to find evidence of the place of scripture.

The second half term is all about Creation where the children will explore the stories of how the world was created from the point of view of some major world faiths.

Outdoor learning

In Outdoor learning this term we are going to be linking our learning to our Science topics. In our Forces topic we will be comparing how things move on different surfaces and we will be outside a lot during our plants topic, looking at plants in our school environment and planting seeds. We are hoping that the weather will be kind to us - we know it will be a lot of fun!

Geography

Geography is all about our Rainforest topic this term. Children will label maps to show the location of the world’s rainforest and research their habitats. They will explore how human beings are destroying the rainforests and what effect this has on the animals and humans who live there as well as on the rest of the world. They will look at the rate of destruction of the rainforests and how and why they should be preserved.

DT

This term the children will design and sew a purse made from Binca. First, they will investigate purses and money containers, then design one, decorating it with stitches such as running stitch and cross stitch. They will then evaluate their designs, saying what they liked about them and how they could make them better if they made them again.

PSHE

Using our PSHE resource One Decision, PSHE will support the work we do about helping children to stay safe online, focussing on children being able to identify possible dangers and consequences of talking to strangers online, knowing how to keep safe in online chatroom, being able to name the positives and negatives of using technology and understanding the difference between making safe and risky choices online, as well as who to tell if they feel uncomfortable. Following this, the children will think about what it means to be responsible. They will discuss stealing and its effects on society, understand the differences between borrowing and stealing and know why stealing is wrong. Later they focus on their feelings and emotions and relate this to grief. They may feel grief about moving house, the death of a pet, divorce or separation within the family, losing friends at school or people who are important to them. They will understand that people experience a range of emotions while grieving and that confusion, sadness and uncertainty is a normal human response. They will find ways to help themselves if they feel sad and discuss how to help someone with their sad feelings too.

Science

In the first half term, we will be exploring Forces and Magnets. We will be having lots of fun as this topic is very practical. The children will start by exploring forces and how they work. They will be comparing how things move on different surfaces, which we will do around the school, and then how objects need contact between them. They will then focus on magnetism and that magnetic forces can act at a distance. There will be many opportunities for the children to play with magnets and to see what materials are magnetic.

In the second half term we will be enjoying exploring plants. The children will go on a nature walk around the school grounds to observe plants in real life. They will identify and describe the functions of different parts of flowering plants such as the roots, stem, leaves, flowers and fruit. They will learn about seed dispersal and how plants reproduce. They will investigate the best conditions to grow plants, by setting up a fair test and watching how they develop and change as they grow and what favourable conditions look like. Our Science work will link really well with our Rainforest Geography topic and also Literacy, as there are many precious plants that can only be found in the rainforest and are used by scientists to discover new medicines, which help human beings.

Art

As artists, we will be linking our work with our Rainforest topic. The children will begin by mixing their own range of green paints and learn how to create shades and tints which will then be used later in the term. They will be exploring the work of a variety of artists including Henri Matisse, Henri Rousseau, Dean Russo, Oenone Hammersley and Julie Hamilton and using some of their styles and ideas to create their own rainforest inspired artwork.

Music

This term year 3 will look at music from Africa. They will learn an African song, and look at the instruments that are native to the people of different tribes. Through listening, the context and use of the music will be looked at, and different terminology will be learnt. As a result, students will perform, as a class, a piece of drumming based on African rhythms, before trying to compose their own rhythms.