Literacy

Year 3 recently stepped into the wonderful world of Roald Dahl for a day of discovery and storytelling magic.

The children explored Dahl’s creative process, learning how he used his famous "Writing Hut" and yellow legal pads to craft his tales. We discovered how his real-life adventures—from his school days to his time as a pilot—provided the "sparky bits" of inspiration for classics like The BFG and Matilda.

We took our learning outside, touring Great Missenden to see the real-life landmarks that inspired his books. The day concluded with a peaceful moment of reflection at Dahl’s grave, where we followed the giant BFG footprints and thought about the lasting power of imagination.

It was a fantastic day that has left us all ready to write our own "gloriumptious" stories!

MATHS

This half-term, Year 3 have made significant progress in Maths. We began by solidifying our understanding of the four operations and mastering methods for solving one- and two-step word problems. Building on our prior knowledge of fractions, we successfully learned to add, subtract, and calculate fractions of amounts. Furthermore, we introduced decimals, focusing on counting and ordering to lay a strong foundation for future learning.

Topic 

Year 3 has had a blast exploring Volcanoes! From the Earth's crust to the cooling lava, the children have become true experts.

Key Highlights:

• The Science: We mastered the parts of a volcano—including the magma chamber, vent, and crater—and learned how tectonic plates shift to form them.

• The Eruptions: Our young scientists wowed us with live experiments, using chemical reactions to simulate high-pressure eruptions in the classroom!

• Amazing Projects: A huge thank you for the incredible home projects. The 3D models and posters on display are truly "lava-ly" and show fantastic effort.

Thank you for supporting your child's learning this term! 

The Year 3 Team

Year 3 Topic – Autumn 1: Our Local Area

This half term in Topic, we’ve been exploring our local area and learning all about different types of settlements. We discovered that Plaistow, where our school is located, is a town in the borough of Newham. We’ve also been learning how settlements are organised, from the smallest to the largest — starting with hamlets and moving up to villages, towns, cities, counties, and finally countries.

To help us understand this better, we created our own settlement hierarchy circles, showing how each type of settlement fits into the bigger picture.

As part of our geography skills, we’ve also been learning how to use 4-figure grid references to find locations on a map. This has helped us to become more confident in using maps and understanding where places are in relation to each other.

It’s been a great start to the year, and we’re looking forward to learning even more about our local area and the wider world around us!

Literacy

At the start of this term, Year 3 wrote a non-chronological report about the school dinners we have. We thought about the menu and the diverse options we can choose from, which reflects the multi-cultural nature of our school. We wrote about the benefits of eating healthy food and how this positively affects our learning. In our report, we mentioned how amazing our chefs are and how much we appreciate them.

In Year 3 this half-term, we have worked on properties of number as well as place value. The children learned how to apply their knowledge of place value to add and subtract 2- and 2-digit numbers, which also include tricky columns. There was also a focus on number facts, number bonds to 10, 20, 100 and using the inverse operation.

Before adding using the column methos, children used a number line to add.

They then moved onto using the dienes to show tricky columns and fair swaps. When the children became confident with adding using the dienes, the then went. Onto using the column method.  

Lastly, the children moved their learning on to word problems with helped them to incorporate problem solving and applying all the skills they have leant. 

Topic

This term in DT, we have been helping Willy Wonka create packaging for his new confectionary called Triple Strawberry Marshmallow Swirlies.

We first looked at the different packaging that our food comes in and we found that different food items were packaged to protect the things inside, show what was inside, have information about the product and some even had windows to show what the product actually looked like.

Our class also explored different nets that made 3D shapes to decide which ones were the strongest, easy to make and stackable. After a lot of testing and experimenting, we thought that best nets were the cube and cuboid.

Lastly, we made prototypes to send to the factory. Mr. Wonka sent us a design brief which we had to follow. They had to be attractive, protect his sweets and have a window so that the customers could see the sweets inside. Here are some we made. 

We've made significant progress in Math this term! We began by solidifying our understanding of the four operations and mastering methods for solving one and two-step word problems. We then picked up where we left off with fractions, successfully learning how to add, subtract, and find fractions of amounts. Additionally, we started counting in and ordering decimal numbers, laying a strong foundation for future learning.

In Literacy, the children have started reading a new book by a BAME author. Planet Omar by Zanib Mian. This book explores many themes such as diversity and inclusivity. The children have really enjoyed reading this book so far and many of them identify with the main character, a Muslim boy, called Omar, who is dealing with a huge change in his life. 

So far, the children have been using various reading skills such as prediction and inference to learn more about Omar and the kind of boy he is. 

To do this, we have looked at the front cover, the blurb and discussing Omar’s many likes and dislikes, which the children have had a lot of fun reading about.