Topic Overview
Gosforth Gets Green
Key Question?
How can I make a difference to Gosforth?
This term, we launch our exciting whole school curriculum topic: NE3 and our City. Across all year groups, children will be exploring the rich geography and history of our local area, deepening their understanding of the community we call home. As part of this journey, every child takes part in a ‘planning and decision making’ challenge—identifying a local issue or gap and proposing thoughtful solutions, whether imagined or actionable. Through this empowering task, we’re helping our young learners realise that although they may be small, their voices matter, their ideas count, and their opinions deserve to be heard.
Geography & History
We will be becoming young leaders and building our planning and decision making skills so that we can make a positive change to Gosforth. We will be walking in our local area and looking at the physical and human features in Gosforth to help us. Following this walk, children will sketch maps of their local area identifying features and adding these to their maps as well as using four figure grid references. Children will be starting to think in more detail about the exact ways they could make a difference to our local area. We look forward to sharing these ideas with you as they progress.
If anyone has any local links to the community, the children would enjoy using these contacts to gain a deeper understanding of the community we live in. Please get in touch with the Year 3 team.
Key Vocabulary:
- Sketch maps
- Digital mapping
- Co-ordinates
- Environment
English
We will kick-start Year 3 by writing informal letters to our new teachers. We will then be using our inference skills to predict how the stories might unfold and develop. Children will be using their imagination and descriptive vocabulary based on visual cues.
As part of our No Outsiders topic, we will be exploring characterisation, feelings and behaviour by the thought-provoking book ‘Beegu.’ Pupils will be introduced to fronted adverbials and incorporate them into their very own adventure stories!
Guided Reading and comprehension / spelling sessions will take place each week; children will complete a series of activities and tasks to support with the acquisition and development of reading skills; we will also be introducing class novels. Spelling homework will be sent home weekly. Please also read and sign reading diaries.
Key Vocabulary:
- Adjectives
- Punctuation
- Fronted Adverbials
- Homophones
Maths
This half term our main focus will centre around the children developing their reasoning and problem-solving skills; these strategies will be woven into all strands of mathematics. The children will continue to develop their understanding of place value and partition three-digit numbers into multiples of 100, 10 and 1.
They will derive and recall all addition and subtraction facts for each number to 20 and look at pairs of numbers which total 100. Children will be encouraged to add and subtract mentally combinations of one- and two-digit numbers. Children will be taught to recall multiplication and division facts for multiplication tables for 3,4 and 8. Following this, they will begin to solve multiplication problems.
Children will begin to convert, estimate, compare and calculate units of measure. Geometric shapes will be compared and classified including quadrilaterals and triangles.
Websites: Please log into Times Table Rock Stars - your log ins have been sent home
Key Vocabulary:
- Place value
- Hundreds, tens and ones
- More than
- Less than
- Equal to
Science
This half term the children will use a range of resources, including ICT, to research Healthy Lifestyles. They will label the skeleton and learn about the function of some of the bones. The children will learn how bones and muscles help us move and will conduct an investigation to measure the effect of exercise on the body by measuring pulse rate. They will have the opportunity to learn about different food groups and will construct their own food pyramid.
Key Vocabulary
- Nutrition
- Vertebrates
- Exoskeleton
- Endoskeleton
- Hydrostatic skeleton
Computing
During computing, children will begin the year learning about the importance of E Safety. They will learn how to be safe, respectful and responsible when online in order for them to be good digital citizens. Plus, children will use their coding skills using the app, Scratch.
Art and Design Technology
Each half term the children will have a week dedicated to art and/or DT.
Art: This half term, we will be reflecting on our journey as an artist at Archibald. We will recap previous artists studied along with key skills learned from Reception to Year 2.
Design Technology: In DT, we will be planning, designing and making our very own cushion! We will be using cross stitch to join two pieces of fabric together. We will also be using cross stitch, applique and reverse applique to decorate our cushions.
PE
This half term, Children will enjoy weekly sessions of outdoor PE where they will develop agility, balance and coordination through a series of non-contact games. They will also play a number of games that will help build their fundamentals and also challenge their ball skills.
PSHE and Religious Education
PSHE
Our big questions this half term is What makes a family? And What can we do about bullying? They will explore relationships by considering different families, friendships and how we build safe relationships whilst respecting ourselves and others. A No Outsiders book will be discussed with the children called ‘This is our house’ and we will be discussing different behaviours and inclusivity.
Religious Education
This half term, children will build on their previous knowledge of other religions and will be looking at signs and symbols in different religions and understanding the difference between literal and non-literal meanings.
Our Values
Please Instagram us @archibald_1st if you see your child being #AFSCurious #AFSCaring #AFSCreative or #AFSCourageous
If you would like any further details about this half term's curriculum, please speak to your child's teacher.