Year 3 | Halfway Junior School

Welcome to Year 3

Life in Year 3

Year 3 is a very exciting year as it is the year that children join our school. In the first term, we make sure that we spend time getting to know each individual child; both academically, but more importantly, personally. We love to find out about their interests, passions and any talents that they may have!

Becoming independent is a key focus of the first few weeks in year 3. We spend time with the children ensuring that they get to know the school, staff, rules, routines and behaviours that we expect from them. They are encouraged to take ownership of their learning and we work hard with them over the year to ensure that they become independent and self-reflective learners. Our curriculum serves to ensure pupils have embeded the learning from KS1 in preparation for the challenges, depth and complexity of key stage 2 whilst providing opportunities to develop more sophisticate ways of thinking.

For more specific details about the transition into year 3, please see our transition page.

Staff

Miss Lund - Class Teacher

Mr Owen- Class Teacher (Senior Leader)

Miss Marklew - Class Teacher and SENDco

Mrs Pegg- Teaching assistant

Mrs Kay- Teaching Assistant

Learning in Year 3

Key Stage 2 Ready

Success within the challenges of KS2 rest firmly on the shoulders of what's gone before. Foundational knowledge and basic skills require a level of fluency and autonomy before they can be applied to the greater complexity of the Key Stage 2 curriculum. Year 3 is the 'gateway' to more complex learning, and therefore focuses on ensuring Key Stage 1 knowledge, skills and understanding is sufficiently fluent before moving into new and complex learning. The Autumn term in year 3 is a key time at school, where pupils not only begin in a new setting, but work to prepare themslves for the exciting opportunities within the Junior School curriculum

Please see the more detailed strategy at the bottom of the page: Foundations for Success at Halfway Juniors.

English

Reading

In reading, as the children become more fluent in decoding words, there is a focus more towards comprehension and interracting with more complex texts. We encourage children to be wide and active readers, and with support, they learn to respond to reading and justify their views about what they have read. Our daily reading lessons cover a range of reading skills which enable children to have a deeper understanding of the text. We are keen for our children to read for pleasure and enjoy a wide variety of reading through studying both fiction and non-fiction texts, including an engaging book study each term.

Writing

In writing, children consolidate their writing skills and grammatical basics, use of vocabulary and their grasp of sentence structure through a carefully planned teaching sequence for writing. This includes spending time immersing pupils in the transcriptional, grammatical and compositional elements of writing. Writing is linked to our topics wherever possible and we teach children to write effectively for a range of purposes across the curriculum, ensuring coherence and organisation within their written pieces.

Maths

In maths, we aim to develop our understanding of whole numbers up to 1000, using a range of physical resources and pictorial representations to help us to explore, compare and order numbers. We extend our knowledge of times tables to include the 3s, 4s and 8, as well as counting in 50s. We believe that it is vital for children to increase their confidence when working mentally with smaller numbers, only moving on to written methods for the four operations when pupils are conceptually secure. Our maths lessons are chunked into shorter sessions throughout the day to provide an opportunity to explore fundamental ideas, develop procedural fluency, and develop a strong grasp of number structures, patterns and relationships.

Curriculum Content