What makes Year 3 different?

Year 3 is an important year as children transition into Key Stage 2. The children have been in education for a number of years and have a basic understanding of the school routing and what is expected of them.

In Key Stage 1, a lot of the children’s learning has been heavily supported by adults. In Year 3, we place a lot more emphasis on the children becoming independent and self-motivated learners, laying a foundation for the rest of their primary school life. They will begin to develop in their maturity and are expected to communicate in more detail about their learning. We will also be expecting children to be able to communicate difficulties with their social situations and take a greater sense of personal responsibility.

In Year 3, the children have the exciting opportunity to participate in a strings project. The children will be able to learn to play a stringed instrument such as the violin, viola and cello.

Writing in Year 3

Our English curriculum exposes the children to a range of high-quality texts through both reading and writing.

The writing is carefully planned so that the children can explore a range of different text types and gradually build up to writing their own versions, with careful attention towards audience and purpose. The children will also explore subject specific vocabulary and will have the opportunity to edit and improve their writing.

The main areas of grammar that will be taught this year include:

• expressing time, place and cause using conjunctions, prepositions and adverbs
• using paragraphs to group ideas
• using headings and subheadings
• using inverted commas to punctuate speech

Reading in Year 3

In Year 3, we will read a range of texts within lessons. We choose texts that will not only develop fluency comprehension skills but will continue to develop a love of reading.

By the end of the year, we aim for all children to be reading with more fluency and prosody. We are looking for children to be able to make links securely between texts they read at school and others they enjoy at home.