Welcome to Birch class' webpage

I am thrilled to welcome you to Birch class' webpage where you can find all of the information about our class.

Miss Dyball is the class teacher and our Learning Support Assisstants are Mrs Wightman, Mrs Telford and Miss Fulcher. 

Spellings

Children are given 10 spellings to practice every week. They will recieve these on a Friday and will be tested the following Friday. It is an expectation that children practice these throughout the week at home, this will support their success in their spelling tests and writing. 

PE

Our PE day is Monday, children must come into school in their PE kits. Please ensure children were appropriate PE clothes, please see our 'Uniform' page under key information for details. All earings must be removed and long hair must be tied up.

Reading

Children are expected to be reading daily, ten minutes each day. If children read a book at home, they can log in to their Accelerate Reader account and take a quiz on their book at home. Children can take a library book home on a Friday, provided they have returned their book from the previous week.

Autumn Term

Talk for Writing

During Autumn Term 1, Birch class explored The Day the Crayons Quit in Talk for Writing, where children wrote an exciting story based on a conflict and resolution plot. During this unit, children developed their writing skills, learning how to use rhetorical questions, varied sentence lengths and a range of conjunctions to communicate how their character is feeling. 

In Autumn 2, we explore persuasive writing in the form of an advert. The children had the opportunity to design their own product to write a persuasive advert about. During this unit, children developed their use of persuasive language, including strong and emotive adjectives, imperative verbs and rhetorical questions. 

Maths

In Autumn Term 1, the children developed their place value knowledge, introducing hundreds into their knowledge of tens and ones. We explored this with the use of manipulatives and pictoral exmaples of resources. We then moved on to exploring addition and subtraction, introducing and developing our understanding of the formal column method for both addition and subtraction. 

In Autumn 2, the children completed their addition and subtraction unit, solidifying their understanding of formal methods. We then moved onto multiplication and division. During this unit, children developed their understanding of the 3, 4 and 8 timestables as well as grouping and sharing. 

We began by recapping our 2, 5 and 10 times tables before moving onto our 3, 4 and 8s. These are the times tables year 3 children should be secure in by the end of year 3. You can support your child by using timestable rockstars three times a week for ten minutes each. 

Talk for Reading

We use the scheme Talk for Reading for our reading and comprehension. During Autumn Term 1, we start our year by exploring the picture book Window by Jeannie Baker. This book took the children on a journey through a suburb of Sydney, exploring the theme of environmentalism.

In Autumn 2, we read Charlotte's Web, focusing on understanding the different characters and how different language choices can impact hoe a character is portrayed. We also started to retrieve evidence from the text to support out ideas and inferences. 

Topic

Who were the Greatest Builders?

During Autumn Term 1, the children explored the settlements, clothes, tools and jewlellry of the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. Children loved discussing how life changed across the ages, how they adapted to their environments and why they changed from being hunter-gatherers to living in farming communities and permenant settlements. We also investigated a range of rocks and their properties, discussing which would make an effective tool. We then moved onto investigating fossils and the process of fossilisation. 

In Autumn 2, we developed out knowledge of fossils and moved onto exploring what soil is made from and how it is formed. In geography, we explored the countries and cities which make up the United Kingdom, identifies human and physical features on a map. We also drew our own land use maps and learned how to use keys to show the features of an area on a map. 

Suggested Reading Books for Year 3

Spring Term

Talk for Writing

During Spring term, we explored the tale of The Great Kapok Tree, taking us on a journey of conservation and caring for the environment. This unit focused on character description and on developing writing skills such as speech, using effective verbs, adverbs and speech verbs within their writing. At the end of the unit, the children wrote their own exciting story based on a character transformation tale plot. 

Maths

During Spring term, we developed our understanding of multiplication and division by moving towards formal methods. We used partitioning to be able to multiply and divide two digit numbers by one digit numbers. Our second unit of Spring term was length and perimeter where we explore using different units of measurement (m, cm and mm) to measure different items. We them used this to develop our understanding of perimeter, moving onto measuring and calculating perimeter. In Spring term 2, we started out first fractions unit of year 3, in which the children developed their understanding of the numerator and denominator and understanding fractions on a number line and a scale. This fed into out final unit in spring term, mass and capacity in which we explored different units of measurement (g, kg, l and ml). 

Talk for Reading

During Spring Term, we explored non fiction writing about the black widow spider. We developed out understanding of non-fiction texts and how to support statements using information in the text. The children also developed the skill of scanning text to find the relevant information quickly. Our second unit was a poetry unit, focusing on understanding the use of words to create a picture in a poem. We used the poem 'The Crocodile' by Lewis Carroll throughout this unit. 

Topic

Bright Sparks

Our Spring term topic focussed on electricity, magnets and forces. The children developed their understanding of electricty, how it can be produced before moving onto building their own circuits. We then developed out understanding of different forces, contact and non-contact. Once we had a secure understanding of non-contact forces, we moved onto exploring magnetism, identidying which objects are megnetic and why and which types of metal are magentic and why. 

The children then used their knowledge and understanding of electricty and magnets to work in groups to develop and build their own board game, incorporating an element of electricty and magnets.