Year 3
The typical day in Year 3 is extremely busy with lots of learning throughout the day. Mornings will consist of handwriting, literacy, guided reading and maths. At Dukesgate we are always trying to instill innovative and effective lessons to maximise and engage your child. We aim to teach a broad and challenging curriculum to ensure that all children enjoy school and continue to develop their love of learning.
Literacy
Year 3 children continue to work hard on the technical skills of writing such as punctuation, sentence types and composition. A main focus in Year 3 will be on spelling and grammar. As their decoding skills become increasingly secure, teaching will be directed more towards developing vocabulary and the range of their reading, making sure that they become independent, fluent and enthusiastic readers who read widely and frequently. Children are encouraged to read for pleasure throughout the day and widen their knowledge of authors in our class library.
Click here to view the National Curriculum for Year 3 English
Mathematics
The principal focus of mathematics teaching in Year 3 is to ensure that pupils become increasingly fluent with whole numbers and the four operations, including number facts and the concept of place value. This should ensure that pupils develop efficient written and mental methods, and perform calculations accurately with increasingly large whole numbers. Children will develop their ability to solve a range of problems, including with simple fractions and decimal place value.
Click to view the National Curriculum for Year 3 Mathematics
Science
In Year 3 children will continue to develop as scientists. They will ask their own questions about what they observe and make some decisions about which types of scientific enquiry are likely to be the best ways of answering them. Children will be observing changes over time, noticing patterns, grouping and classifying things, carrying out simple comparative and fair tests, and finding things out using secondary sources of information. They will draw simple conclusions and use some scientific language, first to talk about and, later, to write about what they have found out.
Click to view the National Curriculum for Year 3 Science
Foundation Subjects
We teach the Foundation Subjects with a focus on powerful knowledge, always encouraging children to make links to prior learning. We aim to provide real experiences. We believe that children learn by doing, so we take them on several educational visits, invite speakers into school, bring in artefacts and interesting objects, and use our environment to spark learning. The topic work is carefully planned to allow children to make links between different areas of learning.
Click to view the Year 3 Curriculum Overview for 2023-24
Religious Education
It is very much the ethos of the school that we foster and develop the approach of understanding, consideration and respect for self and others. We use an enquiry based approach to RE, providing children with the opportunity to reflect upon not only their own beliefs, but also those of others.
This will be ensured through our religious education which is mainly Christian but also includes the study of other world religions and cultures, based on the SACRE agreed syllabus. We have daily acts of collective worship, which are broadly Christian in nature. Parents have the right to withdraw their children from these on religious grounds.