Year 3 - Friday Blog - 16th October

Reading is a very important part of the curriculum and plays a key role in supporting children's learning and development. This week, the children have been sent home with a reading book to enjoy. Once they have finished reading their book and their reading record has been signed, they can have their book changed. The children have been reminded to let an adult know when they are ready for a new book. We encourage all children to read regularly at home, as this helps to develop their fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, and confidence.

This week in English, we began planning our own stories inspired by The Hundred and One Dalmatians. We carefully thought about the pets that would feature in our stories, using a range of adjectives to describe their appearance and personalities. We then focused on developing the main problem in our story, discussing who had stolen the pets, why they had done it, and how they carried out their plan. The children considered whether their villain might use a disguise or a clever distraction to make their stories more believable and engaging.

We also decided who the family characters would be and used a story mountain to plan each stage of our narrative, including the introduction, build-up, problem, rescue and resolution. The children drew on their previous learning about suspense writing to make their build-ups exciting and effective. Everyone worked incredibly hard to develop detailed and imaginative plans, which will support them when they begin writing their stories next week. The children did a fantastic job and have shown great creativity throughout the planning process.

This week in Maths, we continued our learning on Addition and Subtraction by focusing on column subtraction with both 2-digit and 3-digit numbers. The children practised setting out their calculations carefully and ensuring their digits were correctly aligned according to place value.

We explored how to use exchanging (borrowing) when there were not enough ones or tens to subtract. The children learned how to regroup numbers from the tens column to help solve more challenging calculations and developed their understanding of why this method works. They showed great perseverance when tackling problems that required multiple steps and carefully checked their answers to ensure accuracy.

Throughout the week, the children grew in confidence with written subtraction methods and demonstrated excellent mathematical reasoning when explaining their thinking. It has been a fantastic week of learning, and Year 3 should be very proud of their hard work and progress!