Year 3 - Spring Term

Geography:

Rocks, Relics and Rumbles

In the Rocks, Relics and Rumbles project, your child will learn about the different layers of the Earth, including plate tectonics and their potential effects on the Earth's surface. They will investigate different types of rock to learn about their uses and properties. They will also investigate soil and fossils, including learning about the work of Mary Anning. They will have the opportunity to use maps to learn about the lines of latitude and longitude and a compass to learn about the cardinal and intercardinal points. They will also learn about volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis and the long and short-term consequences that these can have.

English: Reading

Spring 1

Spring 2

English: Writing

Skills: See National Curriculum for Year 3

Text Types:

Retell - setting
Diary entry
Narrative retell
Persuasive Letter
Non-Chronological report

Maths

Science:

Forces & Magnets

In the Forces and Magnets project, your child will learn what forces are and what they do. They will learn about pushing and pulling forces and sort different actions into pushes and pulls. They will identify and explain contact forces. They will learn about and investigate frictional forces. They will use force meters to measure the forces needed to carry out everyday tasks and record their measurements. They will learn about magnetism (a non-contact force) and explore bar magnets. They will find out about magnetic attraction, repulsion and magnetic fields. They will test the magnetic properties of different objects. They will learn about the magnetism of the Earth and how this enables compasses to work. They will use this knowledge to make compasses. They will learn about the uses of friction and magnetism and carry out research. They will use different methods to investigate the strength of magnets.

Art: Ammonite

This project teaches children about artistic techniques used in sketching, printmaking and sculpture.

Design & Technology: Making It Move

This project teaches children about cam mechanisms. They experiment with different shaped cams before designing, making and evaluating a child's automaton toy.

Music - Charanga

Project: Three Little Birds

Y3 Spring Term Knowledge Organiser

Computing

Data & Information: During this unit, learners will develop their understanding of what a branching database is and how to create one. They will gain an understanding of what attributes are and how to use them to sort groups of objects by using yes/no questions. The learners will create physical and on-screen branching databases. Finally, they will evaluate the effectiveness of branching databases and will decide what types of data should be presented as a branching database.

Creating Media: During this unit, learners will become familiar with the terms ‘text’ and ‘images’ and understand that they can be used to communicate messages. They will use desktop publishing software and consider careful choices of font size, colour and type to edit and improve premade documents. Learners will be introduced to the terms ‘templates’, ‘orientation’, and ‘placeholders’ and begin to understand how these can support them in making their own template for a magazine front cover. They will start to add text and images to create their own pieces of work using desktop publishing software. Learners will look at a range of page layouts thinking carefully about the purpose of these and evaluate how and why desktop publishing is used in the real world.

PSHEE