Welcome to Year 3!
Year 3 Curriculum Information
January 2026
Welcome back to Year 3.
We are about to embark on a new year and our Spring term chapter, and we have lots of fun learning planned. The termly forecast gives you more detail about the learning which will take place within our topic which this term is based around Ancient Egypt.
Here are our English focus books for this term:
PE
PE is on a Wednesday – Children can come into school in their PE kits. Appropriate school PE kit must be worn and labelled. As winter draws near, the weather will begin to turn cold and wet, so please ensure your child has jogging bottoms, jumpers, gloves and light waterproof jackets, as learning will take place outside as much as possible.
Homework
Reading
The children will continue to engage in reading during our daily English lessons as well as 4 times a week in whole class shared reading sessions. However, to really help them progress and to support their enjoyment of reading, they should be reading at home most nights. To support your child’s progress, please feel free to record any comments in their Reading Record, which will accompany their reading books. Your observations are invaluable in helping us track their development and encourage their love for reading! We know it is hard to fit everything in, but reading offers valuable models for sentence structure, fuels their imagination, improves their knowledge of the world and also offers them some much needed calm time.
Spellings
Spellings will be shared at the start of each week via Dojo and will include tricky words as well as words with the ‘spelling patterns’ we are learning that week. We will be learning these in class, including using them to support our handwriting practise. There will be no formal test, but it is vital that you take some time to look at these at home as we will recap them on a Friday. Be creative with learning – writing out in chalk, repeating in the car, using pens in the baths – any way to engage them. Always check your child understands the meaning of their spellings as this will help to broaden their vocabulary.
Mental Maths
Year 3 children have a big focus on number facts and their fluency and we have introduced the times table facts of 3x, 4x and 8x. Each lesson will start with 5 key questions for them to complete to get warmed up such as: count in 2s from 14 to 30, double 24, which number is missing etc. The children will continue to have a ‘Numbots’ login along with ‘Times Table Rockstars’. These websites are great way to practise and embed their number facts with all 4 operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), so please try to set aside a few minutes a day to practise. These key facts will help your child become more efficient and fluent within the lessons and as they progress through into the next year and beyond.
We want all the children to be happy in school, so if you have any worries or concerns, please catch me on the gate to talk or to arrange a time to chat or if that isn’t convenient, email the office who will pass it on.
Year 3 Extra Information
Reading at home questions booklet
Useful Links
Maths Chase
A fun website for learning times tables
Oxford Owl
Entirely free website with lots of fun games and activities for you and your child - there is also a useful 'At School' section explaining the techniques used to teach reading within school
Letter Join