Class Teachers - Miss Davies and Mrs Hodge / Mrs Price

This year, we have a new Literacy curriculum that we are following. This curriculum consists of whole class reading, Literacy Leaves and Spelling Seeds. 

The children will be introduced to our new Literary Curriculum scheme, which is a complete book-based approach designed to immerse children into a literary world, creating strong levels of engagement to provide meaningful and authentic contexts for learning. 

We are reading 'Arthur and the Golden Rope' by Joe Todd-Stanton as a whole-class reading book.  This book follows the adventures of Arthur as he travels back to the age of the Viking Gods to ask for their help to relight the great fire in his hometown in Iceland. This great fire provides warmth for the citizens and it was destroyed by the great wolf Fenir. The wolf can only be captured by the golden rope and Arthur must find the courage to save his village and defeat the mighty beast. The children have started to explore and analyse the language to define and provide context. 

To lead our spelling and grammar lessons, we will be looking at two core texts, "The Last Garden" and "The Tin Forest", which will engage, challenge and support children to be critical readers and confident, informed writers. Children will go on to write in a range of genres, building towards writing their own version of a narrative about a community overcoming adversity. 

As part of this programme, children will be introduced to Spelling Seeds, designed to work alongside the texts within the Literary Curriculum by providing opportunities to practice spelling rules and patterns.  These are lessons that are closely linked to the whole class reading book that teaches spelling in different contexts.  This term we will be exploring word classes and different suffixes. 

Throughout the week, we will also be focusing on phonics and ensuring that the children are confident in their sounds. 

For Welsh this year, we will be doing daily Helpwr Heddiw sessions. We plan to focus on providing the children with lots of opportunities to deepen their knowledge and confidence when using incidental Welsh in and out of the classroom.  We will be focusing on ensuring that we engage in lots of Welsh reading and writing alongside oracy when we look at the theme 'Fi a Fy Ffrindiau' 'Me and My Friends'.

Each child will also choose a reading book from the library to read at home and school. Please ensure that reading books are brought to school every day.

The start of the Autumn term will develop the pupils skills in understanding Place Value; the value of a digit within a number. Pupils will use a range of concrete materials such as Numicon, Base-10 and counters to explore the value of numbers up to 4-digits.

The children will reinforce their knowledge of odd and even numbers as well as recall number facts within 20. They will also focus on place value to recognise the value of a digit in a number as well as read, write and make numbers to 1000 before using their reasoning skills to solve place value problems.  

As the term progresses, we will compare numbers when reinforcing the meaning of equal to and not equal to and read statements about numbers expressed using an inequality sign, e.g. 6 > 4. The children will also learn to recognise, write and order negative numbers.  They will use a range of approaches to 'show' their maths understanding and be encouraged to use a varied mathematical vocabulary through the use of 'sentence stems.'

They will use mental strategies and the column method to add and subtract with 2-digit numbers as well as find an ‘unknown’ in one-step equations and use this to derive other facts, e.g. 37 + ☐ = 100 therefore; 100 – 37 = ☐.  The children will also use different combinations of money to pay for items up to £2 and calculate the change as well as solve problems involving subtraction and addition.  

Practising times tables daily will support them in calculating problems more efficiently. Pupils should know their 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10 times tables in Year 3. 

As part of our unit of work 'women who changed the word,' the children will be learning about equality and its place in society.  They will investigate key events and women in the past and describe how they have influenced the world that we live in. Children will explore how women's rights have changed over time and the impact it has had on the world.  They will look at similarities and differences between countries, communities, societies and historical periods in order to appreciate; 

• People develop feelings and viewpoints about events and experiences.

• There are similarities and differences between people’s lives in the past and present.

• The rights of others should be respected.

• Artists communicate their moods and emotions through their creative work.

• Collaboration with others often challenges and inspires artists to develop their creative ideas.

• Society is diverse so people have different beliefs and viewpoints.

The unit of work will start by looking at the suffragettes, followed by Marie Curie and Coco Chanel, concluding with a study of Malala Yousafzai, where the children will discuss the right of all children to have an education.

During Health and Wellbeing sessions, we will be focusing on gymnastics, recognising our emotions and healthy living. 

This term, we will be making use of the learning lodge to develop our outdoor experiences, whilst Mr. Murdoch, our Wellbeing Champion will be taking small groups of children to complete outdoor 'forest schools' activities. We will incorporate the 4D room into our learning experiences wherever possible to capture the children's interest and imagination. The children will contribute to creating class rules and continue to embed the school token reward system into their daily routine.  During Friday's enrichment time, the children will experience a range of indoor and outdoor activities to enhance their well-being, e.g. playing an instrument, art and craft and sport.

School values over the term are Responsibility, Managing Changes, Perseverance, Compassion and Hope.  All of these values will be covered throughout lessons, with a focus during whole school and class assemblies. 

PE will take place on a Thursday and children should come to school in their PE kits on this day.  Please avoid wearing jewellery on this day if possible and ensure long hair is tied back.

Children should bring a water bottle to school with them every day, this should be a sufficient amount to last them the whole day. 

Children should bring their reading books to school with them every day. 

Please ensure that all school uniform is clearly labelled with your child’s name.

Please complete this form to provide feedback and comment

To contact your child's teacher please drop us an email via ask@oldcastleprimary.co.uk or call us 01656 815790.  

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