February 2024 - Spring Term 2

Hello, hello, hello and happy term 4!

We are officially half way through the academic year and yet it still feels like yesterday that this years Red Kites’ hatched into year 3! We’ve still got lots of learning left to do before they fully fly the nest…

Year 3 will continue to have Miss Bradburn on Tuesdays this term along with Miss Spraggs and Miss Painton. We always love it when we can work with familiar faces and get to know each other better.

I returned back to some very exciting news from Miss Spencer! Red Kites have won a prize for collectively reading (and logging) the most books out of the whole school- hurrah! Well done, fellow bookworms! This means that we get to pick a class book of our choice; we have been thinking up lots of ideas and recommendations.

We are really getting confident at using Zones of Regulation, and children are becoming much more familiar at communicating, supporting and regulating throughout the school. This has really helped us to understand the difference between feelings and actions and how no emotion is an inherently bad emotion… we all fluctuate between the different zones throughout the day!

This half term, we will be exploring ‘The Changing Face of Didcot’ and all about the geographical factors and locations that surround our lovely village school. We will be getting out and about, looking at landscape artists and even meeting a member of parliament!

In whole class reading we are starting our new book, Tom’s Midnight Garden, and exploring non-chronological reports in writing. A huge thank you to those of you who collected maths packs and attended our Maths evening last term. Some of you were asking about number splat so I thought I would attach the link here: Paint the Squares - Interactive Number Charts (topmarks.co.uk). I will be sending home maths packs to those children who could not attend, so keep those eyes peeled...

Here are our topics for other areas of the curriculum:

SPaG –Speech and Tenses

Science – Types of Rocks

RE – Christianity

PSHE – Healthy body, healthy me

PE – Cricket and Basketball

Art – Landscapes

Spanish - Fruits

Music – Pentatonic melodies and composition

DT- Construction

ICT- Journey inside a computer

We are all very excited to have a fun-filled term and cannot wait to have lots more opportunities to extend our learning, get to know each other even better and learn about where we live.

Best wishes,

Miss Redgrave, Miss Spraggs and Miss Painton

January 2024 - Spring Term 1

Firstly- welcome back and Happy New Year!

I hope you have all had a lovely and restful Christmas break and are ready to kick-start into some brilliant learning this term. Have you set yourselves any new year’s resolutions? Mine is to learn a new fact each day! Did you know that the name for a group of bunnies is a ‘fluffle’?

I must start by saying how incredibly impressed we have all been with how hard Red Kites worked last term during their assessment week. It has been lovely to see everybody grow in confidence and reflect on all of the topics and units we have learnt so far in year 3.

We all know that assessments are merely a snapshot and that happiness and engagement often hold far more importance. On that note, you will be glad to know that we have shared an awful lot of happiness together this year, too. There has been lots of laughter and learning in different ways with a key focus on wellbeing as we move towards using ‘Zones of Regulation’ throughout the school. Find out more here about how you can support this at home: The Zones of Regulation | A Curriculum For Emotional Regulation

This half term, we will be exploring ‘The Beatles’ and learning all about their music, Liverpool, fashion and life in the 1960’s, so this is your permission to blast those golden oldies on the speaker! We may even have a visitor who is related to one of The Beatles...

We will be continuing looking at famous artists and influences in this period across other subjects, including in art where we will be creating pop art pieces and bold designs.

The learning continues with forest school on Thursday afternoons. This will be in addition to PE on Monday and Thursday mornings, so please send your children in with appropriate attire. I think they will be pretty tired after two lots of practical learning every Thursday, so a good nights sleep will be on the cards, I hope!

Here are our topics for other areas of the curriculum:

SPaG –Adverbs and Prepositions

Science – Forces and Magnets

RE – Creation

PSHE – Dreams and Goals

PE – Dance and Indoor Games

Art – Pop Art!  

Spanish - Instruments

Music – Traditional Music (with a focus on Indian music and instruments)

DT- Construction

ICT- Programming (using Scratch)

The last note from me is just to highlight that we have had to make some changes to staffing this term. This means that Red Kites will be working with the wonderful Miss Spraggs in the mornings (and Monday afternoons) and the lovely Miss Painton on Tuesday and Wednesday Afternoons. They both know the school and children well, so transitioning should be smooth for the children. I will keep you updated with the plans for who will be teaching on Tuesdays, but I will still be the Queen Red Kite for the rest of the week! Thank you so much for your patience and understanding.

Best wishes,

Miss Redgrave, Miss Spraggs and Miss Painton