Year 3 is the first year of Key Stage 2* and is usually first year of Junior School. The children are now usually taught sitting at tables where they listen to the teacher and get to practice the concepts taught on their own or in pairs. The tables are sometimes ‘setted’ to include children of similar ability.

The tasks for the Year 3 readers are to develop reading stamina and fluency and to widen their reading range across fiction, poetry and non-fiction. They’ll often discuss books or texts in small groups and ask questions about what they’re reading. This is a critical year for moving from a primarily phonics-based spelling approach to one that relies upon the child’s memory and the accuracy of spelling high frequency words increases.

Children in Year 3 also learn organizational methods that help them prepare for more complex writing tasks. They’ll create maps, webs, and Venn diagrams to plan their work. They’ll write reports, creative fiction, and personal narratives. They’ll also be asked to take more responsibility for the writing process, including revising, editing, and proofreading. Teachers continue to teach and to provide practice time to support the correct formation of the four basic handwriting joins from Year 2. The majority of children use these in independent writing.

Below are listed some of the learning objectives for Year 3, which are taken from the National Strategies Primary Framework part of the current National Curriculum. These learning objectives may change when a new curriculum comes into place in September 2013.

• Choose and prepare poems or stories for performance, identifying appropriate expression, tone, volume and use of voices and other sounds
• Follow up others' points and show whether they agree or disagree in whole-class discussion
• Identify key sections of an informative broadcast, noting how the language used signals changes or transitions in focus
• Actively include and respond to all members of the group
• Identify and discuss qualities of others' performances, including gesture, action and costume
• Spell high and medium frequency words
• Identify and make notes of the main points of section(s) of text
• Identify how different texts are organised, including reference texts, magazines and leaflets, on paper and on screen
• Empathise with characters and debate moral dilemmas portrayed in texts
• Identify features that writers use to provoke readers' reactions
• Use beginning, middle and end to write narratives in which events are sequenced logically and conflicts resolved
• Use layout, format graphics and illustrations for different purposes
• Group related material into paragraphs
• Compose sentences using adjectives, verbs and nouns for precision, clarity and impact
• Write with consistency in the size and proportion of letters and spacing within and between words, using the correct formation of handwriting joins

A pdf leaflet from Cliftonville Primary Schoolexplaining learning objectives and how to help your child with literacy at home.