Time - Months and years - Planning

The Year 3 summer curriculum introduces students to the concepts of months and years, focusing on the number of days in each month, including leap years. The lesson is equipped with practical resources such as small clocks, old calendars, Post-it notes, worksheets, and a presentation to aid learning. Key vocabulary includes terms like 'Time', 'Months', 'Years', 'Calendar', and 'Leap Year'. To engage the children, they are encouraged to use old calendars to identify the sequence of months and differentiate them based on the number of days. A significant part of the lesson is the exploration of leap years and the use of Post-it notes to mark important dates and personal events like birthdays. This hands-on approach is complemented by the use of songs or rhymes to help memorise the varying days in each month, and the children are tasked with sentence completion exercises that are displayed on a working wall for reference.

Further activities in the lesson involve ordering birthdays and understanding the age relationships between peers, especially when multiple birthdays occur within the same month. Children are prompted to reason out loud, using structured sentences to articulate their thought processes. This helps them develop their reasoning skills and deepen their comprehension of date ordering. Independent learning is supported by differentiated worksheets tailored to the children's learning levels, from working towards fluency to achieving greater depth. The lesson also addresses common misconceptions about the number of days in a year and the particulars of a leap year. The plenary session, 'Give me five', allows the children to reflect on what they have learned, the skills they have used, and the knowledge they promise to remember, ensuring a well-rounded understanding of the time-related concepts covered in the lesson.