Formal written methods begin, three more times tables arrive, and fractions get their first real workout.
25 August 2026 · 6 min read
Year 3 is the start of Key Stage 2, and it tends to feel like a bigger step up than any single year since Reception. Numbers get bigger, methods get more formal, and several genuinely new ideas — fractions as calculations, not just shaded shapes — appear for the first time. Here's what's actually covered.
Children work with numbers up to 1,000: reading, writing, comparing, ordering, and understanding place value in terms of hundreds, tens and ones. They count from 0 in multiples of 4, 8, 50 and 100, and find 10 or 100 more or less than a given number.
This is where formal written column methods are introduced for numbers with up to three digits — a genuine shift from the mental and informal jotting methods of Years 1 and 2. Children also learn to estimate answers before calculating, and to use the inverse operation to check their work (checking a subtraction by adding back up).
Three more times tables are introduced this year: 3, 4 and 8 (alongside continued practice of 2, 5 and 10). Children write and calculate mathematical statements using the multiplication tables they know, including two-digit numbers times one-digit numbers, using mental and progressing to formal written layout methods.
Fractions become a genuine topic in their own right this year: counting up and down in tenths, recognising and using fractions as numbers (not just parts of shapes), recognising and showing equivalent fractions with small denominators, and — for the first time — adding and subtracting fractions with the same denominator within one whole (2/5 + 1/5 = 3/5). Children also compare and order unit fractions and fractions with the same denominators.
Children measure, compare, add and subtract lengths, mass and capacity, and start working with perimeter of simple 2D shapes. Money and time both get more demanding: telling and writing time to the nearest minute, using Roman numerals on a clock face, and knowing the number of seconds in a minute and days in each month. In geometry, right angles are introduced formally, alongside horizontal, vertical, perpendicular and parallel lines. Statistics moves on to bar charts and pictograms with a scale.
The formal column method for addition and subtraction is genuinely new, and it's common for children to apply the steps correctly for addition but make errors when subtraction requires exchanging across more than one column. Fractions cause the most noticeable jump in difficulty — treating a fraction as an actual number that can be added, rather than just a picture of a shaded shape, is a real conceptual leap, and 2/5 + 1/5 = 3/10 (adding the denominators too) is an extremely common early mistake.
Grasp Maths tracks written methods and fraction understanding as separate, specific skills, so a child who's confident with column addition but shaky on fraction addition gets practice aimed precisely there, not a generic mix of both.
Looking for printable practice too? See our Year 3 maths worksheets.
Try a free Grasp Maths practice session, matched to the Year 3 curriculum.