Third Grade

Program Description

Academic, social, and cultural skills are taught in an environment that is conducive to an overall sense of safety and well-being in the classroom. Lifelong skills such as responsibility, good citizenship, and respect for oneself and others are integrated in academic lessons. English language arts, math, science, and social studies are taught in a structured yet flexible manner with emphasis on hands-on learning. Third graders, for example, venture to the Sespe Wilderness to learn about forests, native plants, and invasive species as part if their exploration of science and the year-long themes of systems, adaptations, expansion and conflict.

As in all grades, the curriculum is differentiated to meet the needs of each student at his or her level of readiness. Co-curricular classes complete the third-grade experience, including Outdoor Education trips in the fall and spring.

By third grade, most students have transitioned from learning to read to reading to learn. Students will however, continue to build important reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. They will think, talk, and write about what they read in a variety of articles, books, and other texts. In their writing, students will pay more attention to organizing information, developing ideas, and supporting these ideas with facts, details, and reasons. Activities in these areas will include:

Reading a wide range of stories, plays, and poems and describing how a story teaches a lesson
Describing characters in a story and how their actions contributed to events
Reading texts about history, social studies, or science and answering questions about what they learned
Referring to information from illustrations such as maps or pictures as well as the words in a text to support their answers
Learning the usage rules of spoken and written English
Learning and using new words, including words related to specific subjects (such as science words)
Participating in class discussions by listening, asking questions, sharing ideas, and building on the ideas of others
Giving a class presentation on a topic or telling a story using relevant facts and details and speaking clearly
Writing stories with dialogue and descriptions of character’s actions, thoughts, and feelings
Gathering information from books, articles, and online sources to build understanding of a topic
Writing research or opinion papers over extended periods of time

The Mathematics curriculum includes:

Operations and Algebraic Thinking: Represent and solve problems involving multiplication and division. Understand properties of multiplication and the relationship between multiplication and division. Multiply and divide within 100. Solve problems involving the four operations, and identify and explain patterns in arithmetic.
Number and Operations in Base Ten: Use place value understanding and properties of operations to perform multi-digit arithmetic.
Number and Operations, Fractions: Develop understanding of fractions as numbers.
Measurement and Data: Solve problems involving measurement and estimation of intervals of time, liquid volumes, and masses of objects. Represent and interpret data. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. Reason abstractly and quantitatively. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. Model with mathematics. Use appropriate tools strategically. Attend to precision. Look for and make use of structure. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning. Geometric measurement: understand concepts of area and relate area to multiplication and to addition. Geometric measurement: recognize perimeter as an attribute of plane figures and distinguish between linear and area measures.
Geometry: Reason with shapes and their attributes.
Mathematical Practices: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. Reason abstractly and quantitatively. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. Model with mathematics. Use appropriate tools strategically. Attend to precision. Look for and make use of structure. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

The Science curriculum includes:

Earth: Space, solar and Earth systems. Star Patterns in the sky. Phases of the moon. Orbits of the Earth and moon.
Physical: Sources of energy from the sun. Storage, conversion, and transfer of solar energy. Weather and climate. Light, color, vision.
Life: Inheritance and variation of traits; adaptation over time. Biodiversity and extinction.
Engineering: Ask questions and define problems. Develop and use models. Plan and carry out investigations. Analyze and interpret data. Use mathematics and computational thinking. Construct explanations and design solutions. Engage in argument from evidence. Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information.

The Social Studies curriculum includes:

U.S.: The role of rules and laws in our daily lives and the basic structure of the U.S. National symbols and their origins. Early European colonization to the US including Jamestown and Pilgrims.
World: Exploration of Vikings and later European explorers. Reasons for immigration and exploration.
Economic: Basic economic reasoning skills and understanding of the economic causes and effects of exploration. Trade and barter systems. Current global trade relationships. Global impact of exploration.
Geography: Physical features of Europe and the Americas and utilization of these geographical areas. Early exploration across the Bering Straight, “Beringia” and expansion into North America. Trade routes of exploration. Geographical barriers to exploration.

Music
Spanish
Art
Woodshop
Library
Physical Education
Equestrian