Grade 3

Class Subjects

Reading:

Reading instruction is literature-based, using an extensive book collection and supported by the Houghton Mifflin Reading program. This program is designed to develop oral language and comprehension, phonemic awareness, decoding skills, fluency, and reading comprehension through themes. Children will read anthology stories, chapter books, picture books, listen to read aloud books and complete author studies to practice and improve their reading skills.

Writing:

Writing is integrated within all subjects and is supported by Houghton Mifflin. Third grade will focus on the writing process, six traits, and narrative, expository styles of writing. Students will be given opportunities to write unstructured pieces of writing such as journal entries, letters, poems, stories, etc.

Math:

The focus in third grade is using basic facts to solve problems and real-life situations. Furthermore, developing mathematical literacy and reasoning. Skills practiced include addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and simple fractions. Students measure and weigh, produce graphs and identify different shapes, figures and geometric patterns.

Science and Social Studies:

Science and Social Studies standards and benchmarks are taught using the Primary Years Program inquiry-based framework (P.Y.P.). This framework focuses on the development of the whole-child and aims to develop internationally-minded students.

Central Ideas for Social Studies:
●Being aware of cultural problems from the past can effect the choices and solutions in the future.
●Social systems share common beliefs and traditions and express them in unique ways.

Central Ideas for Science:
●The Sun, Moon and Earth are part of a complex system that rely on each other.
●All living things have a life cycle.
●Science and society influence one another.

Through the central ideas students will study the history of communities, specifically first settlers in North America, and will compare social systems to their own. They will learn how geographical features affected Native American communities and how others are developed around these features. They will have a general understanding that the choices they make today, affect the future. In science, the central ideas focus around understanding life cycles, the relative motions of the Sun, Moon and Earth and how work together. Through these ideas students will learn: how to gather data, forming and testing a hypothesis, drawing conclusions and how to record information.