Course Descriptions for Third Grade Classes
Grade 3 | Communication Arts
In this course, the student will become more comfortable with reading and writing, developing an appetite for longer and more complex stories and compositions. He will become a more critical and insightful reader, learning to examine the author's purpose and point of view. He will read daily, practicing comprehension and phonics skills as he reads. The student will apply new skills to read and understand fiction and nonfiction stories presented in Houghton-Mifflin's Legacy of Literacy anthologies and Phonics Library. The stories are organized according to theme. These themes invite the student to view reading as a tool for information gathering, and help the student make connections between the texts. In addition to formal reading instruction, the student will establish a daily reading routine and will complete activities in response to self-selected books.
The student will learn to structure and write complete sentences and then create paragraphs and longer compositions. Writing activities teach the five stages of the writing process. The student will create compositions throughout the course by moving through the stages of planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. He will also write for a variety of purposes, creating letters, compositions, research reports, advertisements, and instructions. Grammar and language usage instruction is reinforced in the meaningful context of writing lessons. The student will continue to master the basic skills of writing with instruction in spelling, handwriting, grammar, and language usage. The Zaner-Bloser Spelling Connections workbook offers weekly spelling lists based on the patterns and relationship of letters within words. Daily practice activities reinforce the spelling strategies and give the student opportunities to use spelling words in context. Cursive handwriting is introduced and instructed with the Zaner-Bloser Handwriting workbook. The student will review manuscript writing before learning the basic strokes of cursive handwriting. During the remainder of the course, the student will master the lowercase and uppercase letters and learn to correctly join letters to make words.
Student Resources
• Let’s Read a Poem (Calvert School)
• Reading Work Pages 3 (Calvert School)
• Reading Word Cards 3 (Calvert School)
• Rewards (Houghton Mifflin)
• Horizons (Houghton Mifflin)
• Reader’s Library: Blackline Masters 3(Houghton Mifflin)
• Smiling Hill Farm (Calvert School)
• Activity Pages 3 (Calvert School)
• Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 3 (Zaner-Bloser)
• Spelling Connections 3(Zaner-Bloser)
• Reading E and Writing E Lesson Manual
· Grade 3 | Mathematics
In this course, the student will learn facts and strategies for adding and subtracting numbers in the hundreds with regrouping, and adding and subtracting money. The Calvert series textbook, Calvert Math, and the Practice and Enrichment Workbook are the primary resources for this course. Multiplication and division facts and patterns are taught in such a way to give the student a conceptual understanding of the operations and how they affect numbers. The student will explore statistics as he learns to create graphs and do experiments to learn about probability. Additionally, the student has the chance to work hands-on as he studies time, money, geometry, fractions, decimals, and measurement (customary and metric units). The student gains an understanding of the practical applications of these skills if you let him help with activities such as shopping (money and decimals), scheduling (time), and cooking (fractions and measurement). Throughout the course, the student is given the opportunity to apply the skills he has learned in different ways. To assist with this, the student will study the problem-solving process. A four-step problem-solving plan is taught and numerous problem-solving strategies and skills are introduced and practiced. Many of these are then applied to different types of problems.
Student Resources
• Calvert Math 3 (Calvert School)
• Calvert Math Practice and Enrichment Workbook 3(Calvert School)
• Math E Lesson Manual
• Blue, Green, Red, White, and Yellow Cubes (each color set of 10)
· Grade 3 | Science
Science provides a way for people to actively learn about the world around them. Throughout this course the student will continue to perform hands-on activities to explore organisms, investigate changes, and examine the solar system. The McGraw-Hill/National Geographic series textbook, Science, and the science kit are the primary resources for this course. The opening unit introduces sea exploration and reviews the scientific method. The Life Science units describe and analyze components of the the living world. The Earth and Space Science units detail Earth's composition and the relationships between the Earth, moon, and sun. The Physical Science unit explores the properties of matter.
In this course the student will create a model to investigate how the sun affects the Earth, build an electrical circuit, design an experiment to discover the rate at which land can change, and delve into many more exciting experiments. The lessons in this course are designed to accommodate a variety of learning styles, and to provide a variety of opportunities for the entire family to participate in the student’s education. Some lessons, or groups of lessons, in each unit are activity-centered, which allow the student to engage the new concepts he encounters through exploration and discovery; others are more traditional, requiring the student to read, research, and reflect on the underlying theory. The student may choose to read and review a fiction or nonfiction book about the subject being studied, undertake a project that reflects a particular personal interest, or participate in an appropriate online interactive experience. The student may include others in a longer-term project such as creating a family garden, or by visiting and reporting on a trip to a farm, zoo, nature center, aquarium, or museum.
Student Resources
• McGraw-Hill Science 3(McGraw-Hill)
• Science E Lesson Manual
• Science Kit
· Grade 3 | Missouri Social Studies
This Social Studies course includes history, civics, geography, and economics lessons. History and civics are taught using A Child's Study of Famous Americans. This book provides biographies of notable American leaders, scientists, humanitarians, writers, and explorers. Each story includes basic biographical information about the individual as well as his or her contribution to American culture. As part of this study, the student will learn about the basic tenets of the American political system, such as the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, rights and responsibilities of citizens, and the three branches of government. The U.S. Constitution and You and How the U.S. Government Works support the civics-based lessons. Neale S. Godfrey’s Ultimate Kids’ Money Book provides the basis for economics lessons. As part of economics, the student will be introduced to basic economic concepts such as money, prices, supply and demand, and taxes. The student will also begin to examine factors that contribute to personal economic decisions. The economics lessons are taught with a focus on the local economy.
Within the context of communities, the student will review the five themes of geography—place, location, regions, movement, and human/environment interactions. Additionally, the student will continue to add to his inventory of basic geography skills, including using map symbols and intermediate directions; reading various types of maps, graphs, and timelines; making simple maps; and using map grids to plot locations. Furthermore, the student will be introduced to the concepts of natural resources and various types of landforms. Steck-Vaughn’s Maps, Globes, Graphs provides the basis for instruction.
Student Resources
• Maps, Globes, Graphs Level C (Steck-Vaughn)
• Activity Pages 3 (Calvert School)
• A Child’s Study of Famous Americans (Calvert School)
• How the U.S. Government Works (Barron’s)
• The U.S. Constitution and You (Barron’s)
• Ultimate Kid’s Money Book (Simon and Schuster)
• Geography E and Social Studies E Lesson Manual