Third Grade Curriculum

Language Arts

The Language Arts curriculum collaboratively delivers composition, grammar, reading, writing, vocabulary and spelling.  Each of these components is organized to meet the unique needs of each student.

 Reading

The Open Court Reading curriculum is a phonics-based curriculum that enables readers to become fluent and provides strategies for reading comprehension.  In addition, independent reading and reading across the curriculum are practiced daily.  Literary skills include identifying point of view, plot, characterization, and setting.  Reading comprehension skills include cause-and-effect relationships, compare vs. contrast, and drawing conclusions.

 Spelling

The textbook Spelling Connections places an emphasis on structural patterns, visual patterns and relationship of letters within words.  The words that students learn to spell are words most commonly used in their writing.  Skill-building activities include phonetic awareness where students learn to apply sound/symbol relationships, solving analogies, and understanding word meanings to stimulate reading comprehension.  Structural patterns that are emphasized include plurals, contractions, compounds, possessives, prefixes, roots and suffixes.  Cross-curriculum content words in the areas of math, science, social studies, geography, and technology are also included in the weekly lessons. 

 Grammar

The grammar component includes identification of the parts of speech, capitalization, punctuation, sentence structure and formation and correct word usage.  Daily review skills promote mastery learning of new concepts.

 Writing

Students develop their writing using pre-writing activities in a reading and writing workbook.  Students also maintain a daily writing journal.  Students learn the steps of the writing process:  pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing/proofreading, and publishing. 

Math

The Saxon Math program is an incremental math program designed to provide a solid foundation for students.  Children participate in a daily math meeting where they practice skills relating to the calendar, counting, time, temperature, money, place value, and problem solving.  A multisensory approach enables children to master number facts in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  By the end of third grade, children should exhibit automatic recall of these facts.  Numbers and operations, measurement, fractions, geometry, data analysis and probability, and problem solving are part of the instruction.

Social Studies

The social studies curriculum focuses on types of communities.   Early communities including Indian, Spanish and the Pilgrims, and rural and urban communities from different geographical regions of the United States are studied.  Community government, the history of our capitol, functions of our federal government, and citizenship are also studied.  In addition, geography and map skills are integrated into the lessons.

Science

The science curriculum covers four areas:  life science, earth science, physical science and health.  Life science focuses on organisms and their habitats, humans in the ecosystem, and changes in the environment and its effect on plants and animals.  Earth science focuses the Earth and space, the Earth’s surface features, landforms and its composition.  Physical science focuses on matter, light and energy, simple machines and electricity.  Health focuses on the musculo-skeletal system, safety, first aid, and nutrition.  Investigation activities and scientific process skills are also taught.