Third Grade Academic Overview
Third grade is primarily a self-contained classroom program. Daily classroom studies include: language arts (consisting of reading, grammar, and spelling), mathematics, social studies, science, Bible, and cursive. In addition, students meet with enrichment teachers for the following subjects each week: music (one 30-minute period), physical education (two 50-minute periods), computer (one 45-minute period), and art (two bi-monthly 60-minute periods). In addition, the students meet weekly with parent leaders for 25-minute discipleship groups based on our Bible curriculum.
Students receive four report cards throughout the year. These report cards measure progress in academic skills, work habits and citizenship. Teachers and parents meet for a conference at the end of the first quarter (and as needed). Approximately 30 minutes of homework in mathematics, language arts, or Bible is expected each weeknight, plus independent reading.
Your child will learn:
Bible: the Bible as God’s word; the lives of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Daniel; memory verses of the Beatitudes (in Matthew), Proverbs, 1 Thessalonians, James, and John
Math: place value to thousands, whole numbers: 1 – 1,000, greater than/less than, count by 2’s, 3’s, 10’s, 25’s, 100’s, addition/ subtraction facts, four -digit addition with regrouping, three-digit subtraction, time, measurement, geometry, graphing, fractions and problem solving, number stories, fact families, multiplication and division and memorization of those facts
Science: matter, energy, light, survival of living things, food chains, solar system, patterns in the sky
Social Studies: California natives (Tongva), pilgrims/immigrants, holidays and symbols, taking care of our land, government (three levels)
Writing: cursive, writing processes (Step Up to Writing), short paragraphs, informational, persuasive, opinion, and comparison writing, letters, poems, reports, autobiographies, types of sentences, grammar and parts of speech, spelling: phonetic rules and high frequency words
Reading: short stories, poems, novels, informational texts; asking and answering questions, determining main ideas, making inferences and predictions, comparing and contrasting, determining character traits, close reading and annotating, participating in literature circles and readers theater