Welcome to 3rd Grade!

Third grade is a year of transition. Students will be learning to be more responsible and cooperative as an individual, partner, teammate, and class member. As third graders, students will learn to monitor their own understandings and build upon their current foundation through goal setting. Students will be taking common assessments each 9 weeks to assess students learning in each subject up to that point. The SOL tests will be at the end of the year and test reading and math. Students will also create assessment portfolios for science and social studies.

Third-grade students will read a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts and will apply reading comprehension strategies and skills in all subject areas using the balanced literacy approach Students will continue to learn new vocabulary words and read age-appropriate text with fluency, accuracy, and expression. Effective communication skills will be reinforced through group activities, oral reports, and daily writing experiences. In addition, students will effectively plan, draft, revise, and edit stories, and will gather and use information from print and non-print sources.

The students will use conceptual math to understand and solve math problems. They will add, subtract, round, and compare numbers 9,999 or less. The students will tell time to the nearest minute and determine elapsed time in one-hour increments. They will solve multi-step word problems. They will be learning multiplication to to the 12s and division. The student will also name, write, model, add, subtract, and compare fractions (including mixed numbers). Students will explore and investigate many ways to solve a problem.

The third-grade students will study animal adaptations, ecosystems, simple machines, water cycle, phases of the moon, and soil. They will also be participating in scientific investigations on these topics through out the year.

The students will study geography, map skills, branches of government, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Ancient Mali, and Explorers. They will be expected to complete some at-home projects while studying these skills.