Third grade is a transition year for students as they become more independent and must take more responsibility for their education, asking questions when they don’t understand something and devising strategies for learning that work best for them. It’s academically a rigorous year in all subject areas,  but the strong foundation built in kindergarten through second grade will help your child be successful.

In third grade, the emphasis is on learning about words, reading text with fluency and expression, and using comprehension strategies. Students will be expected to read and comprehend a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts from a variety of print and electronic resources. Reading comprehension strategies will be applied to all subject areas. Students will build their vocabularies by listening to and reading a variety of genres. Using context clues, language structure, and phonetic strategies is critical for third-grade readers.

Third grade is the year of punctuation marks, and varied and complete sentence structure. Students will be expected to write paragraphs with detailed sentences consisting of strong verbs, adjectives and adverbs to elaborate the main idea in their writing. During Writer’s Workshop, third graders will take ownership of the writing process through planning, drafting, revising, and editing stories and short reports.

The emphasis in third grade is on developing an understanding of, and solving problems that involve multiplication and division through 10 x 10. Students will apply their knowledge of place value and the properties of addition and multiplication for solving problems. Fractions will be taught using concrete models and pictorial representations. Students will use standard units, U.S. Customary and metric, to measure temperature, length and liquid volume. Third graders will understand the concept of probability as the measurement of chance. Geometry for third graders includes exploring properties of shapes, points, lines, line segments, rays, angles, vertices, and identifying polygons with ten or fewer sides, as well as, combining and subdividing polygons to name the resulting polygon. Students will be actively engaged using concrete materials and appropriate technologies to facilitate problem solving.

Third-grade science standards place increasing emphasis on conducting investigations. Students begin to understand the scientific process by being able to develop questions, formulate simple hypotheses, make predictions, gather data, and use the metric system with greater precision. it’s important that third graders can use information to make inferences and draw conclusions. In the area of physical science, the standards focus on simple and compound machines, energy, and a basic understanding of matter. Behavioral and physical adaptations are examined in relation to the life needs of animals. The notion of living systems is further explored in aquatic and terrestrial food chains and diversity in ecosystems. Patterns in the natural world are demonstrated in terms of the phases of the moon, tides, seasonal changes, the water cycle, and animal and plant life cycles. Geological concepts are introduced through the investigation of the components of soil.

Third graders will explore the heritage and contributions of the peoples of ancient China, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the West African empire of Mali. Students will continue developing map skills and demonstrate an understanding of basic economic and civics concepts. Students will examine the social, cultural, and political characteristics of ancient world cultures and understand that many aspects of ancient cultures served as the foundation for modern governments, customs, traditions, and perspectives.