In third grade, we use the Benchmark Literacy program to teach students comprehension for lifelong learning. Effective readers use comprehension and metacognitive strategies in conjunction to develop deeper understanding of a text. Comprehension strategies we will focus on are: analyzing character, analyzing story elements, compare/contrast, distinguish and evaluate fact and opinion, draw conclusions, evaluate authors purpose, identify main idea and supporting details, identify sequence and events, make inferences, make judgements, make predictions, and summarize information. We also focus on metacognitive strategies such as: ask questions, determine text importance, fix-up monitoring, make connections, make inferences, summarize and synthesize, and visualize.
Starting in October, on Tuesdays/Thursdays, we begin our Book Clubs. This is were students are grouped into similar reading abilities and focus on reading one book together while completing a Book Club Journal which focuses on all the comprehension strategies. Parents are an important part of our book clubs as they help facilitate groups.
In addition, students also spend approximately 30-45 minutes of class time in i-Ready Reading where students are working on the online lessons automatically assigned to them based on their diagnostic performance. We monitor students' progress to inform how to support their learning in Reading using this program.
In third grade, we use the Benchmark Writers Workshop program to teach students writing skills for lifelong learning. We focus on the basic rules of grammar as students learn to write their ideas clearly on the genres of Informational Text, Personal Narratives, Persuasive Letters, Procedural Text, and Realistic Fiction. In third grade we work on writing essays with a simple thesis statement, examples and supporting details, and a thoughtful concluding sentence. We work on building skills in the writing process — research, planning, organizing, revising, and editing. We also do fun creative writing throughout the year on various topics, seasons, and celebrations.
Students get practice daily during Writing Workshop time as well as our daily paragraph writing/editing practice we get at the start of the day.
Math Expressions is the curriculum we use to teach mathematics. A big focus in third grade is learning multiplication and division. We will spend a good amount of time in class at the beginning of the year with that as our focus and encourage students to practice their multiplication and division fluency at home. Other big math concepts we cover are Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Number Operations in Base Ten, Measurement and Data, Fractions, and Geometry,
Every Wednesday, we have 6 math centers that students rotate to. We have a teacher center, logic center, problem solving center, computer center, bingo center, and game center. Parents volunteer to help run these centers.
In addition, students also spend approximately 30-45 minutes of class time in i-Ready Math per week where students are working on the online lessons automatically assigned to them based on their diagnostic performance. We monitor students' progress to inform how to support their learning in math using this program.