Narrative and Rationale: The thematic model in Grade 3 is divided into four bundles that build on one another and increase in intellectual demand both in terms of content and the science and engineering practices. While other crosscutting concepts are included at this grade level, the crosscutting concepts of cause and effect is a theme that carries throughout the year.

The grade 3 disciplinary core ideas in physical science focus on forces and explanations for types of interactions involving motion, electricity, and magnetism. Core ideas in life science include life cycles of organisms, fossils as evidence of major changes over time in the environment, and traits influenced by inheritance and the environment. These ideas contribute to building the understanding that variations in traits among individuals of the same species can provide advantages in survival and reproduction. The core ideas in Earth and space science emphasize weather patterns, climates, and the connection between the two. 

Alternatively, view the 3rd Grade Topics Model.

Narrative and Rationale: The four bundles in this Grade 3 model all have a particular topical focus. Bundle 1 focuses on traits of organisms. Bundle 2 builds on Bundle 1 to focus on relationships between organism traits and survival in a habitat. Bundle 3 extends this study to focus on how the climate affects organisms over long periods of time. Bundle 4 shifts focus to the physical sciences, with a study of forces and motion. Throughout the first three bundles, students have the opportunity to build understanding over time of typical weather conditions expected. Alternately, this performance expectation (3-ESS2-1) could be included solely in Bundle 3. There are also a variety of opportunities to incorporate the 3–5 engineering design performance expectations throughout the year in addition to those shown in the bundles. Although two of these performance expectations are included in this 3rd grade model, they will be fully assessable at the end of grade five. 

What is the Thematic Model? In the thematic model, bundles are created to support a given theme.  The theme increases in depth and complexity throughout the school year.

What is the Topic Model? In the topic model, each bundle has a separate but related topic.

The example bundles are not intended to represent the only ways to organize courses, but rather to provide some well thought out, concrete examples of what bundles might look like.

From NGSS:

For each grade, two different examples are provided to motivate users to compare the different examples and think about what works in their local context:

• For each grade K-5, an example is provided that organizes the bundles based on the Topics arrangement of the NGSS and one that focuses on a particular theme that builds across each year.