Curriculum
Literacy/Social Studies:
- Third grade is a pivotal year for your child. Learning to read complex texts with fluency and confidence will serve as a foundation for the reading demands in later grades. By practicing various reading strategies, your child will reliably be able to read increasingly challenging stories, articles, and books and build knowledge about the world around him or her. By the end of the year, your child also will be writing clear sentences, paragraphs, and short essays on a range of topics, drawing on an expanding vocabulary.
- 1st Unit of Study:
- Considering Perspectives and Supporting Opinions: Wolves in Fiction and Fact
- In this module, students explore the questions: “Who is the wolf in fiction?” and “Who is the wolf in fact?” They begin by analyzing how the wolf is characterized in traditional stories, folktales, and fables. Then they research real wolves by reading informational text. Finally, for their performance task, students combine their knowledge of narratives with their research on wolves to write a realistic narrative about wolves.
- 2nd Unit of Study:
- My Librarian is a Camel: How Books are Brought to Children Around the World
- In this module, students will begin to build their close reading skills; students hear stories read aloud and read works in their entirety and excerpts of more challenging writing closely. Students examine the main message in literature about individuals and groups from world communities (including the United States) who have gone to great lengths to access education. Students will practice identifying the central message and taking notes in the provided categories.
- Students will also delve into geography, and how where one lives in the world impacts how one accesses books. They will continue building knowledge and vocabulary related to world geography as they study excerpts from My Librarian Is a Camel, which describes how librarians overcome challenges of geography to get books to people. They will apply their learning by writing a simple information report about how people access books around the world, focusing on the role of specific librarians or organizations they studied.
- 3rd Unit of Study:
For our final unit of the year we will be completing a literacy/social studies module which results in this task: How have immigrants influenced regional cultures of the United States? After reading informational texts about various immigrant communities across the United States, create an info-graphic in which you compare how immigrant communities have significantly shaped various regions of the United States. Support your response with evidence from the texts.
The unit includes reading digital stories and articles about the following immigrant groups in various regions of the United States.
Math:
Science:
- Unit 1- Life Cycles and Animal Adaptations
- Unit 2- Exploring Matter, Electricity, and Forces
- Unit 3- Space and the Solar System