SOL Review

Reading:

Reading consists of two major sections:

1) Word analysis strategies and word reference materials. This includes reading accuracy, fluency, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and high frequency words. Third grade reference materials are glossaries, dictionaries, media, and almanacs.

2) Comprehension of Fictional and Nonfictional text. Comprehension is not only answering questions correctly, it also includes things like cause/effect, inference, main idea, questioning, predicting, antonym/synonym, chronological structure, author's purpose, and genre.

PALS is a phonological awareness literacy screening tool that is given 3 times a year to students with IEPs that have reading goals, up to grade 8. This is a Virginia tool that provides ongoing progress monitoring in all the areas of reading including encoding (or spelling). This tool indicates your child's Independent Oral Reading Level and his/her Instructional Oral Reading Level (accuracy), as well as Fluency (speed) .

All 3rd grade students are expected to read each night for 30 minutes and respond to what they read in their Reading Log. Reading Log responses can come in many forms: write a sentence, draw a picture of the setting and label it, draw a cartoon showing a sequence of events... See the Options Page glued to the front inside cover of your child's Reading Log. Students are expected to choose books on their Independent Reading Level. We encourage students to take the opportunity to choose a Reading Counts book found in the library as well as passages from their small group direction instruction. Reading Counts is a program that lets them earn points and attend a quarterly Reading Counts party.

If your child struggles with reading or has anxiety about reading please feel free to sit with your child and have them read to you each night or you can read to them. Ask them questions about what they read. Have them retell what they read after several pages. These practices will help them become better readers.

Reading and responding in the Reading Log is daily homework.

For more on the Reading SOLs visit the Virginia Department of Education for a full list of Reading SOLs.

Math:

Math also has several different sections:

1) Number, Number Sense, and Computation and Estimation. Students will need to know place value to millions, Add and Subtract with regrouping, and rounding. They will learn to multiply 2 digits by 1 digit and will divide 2 digits by 1 digit without regrouping. Estimating means rounding, and students will focus on ALL the math vocabulary words that connect skills or mean the same thing. Fractions are another big part of 3rd grade. They will learn fraction computation as well as finding equivalent fractions.

2)Measurement and Geometry is another section. Students will learn Polygons, as well as basic geometry vocabulary. They will learn metric as well as US standard measurements.

3)Probability and Statistics, Patterns, Functions, and Algebra is the last area. Students will practice looking for patterns, and determining probability as a fraction. They will be learning a few Algebra rules and will be able to recognize them from a group of choices.

For more on the math details visit the Virginia Department of Education for a full list of Math SOLs.