What will my child learn in third grade?

Reading

Third graders are no longer learning to read; now they’re reading to learn. They’re reading longer books with chapters and using more complex reading strategies.

• Use reading strategies such as asking questions, making inferences and summarizing.

• Describe characters in a story.

• Understand the different genres of fiction.

• Determine the main idea and details in non-fiction texts.

• Use and understand text features in non-fiction texts.

• Use context clues to learn new vocabulary.

• Compare and contrast information from texts.

Writing

When it comes to writing, third graders take the foundational skills they’ve learned thus far and apply them.

• Use thinking maps to organize their ideas.

• Write in a variety of genres including letters, personal narratives, fiction stories and research reports.

• Revise and edit their writing.

• Write in paragraphs using transition words.

• Write in cursive.

• Understand parts of speech: noun, verb and adjective.

• Correctly use basic punctuation.

• Understand prefixes, suffixes and homophones.

• Use reference books such as the dictionary and thesaurus.

• Support opinions in expository writing.

Math

Third-grade math expects students to know their addition, subtraction, multiplication and division fact families and use them in equations and two-step word problems. In addition, third graders will learn how to:

• Read and write large numbers through the hundred thousands, knowing the place value for each digit.

• Round and compare numbers.

• Understand equivalent fractions, be able to compare fractions and change mixed numbers to improper fractions.

• Know decimals to the one-hundredth place.

• Use number lines.

• Recognize and write patterns.

• Do mental addition and subtraction.

• Add four-digit numbers.

• Subtract with regrouping.

• Know time to minute and elapsed time in minutes.

• Read and make graphs.

• Determine a shape’s perimeter and area.

• Recognize two-dimensional shapes.

• Measure with both Customary and Metric systems – length, weight, volume and temperature.

• Multiply three and four digit numbers.

• Divide two and three digit dividends.

Science

• Third-grade science introduces kids to experiments and using the scientific method with a hypothesis and observations. The science curriculum includes weather, the water cycle, and states of matter.

Social Studies

• Social studies class in third grade includes learning about maps, Native Americans, explorers and colonies.