Course Description: 3rd grade math students begin the year by learning specific strategies they can use to understand and solve mathematical problems.  They then move on to developing fluency with addition and subtraction and applying their understanding of these concepts to problems involving the perimeter of polygons.  During the first quarter, students also work on telling time to the nearest minute and solving problems involving time. Students then work on collecting data from their own environments and representing this data using a variety of tables and graphs.  In the second quarter, a significant area of focus is accurately multiplying and dividing within 100 and solving a variety of problems involving multiplication and division. Students also apply their understanding of multiplication to the concept of area.  Students begin the 3rd quarter by studying and classifying a variety of shapes before turning their attention to understanding the concept of using fractions to represent parts of wholes. Developing a conceptual understanding of fractions is one of the main focuses of the third and fourth quarters.  3rd grade math students also learn how to measure, collect and represent measurement data using charts and graphs. Students close the year learning how to solve multi-step problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.