Curriculum Guide
Third Grade

RELIGION

We Believe, We Are the Church 3, Sadlier Publishing Company.
The third grade religion focus is primarily on the church.  The students begin by learning about Jesus and how the church began.  They then learn of the early church, the four marks of the church, and about how a local parish is structured.  Sacraments are an important part of the third grade curriculum, as well as the celebration of the Eucharist.  Finally, the students are taught about discipleship and how they can continue the work of Jesus today.

MATHEMATICS

Connections, Heath Mathematics.
The students become proficient in counting, ordering, money and time.  They are given practice in problem solving strategies as well as deciphering word problems and patterns.  Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts, as well as computation skills are emphasized.  Work with collecting and organizing data, fractions, patterns, measurement, decimals, and geometry is developed significantly.

SCIENCE

Science Horizons, Silver Burdett Ginn.
Third grade science focuses on providing students with learning experiences that relate science to their world through various hands-on experiments, in addition to activities and knowledge provided by the text.  The students study units throughout the year that include the plant and animal world, matter, simple machines, sound and light, the solar system, and weather.

 

LANGUAGE
ARTS

Imagine That! and Picture This!, Scott Foresman Reading
The reading series used by the third graders begins with Finding My Place.  The theme then develops into The Whole Wide World, Getting the Job Done, From Past to Present, Are We There Yet? and finally Imagination. kids.  The many skills learned by the third grade students include drawing conclusions, sequence, graphic sources, realism and fantasy, summarizing, generalizing, visualizing and predicting.  The students learn the difference between fact and opinion, as well as comparing and contrasting, and using context clues when reading.  They begin to identify story elements, theme, main idea, setting, and plot.
Grammar and Spelling are each a part of the reading series.  The Spelling each week is based on phonetic words used within each story.  Practice is given to prefixes, suffixes, contractions, compounds, various vowel sounds, homophones, blends, and capitalization and punctuation.
Grammar is another part of the Scott Foresman series.  The students are given much practice in nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  Understanding sentence and phrases, kinds of sentences, subjects and predicates, capitalization, and quotations are also emphasized.  The students master each concept through practice in the workbook provided by the publisher.
Handwriting- Let’s Learn to Write 3, Peterson Handwriting.  The students improve the overall appearance of their cursive writing by practicing spacing, neatness, slant and rhythmic letter formation and connections.

SOCIAL STUDIES

Social Studies Communities, Scott Foresman.
Third grade social studies compare the various communities of the world including rural, suburban, and urban.  People are also a topic of this curriculum.  The focus is on the movement of people, their celebrations, environment, where communities begin, as well as the rights and responsibilities of citizens in the United States.  History of communities and resources are also taught this year, along with the importance of map skills.