Third Grade Curriculum
Reading/Language arts
This area includes handwriting, the skill of writing, reading, and spelling. Zaner—Bloser is the handwriting style we have adopted. Cursive writing is practiced three days per week until Spring Break. After Spring Break the students use cursive writing on all work through the end of the year. A half hour 3 times a week is devoted to writing. Students will learn new writing skills and polish those already taught. The students create a writing portfolio throughout the year. Spelling words are given out on each school week to practice at home. Pre tests are given on Tuesdays. The post tests are given on the following Monday. We cover six reading themes throughout the year. They are titled Good Citizens, Express Yourself, Learning Lessons, Extreme Nature, Going Places and Novels. We continually work on reading strategies such as, comprehension, decoding, phonics, vocabulary, spelling, grammar, writing, listening/ speaking/viewing, and information and study skills.
Math
A very large focus of third grade math is multiplication. It is introduced in October and continued throughout the entire year. Other units in our math curriculum include: Reviews, Assessments, Adding & Subtracting Whole Numbers, Money and Time, Measures Area and Perimeter, Division, Place Value in Whole Numbers and Decimals, Geometry, Fractions, Measurement, Data and Probability
Religion
The topics covered include: The Church, Sacraments, Mission to the World, Feasts and Seasons, Our Catholic Heritage and Scripture
Social Studies
After reviewing globes, maps, and different kinds of maps we study the following topics: Communities around us, Communities and Geography, Communities over time, Citizens and Government, People in communities, Working in communities
Science
In science we use a combination of hands on experiments mixed with book work. We cover the topics of Life Cycles, Earth and Space Science – Weather and space, Physical Science – Matter, Force and Energy Human Body Systems
Technology
The focus includes: Keyboarding skills, Microsoft Word in general, Windows operation, Internet Skills and Microsoft PowerPoint
Arts
Theme: Media, techniques, Visual Arts, other disciplines and processes
Fall Themes, Winter Themes, Spring Themes and Liturgical Themes
Artistic communication and expression – Picturing America, paintings and drawings
Fall Themes, Winter Themes, Spring Themes and Liturgical Themes
Artistic communication and expression – Picturing America, paintings and drawings