Curriculum Update September , 2018

Science:

The next Science Unit to be covered in Grade 3 is Rocks & Minerals. Please click on the link Rocks & Minerals to access suggestions of books, websites, and short videos.

Remember, research shows that having prior knowledge of the academic vocabulary that will be covered will help students to grasp concepts faster.

Language Arts:

Students will begin units on nonfiction reading and writing.

As we begin the writing unit, students will focus on:

• Collecting and organizing information
• Structuring a nonfiction text with a table of contents
• Drafting a non-fiction text focusing on main idea and details

For reading, students will focus on:

• Previewing nonfiction text to predict what the text will be about
• Reading nonfiction text and summarizing main ideas and details
• Monitoring and comprehending new information being learned from a text

Math:

In the next couple of weeks, students will develop their measurement sense by measuring lengths with standard units—in both the U.S. customary system and the metric system. Children will practice reading a ruler to the nearest inch, nearest 1/ 2 inch, nearest 1/4 inch, and nearest centimeter as they measure a variety of objects, including parts of their own bodies, such as their hand spans, wrists, necks, and heights. In addition to the inch and centimeter, children will also measure with other standard units, such as the foot, yard, and meter. Children will begin to use certain body measures or the lengths of some everyday objects as personal references to estimate the lengths of other objects or distances. For example, a sheet of notebook paper that is about 1 foot long can help children estimate the length of a room in feet.

Children will also discover the meaning of area by tiling small rectangles with blocks and counting how many blocks cover the rectangles. Children see how to calculate area by tiling larger surfaces, such as tabletops and floors, with square feet and square yards. In the last part of this unit, children will explore the circumference and diameter of circles.