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Third Grade General Studies
Curriculum
 Language Arts
Third grade students read fiction and nonfiction and give personal responses to their reading and write book reports. For an example of a “mystery” book report, where the student wrote three possible endings and then had classmates try to guess the correct ending based on the report's summary of the plot, look here. Third graders listen to a variety of fiction and nonfiction selections, use syntactic cues to decode meaning, analyze literature, develop organized writing skills including complete sentences, organized paragraphs, capitalization, spelling, and dictionary use. Students write short stories and short reports and explore various forms of poetry. To see an example of a third grade poem, click here.
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In third grade, each week one student is chosen to be “mensch of the week.” (Mensch is Yiddish for a kind, caring, responsible person.) At the beginning of the week that person is interviewed by his or her classmates. During the week each student writes an essay about the student drawn from both the interview and day-to-day observations of ways that the student positively contributes to the class and school community. At the end of the week the student is presented with a book that includes photos of the student doing things he or she enjoys, classmates' essays, and a colorful cover. Through this process, students discover the gifts that each individual student brings to the class and practice the essay form at the same time.
Technology is integrated into the classroom and the language arts curriculum through, e.g., the students' preparation of Power Point Book Reports. (To see, you must have PowerPoint loaded on your computer. Click "Slideshow" from the top navigation and then "View Show").
Mathematics
Third graders add and subtract to four places, learn multiplication facts through ten, extend multiplication and division fact families to multiples of 10 and 100, begin use of algorithms to solve multiplication problems with one, two and three digits, start whole-number division, solve number stories using prior knowledge, are able to measure in inches to the nearest 1/4 inch and in centimeters, can find area and perimeter of geometrical figures, understand decimals to the thousandth place, use graphing (including pictographs, bar graphs, and line graphs), and can interpret data on a graph.
 Social Studies
Topics include history of Ann Arbor, mapping skills, and current events. Students learn about American states and produce a report on a selected state. For an example, look here. Third graders can measure time by decades and centuries and can summarize the sequence of events about the community, locate points on a map, and identify reliable research information using many different sources.
Science
Topics include water, solar system, biomes, and nutrition. Students compare and contrast the characteristics of the sun, moon, and earth, identify familiar organisms as part of a food chain or web, understand the water cycle and the properties of water, study the food pyramid and how it affects our bodies.
See Link to third grade curriculum map.
See third graders' scores on standardized tests.
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