Third grade is a special year in a child’s educational career. At Middlefork, it marks a unique milestone as students wrap up their primary years and prepare for the transition to the 4th-8th grade campus at Sunset Ridge School.

In English Language Arts, third graders are making the shift from learning to read to reading to learn. In writing workshop, students develop drafting and revising skills by crafting personal narratives, synthesizing information for nonfiction chapter books, and writing persuasive speeches about meaningful causes. Additionally, social studies and science units provide meaningful opportunities for students to engage in inquiry-based learning of content and apply their knowledge, whether it’s designing habitats for their (live) animals to survive within, or discovering the motivations of groups who emigrate from one place to another, through the study of the Jamestown colony. These integrated units also require students to apply their reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills across the curriculum.

In Mathematics, mastery of the number sense skills taught throughout their primary years becomes critical as the academic expectations increase. The Math Learning Center’s Number Corner and Bridges programs serve as the cornerstone curricular materials supporting students in their development of multiplication, division, and fraction concepts, measurement skills (time, liquid volume, mass, area, perimeter), organizing and representing data, and geometric shapes and their attributes. We provide a rich problem-solving environment in which children solve different kinds of problems, explore solution strategies, explain their thinking to others, and make sense of each other’s thinking.

The social-emotional goals for third graders build upon their earlier experiences with continued opportunities to practice self-regulation, increase confidence, and to become more mindful of their own learning and feelings. Students hone their executive functioning skills by recording and tracking their own homework in their assignment notebooks. Above all, however, the focus remains on fostering the hearts and minds of the children every day.

Third Grade Highlights

Chromebooks

Bicycle Safety Unit

Patterns in Animal Survival

Forces and Motion

Multiplication & Fractions

Fairy Tale Writing

Book Clubs