Third Grade

List of 5 items.

• Language Arts

  In third grade, our students learn to be lively and attentive readers and effective and articulate writers. Our language arts program is designed to foster a love of literacy and literature while giving each student the tools they need to succeed. Our differentiated program helps students focus on key strategies that lead to improved comprehension and fluency.
  
  Monthly Book Share projects introduce a new literary genre to students each month. After reading a book, students will create a project and present their work at the end of the month with an oral presentation.
  
  Students conduct in-depth literature studies, which focus on plot, character development, vocabulary, and the voice of each author. Our comprehensive reading program promotes vocabulary development, reading fluency, and grammar skills in a differentiated learning environment. Spelling is taught through the reinforcement of spelling rules using phonics, reading, and writing.

• Math

  The third grade year begins with concepts of place value, which are an essential foundation. Mastery of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers is a goal of third grade math. Students take weekly timed tests on the addition and subtraction facts and later focus on multiplication and division for the rest of the year. Elapsed time and using customary and metric units of length, capacity, and weight are part of the measurement study. Students explore angles, lines, rays, area, and perimeter during geometry. Fractions and mixed numbers are identified on number lines, compared, and manipulated using addition and subtraction. Graphing, problem solving, and working with algebraic concepts are woven throughout each unit of the third grade curriculum.

• Science

  Third grade utilizes the Amplify curriculum. 
  Third graders begin the year exploring forces. In the Balancing Forces unit, students work to investigate and then explain how inventions such as a floating train and hoverboard seem to defy logic. The students create physical models, diagram models, and write scientific explanations detailing how the floating train works. The third graders end the unit with the creation of marble runs. 
  The students then become meteorologists as they work for a fictional Wildlife Protection Organization to discover the best location for an orangutan preserve in Borneo. They analyze how scientists follow weather patterns over space and time as they collect, analyze, and represent weather data. They then use their own patterns found on three fictional islands to determine the best placement of the orangutan preserve. At the end of the unit, the students create their own hurricane houses and see if their construction can withstand hurricane-force winds.  
  Finally, the students become wildlife biologists as they study how organisms get their traits. Third graders are left with the task of determining how fictional Wolf 44- who is different from the rest of his pack, got its traits. They explore similarities and differences in the traits of two different wolf packs to draw a conclusion.

  
  The third graders also enjoy exploring our All Saints garden. Students examine different kinds of seeds from fruits and vegetables, plant seeds, and carefully observe and record the plants as they grow.

  
  

  STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education is an important part of the All Saints curriculum. Of the twenty fastest growing career fields in the United States, fifteen of them require a STEM education. It is widely recognized that the United States needs to do a better job of preparing its students to be able to integrate skills and knowledge in these four fields, not only to prepare those who will end up working in a STEM-related career, but to prepare all of its students to grow into informed citizens, able to make wise decisions on the many public issues involving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

   

  All Saints math, science, and technology teachers work together to ensure that, at all grade levels, All Saints students “do STEM.” Presented with a problem to solve, students brainstorm in small groups, using their science, math, and technology skills, to design and engineer a solution to the problem. They test their design, and, if necessary, re-engineer it before presenting their solution to their classmates. Among the many STEM design challenges students undertake are roller coasters, spirometers to measure lung capacity, cardboard furniture to hold classmates, rain gauges, bird feeders, electrical circuits, bridges, and oil spill cleanup systems. In addition to the design challenges, students routinely integrate their math and technology skills into their regular science lessons.

   

  STEM education is not only fun for students, but it also teaches them the importance and value of creativity, collaboration, flexibility, and communication, important traits for 21^st century citizens.

• World Languages

  Class instruction is held in Spanish. The focus in lower grades is placed on developing oral communication and conversation skills. Songs, stories, games, poems, and props are used to encourage children to participate actively in speaking the language. T.P.R. (Total Physical Response) Storytelling, a method that permits immediate comprehension of the input as students listen to and mimic the phrases in the target language, is used in grades 1 - 5. Students enact dialogues and readings, focus on conversational skills and expand their knowledge of Hispanic countries through poetry, songs, and readings.
  Students delve into the world of feelings, clothing, family, fruits, and vegetables. The fruit and vegetable unit results in a scavenger hunt in our very own organic garden where students put their language skills to the test. The third graders ultimately venture on a field trip to a local farm stand where they purchase produce using a dialogue they have learned entirely in Spanish.

• Social Studies

  The primary goal of third grade social studies is to gain an understanding of the culture, lifestyle, and traditions of those who first inhabited the Monterey Peninsula. These studies emphasize the geography and rich environmental resources of this region of California and encompass a demonstration of how cultures change over time. The class studies the Ohlone Indians, a tribe of Native Americans who prospered in this area for over a thousand years. Native American studies conclude with a project in which each child creates a project inspired by the Ohlone people. Their creations are shared in the annual “Ohlone Village Open House.” Students then study the early explorers of Monterey County and its history. Emphasis is placed upon the cultural changes these individuals brought to the area and their influence on the Native Americans living on the Monterey Peninsula.