Colorado Calvert Academy Third Grade
Course Materials
What Your Child Will Learn in Third Grade
Reading
Reviewing phonics skills, structural analysis, syllabication, irregular plurals, suffixes, prefixes, and possessives; reinforcing skills using anthologies, Reader’s Library, and Smiling Hill Farm; identifying main ideas; drawing conclusions; making inferences; differentiating between fact and opinion; making generalizations; predicting outcomes
Reading biographies of famous Americans, including explorers, presidents and humanitarian leaders, scientists, writers, and artists
Phonics
Expanding long and short vowel sounds; beginning and ending sounds; prefixes and suffixes; diphthongs; combinations, blends, and digraphs; plurals; syllables
Spelling & Vocabulary
Reinforcing correct spelling through daily exercises and spelling strategies; reviewing commonly misspelled words; introducing cross-curricular words; integrating spelling with phonics, vocabulary studies, reading, and writing
Composition
Developing organized writing skills; completing four lessons each week; building skills in basic grammar, punctuation, correction, letter writing, and journaling
Mathematics
Featuring Calvert Math. Addition, subtraction, multiplication (to 9s), and division; reading and writing numbers with place values through 100,000s; comparing fractions; equivalent fractions; decimals to hundredths; pictographs; bar graphs; coordinate points on grids; tree diagrams; rounding; word problems; Roman numerals; regrouping in addition and subtraction; money and time; introduction to statistics, probability, and graphing measurement; units of weight; volume; temperature and linear in metric and customary systems
Science
Introduction to life cycles of organisms; force and motion; matter as a solid, liquid, and gas; heat and light; the solar system; erosion and natural resources; animal ecosystems; health and nutrition
Technology
Application lessons, activities, and online interactive learning tool integrated with curriculum: developing keyboarding, touch typing, and word processing skills; spreadsheet basics; graphing in spreadsheets; e-mail and Internet use; database searches; visual mapping; introduction to presentation software. Internet activities integrated with Reading and Science texts.
Poetry
Memorizing; reading for pleasure; writing original cinquains and haikus
Mythology
Understanding myths and legends of Greece as foundation for literature appreciation
Social Studies
Communities – studying world and U.S. communities. Learning about kinds of communities; rural, suburban, urban; moving to new communities and learning new customs; the meaning of good citizenship; core values of freedom and roles as future guardians of America’s freedoms
Geography
Strengthening map skills; understanding symbols; graphs and grids; longitude; latitude, directions, natural resources, U.S. map, lakes and land boundaries; geography themes; place, regions, movement, location, and Human/Environment Interaction.
Art
Learning techniques in drawing, perspective, and color
