Third Grade

For students at the Atrium, the third grade year is one of significant transition. With the days of “choice” time in the second grade in the rear view mirror, third graders face a more rigorous set of academic challenges and the responsibilities of daily homework. They are increasingly conscious of growing gender differences and how they appear to others, complicating the process of learning to work better in small and large groups. We challenge third graders to realize that they can break away from their core group of friends and successfully collaborate on projects, producing superlative work.

Cooperation, compromise, and caring carry the day, as we use role playing, discussions, and games to build bonds with each other and reinforce acceptance of all people. As we emphasize awareness of how actions affect others, students take responsibility of their actions.

For the Third Grade Theme, click here.

Classroom Structure

Literacy
In writers’ workshop the children write about topics they choose from a list of topic suggestions. We help them to think about events, activities, people or places they know well and topics they are interested in. The children share their stories with friends to get suggestions. This is a time when children can share their works-in-progress with a part of the class to get feedback. Teachers confer individually with children to help both with story construction and with the mechanics of writing at the level at which the child is working. These conferences inform mini-lessons and provide useful opportunities to individually assess the creative and mechanical aspects of each child’s writing. Grade-level-specific sets of expectations inform our work with all of the Explorer writers.

Readers’ workshop begins with the entire class gathered in the meeting area for a mini- lesson. During every mini-lesson we explicitly teach word solving and comprehension strategies. We talk about how to choose books that we will enjoy, about genres, series, authors, what kinds of writing make us want to keep reading, how to give a book a good chance, and when it is time to put a book down and pick another. We study fiction, various kinds of non-fiction, and poetry, nurturing and celebrating a love of reading.

All of our lessons are designed to teach children to be “good readers.” Good readers read for meaning, and have a wide variety of strategies they use to solve words. They learn to tell which books are “just right” for them. They reread sections that don’t make sense in the first reading, so that they always understand what is going on, asking for help as they need it. After the day’s mini-lesson, the children go to their special reading spots, where they read independently from books they’ve chosen and keep in their classroom book bins. This quiet stretch of time to read is something many children look forward to, and is a crucial part of becoming a great, independent reader. At this time, we confer with individual students, keeping close track of their progress, making sure they have “just right” books that hold their interest, and are teaching reading strategies.

Each 3rd grader is also part of reading group sometime during the year. Reading groups are small groups that meet to read the same book together. These groups are made up of children who are at a particular reading level or who have in common the need to learn a particular strategy. Much of the sharing and discussion in these groups mirrors that of adult book groups, and we purposefully choose books that we think each group will find engaging.

During word work, the class is engaged in becoming word solvers, learning how the English language works. We focus on a range of word knowledge, from short vowel sounds, to learning about vowel teams (such as “ea” and “ee”), to learning about spelling rhyming words and words with the same ending sounds. The children will find that if they can spell “black” then they can spell “snack” etc. We also work hard on learning how to spell non-phonetic words and a core of high frequency words. Word Work is a time of direct instruction as well as practice games. As much as possible, we try to make word work interactive and fun. As in other subject areas, our lessons and expectations are informed by specific grade level benchmarks, as well as by our knowledge of each child and where he or she needs extra practice or challenge. Word Work is taught by grade, and is also closely linked to the children’s weekly homework.

R.A.P.P.: Third graders work on a special research and writing project during some writers’ and readers’ workshop times in the first semester. R.A.P.P. stands for “Researching Amazing People (Places, or Things) Project.” By the end of this project they will:

• Know a lot more about their chosen topic
• Have lots of practice picking out what is important as they read, and writing down useful notes
• Know what a paragraph is and how to write one
• Know how to take other people’s ideas and put them into their own words
• Know how to use writing style and layout to get others interested in and excited about their topic.

When it is done, the project will take the form of a small “picture book” with at least 5 pages and a colorful cover designed by the student. Each student will have an opportunity to share his or her book with the whole class.

Mathematics
Math is taught in a workshop model similar to those used for reading and writing. We use the Investigations math curriculum developed by TERC (Technical Education Research Center). Children come together in their math meeting area to discuss a mathematical concept and then children work individually or in small groups on an activity or problem that’s appropriate for their level of understanding. Sometimes this means that children are working on the same problem and extending it according to their abilities. Other times, there are two or three choices of math problems that range in level of difficulty. Much of our math work is done in a hands-on way, with materials available for use throughout math times. The group comes back together toward the end of the math hour to share ideas and strategies, and to summarize the work done that day.

Science
We cover specific areas of Life and Physical Sciences as they relate to our overall theme, “What is a human being?” We become naturalists, recognizing our interdependence with the earth, with Willow Pond as our base of observation all year long. Our Willow Pond studies are often driven by the interests of the particular group (for example, in past years we have done bird and tree studies). In addition, our first semester focus will be a geology study, beginning with rocks and minerals and moving on to a study of the layers of the Earth and volcanoes. Related geography will also be incorporated into these studies.

Homework
We send the homework folder home every Monday, to be brought back on Friday. Students have four nights to practice spelling, fill out their reading log, and complete any additional homework.
Third grade requirements include weekly spelling sheets, memorization of spelling words, thirty minutes of reading twice a week, a journal entry and a math page. Extra credit is offered for students who enjoy the challenge of more homework, and children are able to decide if they want to do the extra credit on a week-by-week basis.