Religion

Blest are We School Edition RCL Benziger
Structure and Method: Our religion text is based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church which gives an orderly presentation of the essential doctrines of the Catholic faith, morals, and practices. These doctrines are taught through text discussions, small group work, and prayer formation.

The Third grade students focus on the topics of the Church As One; the Church As Holy; the Church As Apostolic; and the Church As Having a Mission to the World. Within each area of study, scripture, liturgy, the teaching of social justice, and prayer are emphasized.

Language Arts/Lit/Writing

Journeys Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Structure and Method: Daily lessons are practiced in the student’s work throughout the curriculum. The writing process is also used to practice and improve language skills.

Third grade students learn and practice grammar, usage, and mechanics skills from sentence structure, parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and pronouns), and capitalization and punctuation. The writing process includes writing narratives, stories, expository, expressing opinions, and writing to persuade. Most forms of writing begin with brainstorming, move onto first draft, then editing, proofreading, and final copy. Students also learn vocabulary-building tools that include synonyms, antonyms, prefixes, and suffixes.

Literature

Structure and Method: Grade Three students will become independent and proficient readers through small group reading of the text selections and discussions, the introduction and use of vocabulary words, and comprehension building strategies.

Students will be able to develop comprehension skills by using research skills; context clues; chronological order; and drawing conclusions. They will have knowledge of sequencing; story elements, main idea/details; author’s purpose; and problem/solution; theme; fact/opinion; and cause/effect. They will be able to predict; self-question; check other sources and make connections with their work. Students will be able to complete words studies with spelling and vocabulary words. Students will improve fluency and prosody with reading up to 128 words per minute. Students will use reference materials to build vocabulary as well as knowledge of synonyms and antonyms, classification, structure and comparison.

Writing

Students will be able to write using various genres of text; narrative, recount, expository, persuasive, and descriptive and a research report. Students will correct spelling and punctuation conventions as well as the editing and revision process when writing. Students will be able to abbreviate, understand subject-verb relationship, noun-pronoun agreement, verb tenses, irregular plurals, comparative and superlative adjectives, and adverbs.

Math

GoMath! Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Structure and Method: The students will learn Math through practice of concepts taught in daily lessons, the use of manipulatives, real world experiences and multi-media technology.

The third grade students will review the place value of digits; how to compare, order, and round whole numbers, the value of money, how to count and compare money, and how to count back change; and to be able to add and subtract whole numbers. The students will demonstrate the understanding of graphs and analyzing data; probability; multiplication and division concepts and facts; telling time and temperature; customary and metric measurements; fraction concepts and practice; and decimals.

Science

Scott Foresman Science (along w/Mystery Science as supplemental hands-on lessons).

Structure and Method: Daily text lessons are supplemented with multi-media technology, various concept maps, and participating in small hands-on experiences and small experiments. Scientific thinking is promoted in a process that includes making observations and developing a hypothesis recording and analyzing information and drawing conclusions. Cross-curriculum activities keep students aware of how science is a real world subject.
Students will learn how to classify living things; understand the roles of living things; and the relationship of the Sun, Moon, and Earth.

Social Studies

Communities Adventures in Time and Place Macmillan/McGraw Hill

Structure and Method: Students will be introduced to and become familiar with the types of global communities through sequencing; predicting; comparing and contrasting; visual aids; technology; and cross-curriculum activities.

Students will gain an understanding of many types of communities beginning with what a community is; communities and geography; the uniqueness of communities across our nation and around the world; and governments at the local, state and national level. Students will learn how communities continually change due to new technology and ever changing needs; and how producing goods, jobs and money relate to individual communities. Students also learn how to use timeline and map skills.