+ Science + Social Studies

In third grade, students turn outward from learning about themselves to explore the world around them. We begin by learning about the word community and what is means. Examining several types of communities starting with the classroom and school community, we soon widen our lens to include students’ hometown communities. They each research their own hometown and create a town book highlighting the important places located there.

Students also examine the differences and similarities between rural, suburban, and urban communities. Integrating science, language arts, and engineering into our thematic units, students design and build skyscrapers at home and in the classroom, construct working elevators, and create a mock city within the classroom with fictional characters about whom they write small-moment stories.

Our year concludes with the students learning about a community in a different historical period, the Middle Ages. Their culminating project is a Medieval Morning celebration for which each student researches their role using nonfiction texts, takes notes, and drafts scripts to describe their characters and position in medieval society. In coordination with the Music and Dance program, students narrate their script, perform the recorder, and demonstrate a stick dance for families during the event.

+ Language Arts

Third graders begin the year learning the routines of reading workshop. They identify ways to choose books, learn how our library is organized, learn the many fiction and nonfiction genres, use a reading notebook, and practice strategies to select books that are “just right.” Upon setting these reading routines in place, students meet in small, literature-based, guided reading groups to focus on specific skills. Whole class units of study are also included. During our Mystery unit, students learn to make inferences and predict outcomes. In our poetry unit, the students learn about and experiment with descriptive language, personification, and similes. Lastly, aligning with our medieval study, we explore fairy tales. Students identify the elements of this classic genre, consider how culture affects fairy tales and why there are different versions, and write their own version of a familiar fairy tale.

+ Mathematics

We introduce third graders to a wide range of math concepts. Students begin with a review of our base-ten number system and their addition and subtraction strategies and learn place values up to 1,000,000. They move on to multiplication, fractions, decimals, and percents. They practice measuring with rulers and scales and learn the relationship between an ounce, a cup, a pint, a quart, and a gallon. In a plane geometry unit, they identify points, lines, line segments, rays, angles, planes, parallel lines, perpendicular lines, and polygons.

We contextualize mathematics using real-world scenarios. These may include finding multiplication arrays on skyscrapers or in the grocery store, locating types of angles around the school building, or identifying parallel and perpendicular lines on a city map or in artwork. Students also play math games with partners to practice fact fluency or explore math concepts. Students are always encouraged to use language to explain their mathematical thinking.

+ Social/Emotional

Twice a week we engage the third graders in a lesson from our Open Circle social/emotional curriculum. We gather in an open circle—open because we include one extra space to underscore that there is always room for another voice and no one is ever left out—for a short lesson and conversation and a story or an activity. As an example, in the Strengthening Relationships unit they practice giving compliments that are true, specific, and positive and receiving compliments with a thank you and a smile. They discuss how it feels to be excluded and why people sometimes exclude others, and they practice some ways to include or help others who are left out. The children also consider what it means to cooperate and identify the skills that are needed, such as sharing, taking turns, staying calm, and agreeing on roles. A Chair for My Mother, by Vera Williams, works well to generate a conversation about cooperation.

+ Spanish

In third grade, la clase de español becomes more rigorous. Students are expected to express their needs, to greet each other, and to talk about classroom places and materials with little to no teacher support. In their introducciones unit, they review vocabulary for greetings, basic needs, and the classroom. They also learn how to talk about what they did (in the past) and what they are going to do over the weekend. When they review the Spanish classroom vocabulary, they attempt to make an aerial map with labels. They finish the unit by looking back at a comprehensive vocabulary list, identifying their own weaknesses, and making flashcards for extra practice.

By the end of third grade, students should be confident initiating greetings; talking about the classroom, their homes, their families, the weather, and nature; and discussing people, businesses, and services within communities.

+ Visual Arts

Third graders create many individual and collaborative pieces that compliment explorations prompted by our theme “Where Am I Going?” They construct 3D “dream towns,” which might be rural, suburban, or urban, using paper maché, recycled materials, and tempura. As a class, they create a mural that celebrates animals of the world. When they are finding palindromes using the hundred chart in math class, in art class they create symmetrical, intricate, and colorful visual palindromes. When they are learning about adjectives in language arts, in art class they draw monsters and the five adjectives that describe their monsters are part of the composition. Third graders explore depth of field by creating oil pastel landscapes in the manner of David Hockney. Finally, they work together to create art for our medieval morning.

+ Music

In music class at GUS, third graders: perform basic technique for playing the recorder; relate pitch and rhythm notation to the playing of an instrument; read, sing, and play a repertoire of recorder tunes based on the G major pattern, the pentatonic scale, and the C major scale; relate classical music to a timeline, and listen to classical music selections in class and at a Cape Ann Symphony concert; build a repertoire of seasonal and community songs; learn about the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) and the Native American flute; and learn about the origins of musical notation in the medieval period.

The “Where Am I Going” theme is expressed through the study of music of different world cultures, the exploration of musical notation in the medieval period, and the study of the recorder, an early medieval instrument.

Third graders perform in all-school Grand Friends’ Day, Solstice, and May Day celebrations. In addition, the class performs a full program of recorder selections, narrations, and a Morris stick dance (medieval origins) for the culminating Medieval Morning.

+ Dance

In dance class, students create, express, communicate, and secure confidence through the study of movement. They participate in exercises that foster creativity, challenge them physically and expressively, require teamwork, develop identity, promote problem solving, and require that they describe their creative process. Children gain body awareness, coordination, locomotor skills, musicality, and choreography techniques through formal and improvisational modern dance lessons.

When third graders are learning about maps and mapping, in dance they learn about the trail or pathway a dancer travels through space, and they create a pathway dance map, indicating beginning and end, patterns of movement, and visual cues so another person can perform their dance.

+ Physical Education

If the PE teacher assesses that a class is ready in terms of their skill level and ability to follow rules, third graders begin to play some team-oriented games, such as sideline soccer. As always, all students participate in all activities and we encourage them to strive for their own personal best and to measure their improvement against themselves and not others.

+ Technology

Beginning in third grade, students learn typing and word processing to enhance writing across the curriculum and to become proficient in using both MS Word and Google Docs. Student engage in projects in which they conduct research, collect data, and present their results to the whole school in colorful displays that include text, photos, and graphs. For their research, students use library resources, the Internet, video collections, and EBSCO databases. They cite resources with Easybib and create spreadsheets, graphs, digital photography, slideshows, and video presentations.

+ Community Service

As their community service, third graders compost for the entire school. They begin the year by learning about the purpose and process of composting and what food items can and cannot be composted. They create posters and share this knowledge with the school. Then, every day, the third graders empty the compost bins in each classroom, faculty room, and kitchen carrying the compost to the school’s recycling area. Third graders also tour Brick Ends Farm in Hamilton, MA to see what happens to compost on a large scale.