Students use the skills they learned in the lower grades – reading in English and Hebrew, writing, and basic math operations – as tools for acquiring new knowledge. They reinforce and extend their schoolwork with daily homework assignments and they undertake longer-term projects with greater independence and greater responsibility for their own materials and belongings. A milestone of the third grade is the students’ first experience with written external testing (the ERB/CTP).
Third grade continues to practice mental math facts and numeracy skills.
Third grade students take the ERB tests in the Spring. We work together as a team to prepare our students throughout the year, rather than creating a high-stress environment during the last nine weeks!
The Singapore Math curriculum focus strongly on problem solving, multi-step multiplication, long division, measurement conversion, along with simplifying, multiplying, and adding fractions.
As in all Elementary grades, third grade math is taught each day, both in the scheduled math class time but also during transition times and during segments of the day that yield the teachable moment.
Students continue to build upon the comprehension and decoding strategies that they learned in the lower grades. Units studied during the year include character, non-fiction, books in a series, book clubs, and poetry.
The students keep reader’s notebooks to help keep track of their thoughts and to record their predictions, inferences, and interpretations during book club and small group instruction.
In a workshop setting, they keep writers’ notebooks in which they use many styles of writing, such as personal narratives, informational books, poetry, reading response, and across-curriculum writing, including writing based on research.
3 rd graders are learning to write and read cursive script. Children who master this handwriting are better, more creative writers. The earlier we teach children to master handwriting, the more likely they are to succeed in school, and write with speed and ease in all subjects.
The third grade social studies program centers on the study of communities and their characteristics. We study communities from both the United States and abroad, as well as past and present.
Students learn how geography influences the economic development of a particular area. In addition, concepts related to government, citizenship, and history are introduced.
A special unit of study about the students’ own community, Houston, is included. An additional unit of study concentrates on map skills and geographical concepts.
3rd grade students research current events in our community. They then present the event to the class and conduct discussions and activities.
While the same skills will be taught throughout the grade, the depth in which students interact with the material will depend on one’s level. Students are given benchmark assessments at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year.
Students advance from simply learning about the weekly Parasha to work with important narratives from the Torah using a Standards-based approach.
The highlight of the third-grade Judaic experience is leading the Rosh Chodesh service, including Hallel, in the winter. In celebration of this achievement, third graders receive a JPS Tanach for use in their continuing studies.
In the classroom as well as in the lab, students will be taught the scientific method in order to perform investigations and interpret data.
They will perform an in-depth study of plants, specifically exploring how they grow as well as looking at a plant’s basic anatomy. In addition to making observations and collecting data, students explore how varying conditions impact a plant’s growth.
Students will develop an understanding of matter in its three basic states –solid, liquid, and gas. They will generate understandings of the properties of each state and apply them to the classification of various substances. In the process of gathering and applying evidence to support their hypotheses, they have repeated opportunities to revise their ideas and overcome common misconceptions.
It started out as a preschool with five students in a church located in the heart of Princeton. Growing rapidly, the school moved into a larger church.
Students will add greater dimension to their work and will experiment with and observe great works of art such as Picasso and a 3D picture in the style of Agam.
Students further learn the Kodaly songs, Solfege singing, music composition, and learning to play the recorder. Students sing in a group and in performances for our Thanksgiving, Grandfriends, Chanukah, Spring Showcase programs, and during their own Shabbat Service.
While the same skills will be taught throughout the grade, the depth in which students interact with the material will depend on one’s level. Students are given benchmark assessments at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year.
In 3rd grade students will learn to count from 0 – 39, learn the difference between “tu” and “usted” (informal and formal), gender (masculine & feminine nouns and adjectives), singular and plural, and definitive and indefinite articles. We will review and expand past vocabulary and learn more articles of clothing.
Through monthly thematic units from basketball to Jump Rope for Heart, we focus on age and skill-appropriate lessons four days a week for 30 minutes a day with a health class once a week.
