Colorado Calvert Academy Third Grade Virtual School
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
