3rd Grade

Third Grade Newsletter 2025-2026

Reading Module 5: 

What can sports teach us about working together?

 

Reading: In this module, students will listen to, read, and view a variety of texts 

and media that present them with information about the concept of teamwork. 

 

This genre focuses on realistic fiction and provides students with opportunities to identify literary elements, author’s craft, and theme in order to better understand unfamiliar texts. Students will also encounter narrative nonfiction and videos to build knowledge across genres. 

 

Skills and Strategies Taught in This Module: Author’s Purpose, Ask and Answer Questions, Literary Elements, Theme, Author’s Craft, Make and Confirm Predictions, Figurative Language, Text Structure, Point of View

 

Vocabulary Focuses:

• Suffixes: -er/-or; -er/-est; -ment

• Greek Root: bio; Latin Root vid

• Homographs/Homophones
• Shades of Meaning

 

Home Connections: 

Discuss the Topic: Set aside time daily for your child to share with you what he or she is learning. Use these ideas to help build your child’s knowledge about the topic: 

• Talk about the ideas your child has added to the Knowledge Map each week. 
• Ask about the texts your child is reading, and what he or she has learned from them.
• Share with your child your own questions about the topic, and work together to find the answers.

 

Explore the Genre: The genre focus in this module is realistic fiction. Discuss with your child the characteristics of this genre. Ask your child to read to you each day and make time to read together.

 

 Look for texts that: 

• Spark your child’s curiosity. 
• Tie to the module topic. 
• Reflect real-life problems and situations. 
• Feature true-to-life characters who use teamwork to solve a problem.

Writing Module 5: Argument/Persuasive Letter  

In this module students will write a letter persuading a new student to be their friend. Students will use persuasive language to give supporting details about why the new student should be their friend. 

Skills and Strategies Taught in This Module: Using the writing process to pre-write, draft, revise, edit, and publish their piece.  Students will use a friendly letter format as they work to add persuasive elements & language to persuade their reader.

Reading Module 6: Animal Behaviors

 

Reading: In this module, students will listen to, read, and view a variety of texts and media that present them with information about animal survival. A genre focus on nonfiction provides students with opportunities to identify the author's purpose, central idea, and text structure in order to better understand unfamiliar texts. As students build their vocabulary and synthesize topic knowledge, they will learn more about the way animals utilize behaviors and characteristics, or traits, to help them survive.

 

Vocabulary Focuses: 

• Prefixes: uni-, bi-, tri-, un- 
• Suffixes: -ly
• Vocabulary Strategies: Reference Sources: Thesaurus, Homographs/Homophones

 

Home Connections: 

Discuss the Topic: Set aside time daily for your child to share with you what he or she is learning. Use these ideas to help build your child’s knowledge about the topic: 

• Talk about the ideas your child has added to the Knowledge Map each week.
• Ask about the texts your child is reading, and what he or she has learned from them.
• Share with your child your own questions about the topic, and work together to find the answers.

Explore the Genre: The genre focus in this module is nonfiction. Discuss with your child the characteristics of this genre. Ask your child to read to you each day and make time to read together.

Look for texts that: 

• Spark your child’s curiosity.
• Tie to the module topic.
• Provide interesting facts and details about animal behavior.
• Have unique formats and visuals that take readers into an animal’s world.

Writing Module 6: Informational Text: Expository Essay

In this module students will think about the animals that live outdoors throughout the year. They will then conduct research and write an expository essay about an animal who uses special skills to live outdoors year round.

Math: Area & Multiplication

       Students will develop a deep understanding of the concept of area.  Beginning with concrete models and then moving to pictorial and abstract models, students come to understand how area is related to multiplication and addition.  

       Area is defined as the number of unit squares needed to cover a region with no gaps and no overlaps.  Students count unit squares to find the areas of a wide variety of shapes.  Students  continue to cover shapes with nonstandard square units and learn that the size of the unit square determines the area measurement.  Students begin using standard units (square inches, square feet, square centimeters, square meters) to find the areas of squares and rectangles.  

       Students find the area of a rectangle with whole-number side lengths by counting unit squares, and then show that the area is the same as would be found by multiplying the side lengths.  They find the areas of rectangles with whole-number side lengths in real-world and mathematical contexts, and they also find a missing side length given the area of a rectangle and one dimension.  

       Lastly, students use area models to represent the Distributive Property in mathematical reasoning.  Students learn that area is additive.  They break apart irregular rectilinear figures into non-overlapping parts and add the areas of those parts to find the area of the original figure.  Most of these problems can be solved in several ways.  Students learn that they can also use subtraction to find the area of irregular rectilinear  shapes.  Addition and subtraction have similar relationships to area because addition and subtraction are inverse operations.

Home Connection:  

During this unit you can help your child understand Area & Multiplication by 

• Practicing multiplication facts 
• Reviewing how Multiplication and Addition relate to one another. 
• Continue to work on IXL skill plans 

Materials: notebook, enVision Volume 1 book, Math Tools that include: cubes, unit tiles, array boards, multiplication skip counting chart,

Science:

 In the Environments and Survival unit, students assume the role of biologists studying a population of grove snails to understand how the snails’ traits influence their survival in a changing environment. Students apply what they learn to plan, make, and test designs that solve problems. Reporting to the lead engineer at an engineering firm, students work to explain why the snails with yellow shells in the population aren’t surviving as well as the snails with banded shells. Motivated to figure out why some snails are more likely to survive than others, students use physical models, read informational texts, analyze data, and engage in student-to-student discussions to investigate factors affecting organisms’ survival. Students write scientific explanations about their findings to communicate ideas back to the engineering firm. At the end of the unit, to help the engineering firm design a robot that aims to reverse the effect of an environmental change, students use their newfound understanding of how the traits of organisms affect the organisms’ survival.

Social Studies: 

In this unit students will identify the role of the individual and how their role can play a part in our local as well nationwide government. In 1958, political scientist Harold Laswell offered a simple definition of politics. Politics, he observed, “decides who gets what, when and how.” In employing such an expansive definition, Laswell highlighted the way in which politics remains at the center of all human interaction impacting everything from gas prices and access to education, to the cost of health care.

By studying the role of government, students gain vital knowledge about how the world works, all the way from their city or town to the global community. This is especially important in the United States. As a nation rich in diversity, continually undergoing major demographic changes, American unity is grounded in a shared political culture represented in the broad patterns of ideas, beliefs, and values about citizens and government that people agree are important.

Art: Students will connect to their HMH module by creating animals. Students will learn how to draw different types of animals and to create the shapes of their bodies, specific details, and how to add texture. Students will create backgrounds connected to the animal's environment.

Music: Students in Third Grade will be beginning to prepare a musical story as a stage presentation for families. Their work will connect to their previous “Stories on Stage” unit. Performances for each of these stories will take place in February. Students in class 301 will be learning the musical story “Kitty Cat Capers.” Students in class 302 will be learning the musical story “Arf: A Canine Musical of Kindness.” 

SPARK New Victory Theater:

All students in third grade are participating in our partnership with SPARK New Victory Theater. Teaching artists from the theater will be leading our students in fifteen workshops on theater. The students will be learning a unit about Character Development and Puppetry to tie to their previous HMH unit “What a Character.”

Physical Education: 

Third grade students continue to develop their physical fitness and sports skills in physical education through engaging games and activities. They are practicing skills such as running, jogging, dribbling, throwing, balancing and catching while learning game rules, teamwork, and good sportsmanship. We are focusing on working together to complete tasks and learning how to be more successful when we work as a team to accomplish a task or activity. PE class encourages third graders to stay active, challenge themselves, and build lifelong healthy habits.

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