3rd Grade

Third Grade Newsletter 2025-2026

Summary of Module 4: Stories on Stage

Reading: Over the course of Module 4 we will read texts that will help us answer the Essential Question: Why might some stories be better told as plays? In this module, students will listen to, read, and view a variety of texts and media that give them information about the features of drama. 

This genre focus on drama provides students with opportunities to identify elements of drama and literary elements in order to better understand unfamiliar texts. Students will also encounter fables and videos to build knowledge across genres. 

Skills and Strategies Taught in This Module: Ideas and Support, Visualizing, Elements of Drama, Literary Elements, Figurative Language, Summarizing, Media Techniques, Retelling, & Theme

Vocabulary Focuses: 

• Prefixes: in- (not), im- (into)
• Suffixes: -er/-or (one who)
• Latin Roots: aud, vis
• Multiple- Meaning Words

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 drama. 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. 
• Include interesting characters, settings, and conflicts. 
• Offer opportunities to perform one or more scenes.

Module 4 Writing: Narrative Story

In this module students will write a story about someone in their lives who has made a difference in another person’s life.Skills and Strategies Taught in This Module: Writers will work through the writing process to prewrite, draft, revise, edit, and publish their stories.  Students will add narrative elements such as characters, setting, plot, theme, and dialogue to their writing.

Math Curriculum: Understand Multiplication and Division of Whole Numbers

       This module focuses on interpreting the meaning of multiplication and division, using patterns to begin to build fluency with multiplication facts, apply properties to multiplication and finally solve real world problems that involve these operations.  

       Students will begin by looking at the connection between addition and multiplication. Students learn that both repeated addition and multiplication can be used to represent situations involving equal groups. An equal group situation builds on students’ knowledge of addition, as it can be solved by adding equal sized groups. 

       Division situations that involve sharing are also equal group situations. The number of groups is known, but the number in each group is unknown.  Division is also used to solve problems in which the number in each group is known but the number of groups is unknown.  Students will work in situations involving an unknown number of groups to reinforce the connection between division using equal groups and repeated subtraction.

          Students will learn the different Properties of multiplication.  Starting with the Identity Property of Multiplication and Zero property of multiplication.  Moving onto the Distributive property .  Students use the Associative (Grouping)Property of multiplication to multiply with three factors.

       These different topics will help students understand that like addition and subtraction, multiplication and division have an inverse relationship.  Inverse operations “undo” each other.  Students will find patterns in multiplication and division tables that involve even and odd numbers. 

       At the end of this module students will solve real world problems involving both operations.  Students use visual models such as equal groups, arrays, tables, and equations to represent these situations. 

Home Connection: One way you can support this unit at home is adding real life connections when shopping or cooking with your child for example

• If we need 20 apples to make apple pie and there’s 5 in a bag - how many bags of apples do we need?
• If a milk carton costs $2 how much would we need to buy 4 cartons

Materials: Notebook, pencil, EnVision Volume 1 book, Math Tools that includes: Number Line, Counters, Dice)

Science:  Unit 2 Inheritance and Traits:

In this Unit, students  will assume the role of wildlife biologists solving the mystery of how one wolf got some traits that are similar to and some that are quite different from those of the rest of its pack. Students conduct investigations and analyze data in order to figure out patterns in traits between parents and offspring. They ask questions and obtain information as they read science texts about traits, relatedness, inheritance, and the influence of the environment on traits.

Home Connection:

One way you can support this unit at home is by looking at various organisms in your neighborhood, backyard or outside of your home. Observe and discuss how the organisms meet their needs, and the type of environment they are living in.  Why are some organisms  different from each other even though they are all the same species?

Social Studies Civics for All:  Rights, Responsibility and The Role of an Individual-

In this unit students will identify why we as individuals hold certain values, and how we also share similar values with others. Sometimes those shared values bring us together into a community. Conversely, sometimes members of a community have competing or even opposing values. Community does not just mean “neighborhood,” but in fact can refer to any number of common characteristics shared by a group, such as location, history, or even race and ethnicity. Students will be tasked with determining what aspects of their community are assets and considering what they would like to improve. Students will also stay informed with the issues affecting their community. They will explore their constitutional rights and the power of voting to change the needs and wants of their community on a local, state, and nationwide level.

Music Curriculum: 

Students in Third Grade will be beginning to prepare a musical story as a stage presentation for families. Their work will connect to their upcoming “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 and 204 will be learning the musical story “Arf: A Canine Musical of Kindness.” More information about these performances will be available soon. 

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.”

Ballet Tech: 

A small group of students who were selected by teaching artists at Ballet Tech have been learning about the fundamentals of Ballet. Students have been receiving instruction once a week at their studio location. The final sharing session for this program is on December 3rd 2025

Art Curriculum: 3rd grade artists will be able to identify the main elements of a story (character, setting, action) and translate them into a visual composition using color, line, and shape to convey mood, theme and emotion.

Student Voice: Check out our Module 2 Wrap Up

Link to MODULE WRAP UP