Online Class: Third Grade Curriculum

Third grade is a crucial time when children start to master communication skills. As students have refined their vocabularies and writing techniques, teachers can provide them with the activities, guidance and space to strengthen those skills to communicate their thoughts and feelings.

Third graders begin to master basic academic skills and become stronger in their cognitive abilities. This is a good time for teachers to keep in mind new scientific research showing that passive lecturing should not dominate the classroom structure. While there are times instructors need to impart certain information to the entire classroom, teachers really need to re-think how that information is delivered.

What some call an "active" or "interactive" style of teaching allows students to consider and reflect on the information provided, experiment with the new knowledge, and share their own ideas and approaches. Throughout this course, we provide tips and activities for active teaching, in each of eight academic areas: reading, writing, math, science, social studies, art, music, and drama.

We also provide highlights of national common core standards in each of the academic areas, as well as overview of relevant curriculum and teaching theories. This course is designed to provide general information about third grade curriculum; teachers should keep in mind that each state and each school district maintain their own standards and requirements.

Courses Frequently Bought Together:

How To Be a Substitute Teacher

Building Children's Reading Skills

Course Motivation

Academic Needs  

The first and second grades are often viewed collectively. In fact, some schools combine the classrooms of the early primary years. Third graders begin to master basic academic skills and become stronger in their cognitive abilities. 

The fledgling skills of reading and writing combine to allow children to begin to use their powerful new skills to learn at a deeper level. As Education.com describes it, kids begin to move from "learning to read" to "reading to learn," and from "learning to write" to "writing to communicate." 

At this stage, the thinking required to convert letters into sounds has become mostly automatic, so students can focus on the meaning of the text that they are reading. Children become readers that are more fluent. Their vocabulary expands and they can read longer and more complex material.  

In third grade, students can write at a more complex level. They can spell many words correctly now, and they understand the stages of the writing process. Their use of language will improve, including mastering basic grammar and style rules. They will also work to edit and revise their own writing.

Because the basics of reading and writing are now more comfortable, the discipline of social studies can become a more prominent topic. Teachers can capitalize on children's natural interest about people, places, and times by using stories to teach about different cultures, past and present. At this level, the teaching in part focuses on imparting knowledge, but it also seeks to lay a foundation for more sophisticated learning later.

Third grade is an important year for mathematics concepts. At this stage, the curriculum moves from simple computation to skills that are more complex. In science, students are encouraged to channel their innate curiosity into asking questions and seeking answers. Students should be given chances to collect and analyze data from their own mini-experiments.

While students will be taught more sophisticated critical thinking skills, Education.com stresses that at this age, children have accumulated enough experiences that they can make more use of common sense.  Educators can praise kids for using common sense to solve problems and expect them to be able to work out some problems by themselves.