3rd Grade Standards

READING

Key Ideas and Details

  • Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.
  • Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text.
  • Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events

Literary Organization and Structure

  • Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.
  • Refer to parts of stories, dramas, and poems when writing or speaking about a text, using terms such as chapter, scene, and stanza; describe how each successive part builds on earlier sections.
  • Distinguish their own point of view from that of the narrator or those of the characters.

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

  • Explain how specific aspects of a text’s illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)
  • Compare and contrast the themes, settings, and plots of stories written by the same author about the same or similar characters (e.g., in books from a series)

Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

  • By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poetry, at the high end of the grades 2-3 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

Fluency

  • Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
  • Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

WRITING AND LANGUAGE

Text Types and Purposes

  • Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons.
  • Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.
  • Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

Production and Distribution of Writing

  • With guidance and support from adults, produce writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task and purpose.
  • With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, and editing.
  • With guidance and support from adults, use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding skills) as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

Research to Build and Present Knowledge

  • Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic.
  • Recall information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources; take brief notes on sources and sort evidence into provided categories.

Range of Writing

  • Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Conventions of Standard English

  • Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
  • Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

Knowledge of Language

  • Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening.

Vocabulary Acquisition and Use

  • Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning word and phrases based on grade 3 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.
  • Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships and nuances in word meanings.
  • Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate conversational, general academic, and domain-specific words and phrases, including those that signal spatial and temporal relationships (e.g., After dinner that night we went looking for them).

SPEAKING AND LISTENING

Comprehension and Collaboration

  • Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.
  • Determine the main ideas and supporting details of a text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
  • Ask and answer questions about information from a speaker, offering appropriate elaboration and detail.

Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas

  • Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.
  • Create engaging audio recordings of stories or poems that demonstrate fluid reading at an understandable pace; add visual displays when appropriate to emphasize or enhance certain facts or details.
  • Speak in complete sentences when appropriate to task and situation in order to provide requested detail or clarification.

MATH

Mathematical Practices

  • Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
  • Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
  • Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
  • Model with mathematics.
  • Use appropriate tools strategically.
  • Attend to precision.
  • Look for and make use of structure.
  • Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

Operations and Algebraic Thinking

  • Represent and solve problems involving multiplication and division.
  • Understand properties of multiplication and the relationship between multiplication and division.
  • Multiply and divide within 100.
  • Solve problems involving the four operations, and identify and explain patterns in arithmetic.

Number and Operations in Base Ten

  • Use place value understanding and properties of operations to perform multi-digit arithmetic.

Number and Operations—Fractions

  • Develop understanding of fractions as numbers.

Measurement and Data

  • Solve problems involving measurement and estimation of intervals of time, liquid volumes, and masses of objects.
  • Represent and interpret data.
  • Geometric measurement: understand concepts of area and relate area to multiplication and to addition.
  • Geometric measurement: recognize perimeter as an attribute of plane figures and distinguish between linear and area measures.

Geometry

  • Reason with shapes and their attributes.

MEDIA/TECHNOLOGY

Integration

Digital Citizenship

SOCIAL STUDIES

Social Studies Skills

  • SSS1: Uses critical reasoning skills to analyze and evaluate claims.
  • SSS1.3.1 Explain the purpose of documents and the concepts used in them.
  • SSS1.3.2 Evaluate if information is well accepted and relevant, or if information is clear, specific, and detailed.
  • SSS2: Uses inquiry-based research.
  • SSS2.3.1 Use a graphic organizer to organize main ideas and supporting details from a variety of print and non-print texts.
  • SSS2.3.2 Explain how and why compelling questions are important to others (e.g., peers, adults).
  • SSS3: Deliberates public issues.
  • SSS3.3.1 Engage others in discussions that attempt to clarify and address multiple viewpoints on public issues based on key ideals.
  • SSS4: Creates a product that uses social studies content to support a claim and presents the product in a manner that meaningfully communicates with a key audience.
  • SSS4.3.1 Draw conclusions using clear, specific, and accurate examples in a paper or presentation.
  • SSS4.3.2 Give clear attribution to sources within writing or presentations.
  • SSS4.3.3 Use distinctions between fact and opinion to determine the credibility of multiple sources.

Civics

  • C1: Understands key ideals and principles of the United States, including those in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and other foundational documents.
  • C1.3.1 Recognize the key ideals of unity and diversity.
  • C1.3.2 Recognize and apply the key ideals of unity and diversity within the context of the community.
  • C1.3.3 Use deliberative processes when making decisions or reaching judgment as a group.
  • C1.3.4 Identify core virtues and democratic principles found in classroom and school rules.
  • C2: Understands the purposes, organization, and function of governments, laws, and political systems.
  • C2.3.1 Describe the basic organization of government in the community or city.
  • C2.3.2 Identify the basic function of government and laws in the community or city.
  • C2.3.3 Explain the reasons for rules in the home or in school, and compare rules and laws in the local community.
  • C2.3.4 Describe ways in which people benefit from and are challenged by working together, including through government, workplaces, voluntary organizations, and families.
  • C3: Understands the purposes and organization of tribal and international relationships and U.S. foreign policy.
  • C3.3.1 Explain that tribes have lived in North America since time immemorial.
  • C3.3.2 Know and understand that tribes have organizational structures (councils, chairman, etc.) that are formed to benefit the entire tribe.
  • C3.3.3 Explain how tribes of North America work to help the people of their tribes.
  • C4: Understands civic involvement.
  • C4.3.1 Recognize that civic participation involves being informed about public issues, taking action, and voting in elections. 
  • C4.3.2 Explain the many ways people become knowledgeable about issues in their communities: they read, discuss, communicate, and vote. 
  • C4.3.3 Demonstrate that voting is a civic duty.

Economics

  • E1: Understands that people have to make choices between wants and needs and evaluate the outcomes of those choices.
  • E1.3.1 Identify the costs and benefits of individual choices.
  • E1.3.2 Identify positive and negative incentives that influence the decisions people make.
  • E.1.3.3 Describe how individual choices are influenced by various cultural norms.
  • E2: Understands the components of an economic system.
  • E2.3.1 Recognize how the economic systems of groups are influenced by community and cultural laws, values, and customs.
  • E2.3.2 Identify examples of the variety of resources (human capital, physical capital, and natural resources) that are used to produce goods and services.
  • E2.3.3 Explain why individuals and businesses specialize and trade.
  • E2.3.4 Explain the role of money in making exchange easier.
  • E2.3.5 Explain how profits influence sellers in markets.
  • E2.3.6 Identify examples of external benefits (acquired relationships) and costs (things given up).
  • E2.3.7 Describe the role of financial institutions in an economy.
  • E3:  Understands the government’s role in the economy.
  • E3.3.1 Describe how local taxation supports one’s community. 
  • E3.3.2 Explain the ways in which the government pays for the goods and services it provides.
  • E4: Understands the economic issues and problems that all societies face.
  • E4.3.1 Identify the positive and negative impacts of trade among and between cultural groups.
  • E4.3.2 Explain how trade leads to increasing economic interdependence among cultural groups.
  • E4.3.3 Explain the effects of increasing economic interdependence on different groups within participating cultural groups.

Geography

  • G1: Understands the physical characteristics, cultural characteristics, and location of places, regions, and spatial patterns on the Earth’s surface.
  • G1.3.1 Examine and use maps and globes to understand the regions of North America in the past and present.
  • G1.3.2 Investigate the physical, political, and cultural characteristics of places, regions, and people in North America, including the location of the fifty states within the regions of the United States.
  • G2: Understands human interaction with the environment.
  • G2.3.1 Explain how the environment affects cultural groups and how groups affect the environment.
  • G2.3.2 Examine the cultural universals of place, time, family life, economics, communication, arts, recreation, food, clothing, shelter, transportation, government, and education.
  • G2.3.3 Compare the traditions, beliefs, and values of cultural groups in North America.
  • G3: Understands the geographic context of global issues and events.
  • G3.3.1 Explain that learning about the geography of North America helps us understand cultures from around the world.

History

  • H1: Understands historical chronology.
  • H1.3.1 Create timelines to show events connected to their cultural identities.
  • H1.3.2 Compare the similarities and differences between their own cultural timelines and those of others.
  • H1.3.3 Use timelines to explain the context of history.
  • H2: Understands and analyzes causal factors that have shaped major events in history.
  • H2.3.1 Demonstrate how contributions made by various cultural and ethnic groups have shaped the history of the community and world.
  • H2.3.2 Explain probable causes and effects of events and developments locally.
  • H3: Understands that there are multiple perspectives and interpretations of historical events.
  • H3.3.1 Recognize and explain that there are multiple cultural perspectives through a study of important individual or major events.
  • H3.3.2 Explain connections among historical contexts and people’s perspectives at the time.
  • H3.3.3 Describe how people’s perspectives shaped the historical sources they created.
  • H4: Understands how historical events inform analysis of contemporary issues and events.
  • H4.3.1 Recognize and explain how significant cultural events have implications for current decisions.
  • H4.3.2 Use evidence to develop a claim about our past community’s history.
  • H4.3.3 Summarize how different kinds of historical sources are used to explain events in the past.

SCIENCE

Physical Science

  • 3-PS2-1 Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object
  • 3-PS2-2 Make observations and/or measurements of an object’s motion to provide evidence that a pattern can be used to predict future motion.
  • 3-PS2-3 Ask questions to determine cause and effect relationships of electric or magnetic interactions between two objects not in contact with each other.
  • 3-PS2-4 Define a simple design problem that can be solved by applying scientific ideas about magnets. *

Life Science

  • 3-LS1-1 Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death.
  • 3-LS2-1 Construct an argument that some animals form groups that help members survive.
  • 3-LS3-1 Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exists in a group of similar organisms.
  • 3-LS3-2 Use evidence to support the explanation that traits can be influenced by the environment.
  • 3-LS4-1 Analyze and interpret data from fossils to provide evidence of the organisms and the environments in which they lived long ago.
  • 3-LS4-2 Use evidence to construct an explanation for how the variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing.
  • 3-LS4-3 Construct an argument with evidence that in a particular habitat some organisms can survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all.
  • 3-LS4-4 Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there may change. *

Earth and Space Science

  • 3-ESS2-1 Represent data in tables and graphical displays to describe typical weather conditions expected during a particular season.
  • 3-ESS2-2 Obtain and combine information to describe climates in different regions of the world.
  • 3-ESS3-1 Make a claim about the merit of a design solution that reduces the impacts of a weather related hazard. *

Engineering Design

  • 3-5-ETS2-1 Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
  • 3-5-ETS2-2 Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
  • 3-5-ETS2-3 Plan and carry out fair tests in which variables are controlled and failure points are considered to identify aspects of a model or prototype that can be improved.

RELIGION

KNOWLEDGE OF THE FAITH:

Students explore, profess, and reflect on our Catholic Faith, which is the content of God’s revelation found in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition and lived out in the Creed and Church doctrine.

LITURGICAL EDUCATION: 

Students recognize the presence of Christ and enter into communion with Him through active, full and conscious participation in the Liturgical celebrations and Sacraments of the Church.

MORALITY / LIFE IN CHRIST: 

Students develop a moral conscience that is informed by Church teachings and conformed to Christ, as modeled in a personal life of virtue and demonstrated in service of the Gospel’s demands for society.

TEACHING TO PRAY: 

Students experience and engage in Catholic expressions of prayer to deepen their relationship with God and the Church.

THE LIFE, COMMUNITY AND HISTORY OF THE CHURCH: 

Students study and participate in the life and mission of the church, the Body of Christ and the community of believers, as expressed in the Church’s origin, history, ecclesiology, the Communion of Saints and their family, the domestic church.

THE CHURCH’S MISSIONARY LIFE AND SERVICE: 

Students acquire and demonstrate skills to recognize their gifts from God and their vocation to share the good News of Jesus Christ in word and deed in the world.