Third Grade

Essential Content

2nd reading

Guiding Question: Are All Students Working With Content Aligned to the Appropriate Standards for Their Subject and Grade?

Ensure that all students are working with content aligned to the appropriate standards for their subject area and grade. Each content area listed includes a summary of the priority standards that students should be able to demonstrate proficiency in by the end of kindergarten. These prioritized items are considered foundational understandings that students will build upon in first grade and beyond.

Priority Standards

What students will know, what students will do, and what thinking skills students will develop to apply and transfer understandings that endure within the discipline, leverage deeper understandings, and/or support readiness for success at the next grade level. These are the standards that should anchor and drive instruction.

 

Signature Elements

The practices, strategies, and routines at the core of teaching and learning within the content area/discipline.

Third Grade Standards

This is the list of third-grade standards found on the SFUSD report card. They represent understandings that endure within the discipline, leverage deeper understandings within the content area, and/or support readiness for success at the next grade level.

Arts
  • Engages and develops the ability to express self with increasing creativity, complexity, and depth through 2D and 3D
    visual art
  • Engages and develops the ability to express self through creative movement and creative expression
  • Engages and develops the ability to create music through instruments, voice, or with objects
Digital Learning
  • Makes choices independently about the most appropriate tools needed to complete a project
  • Uses presentation tools, multimedia, and public speaking to share learning with an audience.
  • Works collaboratively on projects using technology tools
English Language Arts
  • Recounts stories, identifies the main idea of informational texts and provides details
  • Compares and contrasts main points and details presented by two texts on the same topic
  • Writes narratives; establishes a situation, effectively uses narrative techniques, and provides a conclusion
  • Writes informative/explanatory pieces; introduces the topic, uses facts to develop points, and provides a concluding statement
  • Writes opinion pieces; introduces a topic, states a point of view supported by reasons, and provides a concluding statement
  • Reports orally on a topic with appropriate facts and details
  • Uses grade level phonics and more than one strategy to solve unknown words in a text
  • Uses grade level writing conventions for capitalization, punctuation, and spelling
  • Reads at grade level expectations
English Language Development
  • Contributes to discussions in all settings by asking relevant questions, and building on others’ ideas
  • Expresses an opinion to persuade and negotiate using expanded learned phrases in conversations in all settings
  • Listens actively to read alouds, presentations, and discussions by asking and answering detailed questions, restating and paraphrasing
  • Describes ideas, experiences, key text elements and details from a variety of grade level texts and multimedia
  • Understands and applies how writers and speakers use language
  • Knows and applies basic literacy skills in reading and writing
Health
  • Explains and practices positive peer and family relationships
  • Identifies and demonstrates health practices that reduce illness and disease caused by bacteria and viruses
  • Recognizes and demonstrates respect for individual differences in growth and development
History/Social Studies
  • Identifies geographical features, and uses map and charts to organize information
  • Describes the American Indian nations
  • Describes the sequence of major historical events in local history
  • Understands the role of rules and laws and the basic structure of the U.S. government
  • Understands and describes the economy of the local region
Mathematics
  • Reasons about problems, explains thinking, and considers thinking of others
  • Represents and solves problems involving multiplication and division
  • Uses properties of operations to fluently multiply and divide within 100
  • Solves problems involving the four operations using equations, patterns in numbers, and the reasonableness of the answers
  • Uses place value/properties of operations to fluently add and subtract numbers within 1000
  • Represents and explains fractions as numbers
  • Measures area and relates it to multiplication and addition
  • Measures perimeter and distinguishes it from/relates it to area
  • Categorizes shapes by their attributes and divides shapes into equal areas
  • Solves problems involving measuring time, volume, and mass
  • Makes, interprets, and analyzes a scaled picture/bar graph and a line plot using halves and fourths of inches
Physical Education
  • Throws and catches an object with a partner while increasing distance
  • Dribbles a ball while traveling and changing directions
  • Jumps rope continuously forward and backward
  • Identifies stretches that are safe versus unsafe
  • Names and locates the major muscle groups of the body
Science
  • Asks questions about variables that can be investigated based on patterns such as cause and effect relationships
  • Plans and conducts investigations collaboratively (using fair tests, controlled variables, and considering the number of trials), to produce data as the basis for evidence
  • Collaboratively develops and revises scientific models that show the relationships among variables within different systems
  • Applies scientific ideas when designing or building a device that solves a specific problem, and compares multiple solutions to a problem
Social-Emotional Development
  • Works/plays collaboratively with others
  • Regulates emotions and works with focus
  • Approaches challenges as learning opportunities
  • Accomplishes personal and academic goals
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Essential Content CORE Rubric Teaching Practices

Design Lessons that Advance Students to Grade-Level Standards and/or IEP Goals
  • Demonstrate knowledge of subject matter and academic content standards.
  • Address rigor and depth of standards.
  • Select appropriately demanding instructional materials, tasks, texts for grade/course and time in the school year based on guidance in standards, students’ language development, and/or students’ IEP goals (e.g. Lexile level and complexity of text).
  • Use developmentally appropriate practices.
  • Use subject-appropriate pedagogical practices, including those found in SFUSD curricula (Reader’s Workshop, Writer’s Workshop, Math Signature Strategies, ELD practices).
  • Explicitly address how English works through complex texts (i.e. text level, sentence level, phrase level, word level)
  • Develop and provide accommodations and modifications as needed to ensure all students are able to attain learning goals.
  • Address students’ IEP goals and other specific learning needs in developing learning goals and preparing lessons.
  • Design single lessons and sequences of lessons.
    • Develop a vision for student success and standards-aligned, long- and short-term goals that are ambitious, measurable, and appropriate for all students.
    • Develop and/or uses a long-term, sequential plan that leads to mastery of the most important content for the grade or course.
    • Develop and clearly communicate a well-framed, standards-aligned, and appropriately rigorous instructional objective(s) and language objective(s) to describe the goal(s) of the lesson.
    • Develop and/or use daily lesson activities that are well-sequenced and move students toward mastery of grade-level standards.
    • Develop and/or use appropriately demanding instructional materials, such as texts, questions, problems, exercises, and assessments.
  • Plan differentiated instruction considering students’ individual learning needs and levels of readiness, ensuring content is accessible to all students.
  • Anticipate common student misunderstandings given the content and ensure strategies are in place to overcome those misunderstandings.
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Teaches Lesson Content Accurately and Coherently
  • Explain and model accurate content, practices, and strategies, and all content necessary for students to achieve the learning goal(s).
  • Use explanations of content that are clear, coherent, and support student understanding of content.
  • Provide opportunities for engagement and identity exploration through a variety of creative, technological, and artistic forms and disciplines.
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This page was last updated on August 29, 2023