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    Curriculum Overview

     

     

     

     

    Curriculum in all of the third grade classrooms follows the Common Core

    (Arizona College and Career Readiness) Standards.
     

    Writing

     

    Next to reading, writing should be the most exciting skill to improve on this year. Students will build their basic writing and spelling skills through mini lessons and activities to become more effective writers. There are many aspects of writing that we will focus on this year. 

     

    The first is the writing process itself. The students will have an ongoing writing folder which holds the assignments they will be working on each day to improve familiarity with the writing process. The focus for the writing process includes: 

     

                                  Prewriting                                     Editing                               Writing

                                  Publishing                                     Revising 

     
     

    Another focus in writing is grammar. Students will understand how to recognize and form a complete sentence with subject and predicate, follow basic capitalization rules, proofreading strategies, and other grammar terms like: 

     
                            

                               Subject/verb agreement                                     Prepositional phrase                                                                   

                                           Punctuation                                                         

     

    An additional focus in writing is spelling.  Words Their Way will be used to meet each student's spelling needs.  Students will practice their spelling words through word sorts.  There will be a variety of activities for student to practice with at school and home.  Words Their Way focuses on spelling phonemic patterns and spelling rules, such as: 
      

                               vowel patterns                                                       dropping the final ‘e’            

                                           changing final ‘y’ to ‘i’                                         doubling final consonant
                                           syllables                                                                 prefixes and suffixes
                                            
     

    The students should learn the spelling pattern and apply their knowledge to other words following this same pattern.  This will be a little different than memorizing a spelling list.  Into Reading will teach children to spell words that may not necessarily be on their practice list.

     
    One more focus in writing is working to include the six recognized traits to a well written piece. These are:
     

                         Ideas                                                 Word Choice                                  Organization           

                                     Sentence Fluency                             Voice                                               Conventions 
     

    Lastly, there are many different types of writing. In third grade, we will be working on some or all of these genres: 

     

                                 Argumentative/persuasive                                  Narrative

                                 Informative/explanatory texts                            Comparison/Contrast

                                 Cause/effect                                                          Description