FIFTH SIX WEEKS OF 3rd GRADE
Focus
The focus of the fifth six weeks is to reassess students in reading and writing, we will
continue working on using the writing process to compose expository essays (explain why).
Instructional Approach
During this six weeks we will practice making connections across texts. Students will also
work on their individual reading strategy and reading stamina. During writer’s workshop, we
will use the writing process to write expository essays (explain why) and work on our writing
stamina. We will also continue to read, interpret, and analyze poetry.
Family Support
You can help your child in several ways.
 Reinforce the need for daily reading in a variety of genres at his/her “just right” level.
 Engage in discussion with your child about his/her reading.
 Ask your child how they can connect one text to another
 Encourage your child to write/tell you about their opinion and explain why.
Focus
During the fifth six weeks, third graders will understand that people have choices in how they
earn, spend, and save their money. People are motivated to pay for goods or services based
on various factors such as quality, cost, convenience, and popularity. They will learn that
profit is a measure of success and production cost should be less than the sales price.
Students will see that there is a relationship between the market price of a product and its
supply and demand in a free enterprise system.
Instructional Approach
Students will name ways they can earn, spend, save, and donate money. They will use this
information to create a simple budget. The concept of scarcity will be explored as students
explain the impact it has on the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and
services.
Next, students will complete activities to understand how businesses operate in the U.S. free
enterprise system. They will identify individuals, past and present, who have started new
businesses. These individuals include Henry Ford, Mary Kay Ash, Wallace Amos, Milton
Hershey, and Sam Walton.
To show their understanding of the free market system, students will create and advertise a
product. They will buy and sell their products during a class market day and reflect on the
adjustments they could make to make more profit in the future.
Family Support
You can help your child in several ways.
 Discuss the meaning of the terms: income, earnings, budget, savings, charitable
donations, spending, needs vs wants, long and short term goals.
 Share examples of scarcity that you’ve experienced and the choices it caused you to
make.
Focus
During this unit your child will be learning about different environments and the interactions &
cause/effect relationships of the living and nonliving things within them.
Instructional Approach
We will be researching different environments through the internet and our school library. The
students will research the interactions of the organisms in each. We will learn how the
animals and plants depend on one another for energy and how there can be changes to
environments and the things living within them due to major events such as flooding and
droughts.
Family Support
You can help your child in several ways.
 Take some time to observe wildlife in your area. Go to a nearby park or even watch
videos of animals in their natural habitats.
 Have your child record their observations of things that can cause environmental
changes, both locally and globally. (This can be done by watching the weather channel
and/or going online to find articles and videos on environments).
Focus
In this six weeks your child will be problem solving with fractions. Students will be
representing fractions, including equivalent fractions with concrete objects, and pictorial
models including strip diagrams and number lines. They will also be comparing fractions with
the same numerator or denominator.
Instructional Approach
Last year, your child learned how to partition and name objects in equal sized parts. They
learned that the more fractional parts used to make a whole, the smaller the parts and that
the fewer the fractional parts, the larger the part. This year, students will be building off of that
knowledge in order to explain what a unit fraction is, how to decompose a fraction as a sum
of its parts, and how to represent equivalent fractions using objects and pictorial models.
Students will also be working on their reasoning and communication skills in order to justify
why one fraction may be larger or smaller than another.
Family Support
You can help your child in several ways.
 While in the car, mark the passing of time with fractions. “We are one-third of the way
there.” Or, “it will take us 20 minutes to get to practice. In how many minutes will we be
halfway there?”
 Let the students explore with measuring cups and spoons. Have them discover how many
⅙ there are in ⅓ or how many ¼’s are in ¾’s.
 Practice skip counting by unit fractions up to a given number. For example: ⅚- ⅙, 2/6,
3/6, 4/6, ⅚. There are five ⅙ in ⅚. Or, 3/3- ⅓, ⅔, 3/3. There are three ⅓ in 3/3.
More information about math can be found on the Third Grade website.
Ways to Represent Fractions
Concrete Models
Linear Models
Decomposing into Unit Fractions
Area Models
Pictorial models
Representing Equivalent Fractions
Important Math Vocabulary
Numerator-This number tells the number of parts you have. It is the top number in a fraction
Denominator- This number tells the number of fractional parts an object or set has been separated into.
It is the bottom number in a fraction.
Equivalent- an equal value
Unit fraction- a number with a numerator of 1 and the denominator greater than 1