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Third Grade

Welcome to Third Grade

Hello Families,

Welcome back Panthers! From all of us third-grade teachers, we would like to welcome you back to a new school year! We are excited to start this new journey with you and our third graders. This year is a very important year in your child’s academic career. With the F.A.S.T. that the students are required to take, there is a lot of hard work ahead. To ensure our third graders have a successful year there are some things you can do at home to help them:

  • View and sign student’s planner.
  • Review homework with student.
  • Review corrected assignments with student.
  • Communicate with teacher.
  • Have students to read every night.

At HCES you will find a dedicated team of third-grade teachers. We have a vast background of teaching experience and skills, which we use to meet the needs of all third-grade students. Together, we plan and prepare curriculum that will meet the needs of all students in the areas of English Language Arts (and Spanish Language Arts for our Dual Language students), Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies.

With student’s first time seeing the F.A.S.T., third-grade is a crucial year in building independent learners. Our day consists of 90 minutes of reading which includes whole group and small group instruction. We also have a 45-minute math block where we work in whole group, small group, and independent instruction. We also go over science and social studies skills and STEM activities.

It is very important to make sure our students are successful this year, we would like to see them become more independent as well.

We thank you for all that you do and we are very excited to be working with our new third graders this year!

Sincerely,

Your Third-Grade Teachers

A green pencil icon on a white background. Third Grade Supply List

 

A green icon depicts a person presenting to an audience in front of a whiteboard.Third Grade Teachers

 

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    Ms. Perez – Team Leader | ELA
    Partner Teacher to Ms. Gioia

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    Ms. Gioia – Math | Science | Social Studies
    Partner teacher to Ms. Perez
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    Ms. Juncal – TWDL Spanish Teacher
    Partner Teacher to Ms. Usme

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  • A woman with long, auburn hair smiles at the camera.

    Ms. Usme – TWDL English Teacher
    Partner teacher to Ms. Juncal
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  • A woman with long brown hair smiles at the camera.

    Ms. Berros – ELA
    Partner Teacher to Ms. Prehay
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    Ms. Prehay – Math | Science | Social Studies
    Partner teacher to Ms. Berros
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  • Ms. Plowright – Singleton
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A stack of three books with green covers. English Language Arts

ELA Standards

  • Reading

    Reading skills are taught and practiced for 90 minutes every day. The reading skills that are taught are based on the Florida B.E.S.T. Standards. Students will be assessed at the end of each unit on these standards. Students will have reading homework every day.

    Reading Skills

    Some of the important skills that students will work on are:

    •             Text Organization

    •             Central Message

    •             Theme

    •             Making Generalizations

    •             Analyzing Characters

    •             Drawing Conclusions

    •             Sequencing

    •             Making Inferences

    •             Comparing & Contrasting

    •             Story Structure

    •             Making Claims

    •             Text Features

    •             Connecting illustrations to text

    •             Perspective

    •             Summarizing


    Writing/Language Arts

    Written communication skills are strongly emphasized in the third-grade. Informative, argumentative, and narrative writing will be worked on throughout the year, and mastering grammar conventions will be one of our goals this year.

    Language Arts / Writing Skills:

    •             Narrative, Expository and Argumentative Writing

    •             Paragraph structure

    •             writing with supporting evidence and elaboration

    •             Grammar

    o             Sentence formation

    o             Correct punctuation

    o             Grade-level grammar

    o             Cursive Writing

    • Read a Variety of Texts: Build an at-home library of children’s stories, non-fiction texts, magazines, recipes, comics, etc.
       
    • Choose Appropriate Books: Help your child pick books that are not too hard but not too easy.
       
    • Read to Your Child Every Day: Model good reading strategies to your child by reading a few minutes each day.
       
    • Have Your Child Read to You Every Day: Spend 15-20 minutes listening to your child read to you before they are tired.
       
    • Talk About It: Ask your child questions about what they read.
       
    • Have them retell the story in their own words including a description of the characters and setting and what happens in the book (beginning, middle, end, problem, solution).
       
    • Practice Text Tracking: If your child is an early reader, encourage them to point to each word.
       
    • Reread Favorite Books: Repeat favorite books over and over to build reading fluency.
       
    • Reading Apps: Download reading apps for your device.
       
    • Practice Decoding Strategies: If your child is having trouble figuring out a word, remind them of the following strategies:
      • Eagle Eye-Look at the pictures for clues.
      • Lips the Fish-Get your lips ready and say the first sound.
      • Stretchy Snake-Stretch out the sounds and then shrink them back together.
      • Chunky Monkey-Look for chunks in the word that you know and then blend the words together.
      • Skippy Frog-Skip the word and then go back and re-read.
      • Tryin’ Lion-Try it again.
      • Helpful Kangaroo-Ask for help!

  • Image of a guide for Florida's B.E.S.T. Standards for Grade 3 English Language Arts.

  • A vertical banner displays 'Florida's B.E.S.T. Standards' in bold text.

A green icon displays mathematical symbols: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Mathematics

Math Standards

  • Math

    Math skills are taught and practiced for 45 minutes every day. The math skills that are taught are based on the Florida B.E.S.T. Standards and will be assessed at the end of each unit on these standards. Third-grade students are expected to be fluent with their multiplication facts. Students will be tested on these facts until they prove they are multiplication masters!

     

    Math skills:

    Some of the important skills that students will work on are:

    • Pre-Algebra
    • Fractions
    • Geometric Figures
    • Place Value
    • Elapsed Time
    • Multiplication and Division
    • Area and Perimeter
    • Multi-Step Word Problems
    • Multi-Digit Addition and Subtraction
    • Measurement

  • A vertical banner displays 'Florida's B.E.S.T. Standards' in bold text.

A green illustration of a microscope on a white background.Science

Science Standards

An illustration of a government building with an American flag.Social Studies

Social Studies Standards

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Health Standards