Your potential is our passion.
Third Grade
In the third grade classroom, students continue to build upon their earlier academic and social lessons as they move from the primary to the intermediate grades. The students begin to establish and develop a sense of community on multiple levels, create and maintain a comfortable social environment where community members feel safe and valued, and expect outstanding citizenship of themselves and others in order to make the school community an outstanding place. With continued emphasis on the Keys to Citizenship program, the students are encouraged to exude respect, responsibility, kindness, honesty, and service.
At third grade the emphasis in reading shifts to reading to learn. In taking a metacognitive approach, readers are required to be aware of their thinking while they read. Each learner will cultivate a love of reading. Each learner will develop a greater command of the English language as a speaker, a listener, a reader, and a writer. Each learner will be exposed to various aspects/genres of oral and written language and literature. This metacognitive approach is also applied to writing as a craft. Each learner will consider their task, their audience, and their purpose when they create written composition. Each learner will create coherent paragraphs featuring a topic sentence and supporting facts/details. Each learner will follow the steps of the writing process in order to publish quality written work.
Back
In the third grade study of mathematics, students continue to build upon the skills and concepts previously learned. As is the case with reading and writing, a metacognitive approach to learning concepts and skills is emphasized. As a result, the children learn and understand various ways to solve math problems as well as learning and celebrating diverse mathematic ideas and strategies. Each learner will master addition facts, inverse subtraction facts, multiplication facts, and inverse division facts. Each learner will solve problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers. Each learner will use appropriate symbols and operations to represent, describe, simplify, and solve number relationships involving algebraic thinking.
The third grade social and cultural studies curriculum focuses on the concept of community, ranging in scope from immediate community to global community. In the study of various cultures and lifestyles, students learn to accept and celebrate differences among social groups. Many of the lessons and activities are inherently integrated with other academic subjects, including language and literature, music, library, computer, art, and Spanish. The social studies text serves as one of the primary resources in the study of expository writing.
Publications
Community
Laguna Blanca is Santa Barbara’s premier private, co-educational, college preparatory day school for students in Early Kindergarten through Grade 12.