Lower School (K-5)
Third Grade
Megan Littlefield
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Third Grade Overview
As an educator, I am filled with a great sense of responsibility. I have the rare opportunity to open my students’ minds, to teach them to think critically, love fiercely, and ultimately, not to judge, but instead, to be curious. I am passionate about inspiring and empowering children to succeed as intelligent, confident, well-rounded, and socially aware contributors in their communities. I aspire to equip students with skills that are essential for participating in the twenty-first century: critical thinking, creativity, initiative, inclusivity, and leadership. I support my students by fostering and inspiring them to develop their skills and imagination to better our world. Being a teacher provides a meaningful opportunity to provide my students with a good education that is not only academically rigorous, but also equips them with resilience and valor in the face of stress, a sense of craft in their work, a devotion to justice, caring in their social relationships, and an enthusiasm for advancing the public good.
Core Subjects
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Language Arts
Writing
My students are exposed to a variety of writing. The opening unit extends students’ work with personal narrative while engaging them more fully in the complete writing process, with increasing emphasis on drafting and revising their work. They will also explore nonfiction writing by turning to texts as their teachers. Children work in clubs to gather, synthesize, and organize information about animals, and then use this information to seek solutions to real-world problems. Third graders use their newfound abilities to gather and organize information to persuade people that the causes the children believe in matter, like stopping bullying, recycling, and saving dogs at the SPCA. Third graders use familiar fairy tales to explore techniques of fiction writing such as writing in scenes, employing an omniscient narrator to orient readers, using story structure to create tension, and crafting figurative language to convey mood.Reading
Through a workshop model reading program, I am able to support the crucial transition children make from learning to read to reading to learn. The opening unit launches my students’ lives as upper elementary school readers. Children ramp up their reading skills by immersing themselves in within-reach fiction books while working on word solving, vocabulary development, envisionment, and prediction. In third grade, they will address essential skills for reading expository nonfiction, such as ascertaining main ideas, recognizing text infrastructure, comparing texts, and thinking critically, as well as the skills for reading narrative nonfiction, such as determining importance by using knowledge of story structure. Third-graders spend time with fiction books, learning to closely observe characters, make predictions, and sharpen their skills in interpretation. -
Math
In third grade, my students will develop mathematical thinking and reasoning abilities through problems and investigations in the areas of number, operations, algebraic thinking, measurement, data, and geometry. Some of these problems and investigations grow out of ventures into everyday life, while others delve more deeply into the world of mathematics itself. Students are encouraged to explore, develop, test, discuss, and apply ideas: to see mathematics as something that is fluid, vibrant, creative, and relevant. This year, students focus intensively on the three critical areas: (1) developing understanding and fluency with multi-digit multiplication, and developing understanding of dividing to find quotients involving multi-digit dividends; (2) developing an understanding of fraction equivalence, addition and subtraction of fractions with like denominators, and multiplication of fractions by whole numbers; (3) understanding that geometric figures can be analyzed and classified based on their properties, such as having parallel sides, perpendicular sides, particular angle measures, and symmetry. -
Social Studies
Third grade social studies teaches students about communities, both local and in the wider world. My students will spend a majority of their time answering the essential questions: “What were some of the first communities in the United States?”, “How did those communities live?” and “Where are they now?” As students learn, think about, and compare these aspects of different communities, they both learn more about the world around them as well as improve on their analysis, writing, and reading skills. Third graders have the ability to understand the greater communities beyond their own, as well as question and analyze the facts they learn, making social studies an ideal outlet for them to develop their critical thinking skills.
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