Third Grade
Our teachers!
Liza Smith
651-982-8923
Alayna Westerman
651-982-8924
651-982-8925
Third graders have busy, full days at Columbus. Subjects of science, social studies, math and art. Science units involve hands-on, scientific method activities in the areas of water, chemistry/mystery powders, the environment, plants and animals, magnets and electricity. Our Star Lab, housed in the Media Center one month out of the year, offers students education on constellations and the night sky.
Social studies topics revolve around communities/ cities, Native Americans, the early settlers, geography, our government and national capital.
Students express themselves while working in our SMART curriculum by creating various art forms with a variety of media.
Columbus uses the Houghton Mifflin Communications curriculum. Students learn reading and language skills while at the same time delving into interesting themes such as Weather Watch.. Disasters... Community Ties... and What's Cooking? Third grade staff teach curriculum objectives in a multi-disciplinary approach, often teaching by integrating several content areas at the same time. It's very exciting that all of our third grade classes have interactive SmartBoards. Students and teachers enjoy manipulating and working with multi-thematic objects and lessons.
Investigations, our math curriculum, emphasizes problem solving, mathematical thinking, multiplication and division, geometry, measurement, data collection and graphing, fractions, addition and subtraction, and the base 10 number system as well as computation and basic math facts.