Third Grade Math with Confidence Instructor Guide
The Third Grade Math with Confidence Instructor Guide coordinates with two Student Workbooks.
- The Instructor Guide functions as the core of the program. It includes conversational and hands-on activities and games that teach the key skills and concepts.
- The two Student Workbooks (Part A and Part B ) provide lesson activities, practice, and review. Workbook Part A covers Units 1-8, and Workbook Part B covers Units 9-16.
Third Grade Math with Confidence covers everything your child needs to learn in third grade. Students learn to…
- Read, write, compare, and understand place value in numbers to 10,000
- Add and subtract numbers to 10,000
- Master multiplication facts (up to 10 times 10) and division facts (up to 100 divided by 10)
- Multiply one-digit numbers by multiples of 10
- Use addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to solve word problems (including two-step word problems)
- Find the area and perimeter of rectangles, squares, and shapes composed of rectangles
- Read, write, and compare fractions
- Identify simple equivalent fractions and add and subtract fractions with the like denominators
- Solve measurement problems involving elapsed time, length, weight, and capacity
- Identify right angles, rectangles, squares, and rhombuses
- Identify faces, edges, and vertices in 3-D shapes
What’s New in Third Grade?
If you used earlier levels of Math with Confidence, you’ll find a few changes in Third Grade Math with Confidence to match your child’s growing math maturity:
- Lessons are grouped into units, not weeks. Consequently, this gives you more flexibility with your schedule and allows the number of lessons in each unit to vary depending on what skills need to be covered. Each unit focuses on developing thorough understanding of one main concept, such as multiplication, area and perimeter, or fractions.
- There are 16 units in all. Units vary in length from 6 to 12 lessons, and there are a total of 144 lessons. The final lesson in each unit is an optional enrichment lesson. 128 are regular lessons, and 16 are optional enrichment lessons.
You’re welcome to adjust the number of lessons you teach per week to best fit your family’s schedule. Some families prefer to teach math 5 days per week, while others prefer to teach math 4 days per week and leave one day open for co-ops, errands, or field trips.
- Use the following guidelines to plan your year:
- If you teach 4 lessons per week and teach all the enrichment lessons, Third Grade Math with Confidence will take you 36 weeks.
- If you teach 4 lessons per week and skip the enrichment lessons, Third Grade Math with Confidence will take you 32 weeks.
- If you teach 5 lessons per week and teach all the enrichment lessons, Third Grade Math with Confidence will take you 29 weeks.
- If you teach 5 lessons per week and skip the enrichment lessons, Third Grade Math with Confidence will take you 26 weeks.
Use this list as a rough guide to planning your year, but don’t set it in stone. You’ll generally be able to cover one lesson per day, but you may occasionally find that you want to split a lesson over two days.
Author Kate Snow’s placement help for Third Grade Math with Confidence:
Children are ready to start Third Grade Math with Confidence if they can:
- Count to 1,000 by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s.
- Read, write, and compare 3-digit numbers.
- Understand place-value in 3-digit numbers
- Know the addition and subtraction facts mostly be heart. (Children should be able to recall the answers to most within 3 seconds of so.)
- Know how to use place-value strategies to solve mental math problems like 55+37, 36+8, 90-42, or 74-6
- Know how to add and subtract two and three-digit numbers with the standard written process. (You might know this method as “stack method” or
- “borrowing and carrying.”)
(Note that this is the bare minimum list of skills your child should know before starting Third Grade Math with Confidence. It is not a full list of everything covered in Second Grade Math with Confidence.)
If your child is not fluent with the addition and subtraction facts but knows the rest of the skills listed above, he is probably ready to begin Third Grade Math with Confidence. Make sure to add 5 minutes of daily addition and subtraction facts practice to each lesson until your child becomes more fluent with the facts.
