Leveled books are used to give students a balanced program and the children gain in confidence and expertise. Writing continues to be emphasized and students are expected to begin editing some of their work by the end of the year. Spelling begins to be more standardized as students build a fund of words that they are able to spell correctly. Third grade poses many challenges as students' reading material becomes longer and more complex. The anthologies are used routinely as are a selection of books around social studies and science themes.
Students do much more writing and a lot of it centers around social studies and science.
More types of writing are expected such as book reports, writing logs, research papers, letter writing of many types and writing in math. Computers Fox School is fortunate to have 12 new iMacs in the building. Eleven of them are in classrooms while 1 is in the computer lab along with thirteen other Macintosh computers. Classroom use varies from teacher to teacher but all have been implementing the newly written Technology curriculum. Several third grade students have become so proficient at word processing, that they can type 45 words per minute and use the computer to create their stories without doing any writing by hand.