This parent guide supports parents in helping their child at home with the 3rd grade Science content.

This resource accompanies our Rethink 3rd Grade Science course. It includes ideas for use, ways to support exceptional children, ways to extend learning, digital resources and tools, tips for supporting English Language Learners and students with visual and hearing impairments. There are also ideas for offline learning. 

A 3rd-grade lesson plan that covers: Newcomer Writing using the 8 phases of explicit instruction for writing by Calderon and Slakk (2018): 1) Pre-teach the most important vocabulary; 2) Use a Mentor text for reading before writing; 3) Present the text structure to use; 4) Model it (Model each phase of the writing process); 5) Memorize it (Ensure that students memorize the language and steps of the strategy); 6) Support it (Scaffold according to student need); 7) Ample use of student interaction (Collaborate and cooperative writing strategies with other students); and 8) Differentiated assessment

Students will learn about bones and muscles in order to create a body design for an alien, representing its skeletal and muscular systems using wire and rubberbands.

Students will understand and appreciate the work of their bones, muscles, and joints.This educator's guide provides a detailed lesson plan for instruction on the musculoskeletal system. The guide includes questions for discussion, outlines of two classroom activities, a quiz for assessment, and reproducible student handouts. In the first activity, "A Winning Combination," students write a play-by-play commentary describing how the parts of the knee joint work together to kick a soccer ball. In the second activity, "Dr. Build-a-Bone's Laboratory," students read an article about bones (including a cross-section diagram of a bone) to investigate what bones are composed of and how new bone is formed.

This article is divided into four parts. The first parts explains the structural features of bones and their role to physically support an organism. The second part focuses on the self-healing ability of bones and how broken bones are medically attended. The third part exemplifies how the sceletal and muscular system are connected with the example of the shinbone. The last part explains the astonishing fact that the number of bones shrinks with growing age, since separate bones during infantry grow together later in life into one bone. The text is written for native speakers age 9 and up.

This brief video describes the major components and functions of the muscular system.

This printable and fillable worksheet assesses student knowledge about the bones that make up the human skeleton.

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 3rd Grade Science. 

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 3rd Grade Science.

In this slideshow students learn that the skeleton gives the human body a supporting frame and protects the internal organs. The resource illustrates that the skeletal system is attached to the muscular system, and they work together, allowing the body to move.

In this slideshow students will learn about the muscular system. This resource illustrates how the muscular system helps vital organs function, and it also performs another very important job. The muscular system is attached to the skeletal system, and that is what allows a person to move!

3rd-grade lesson plan implementing the 7 steps for pre-teaching vocabulary by Calderon and Slakk (2018): 1) Students repeat word 3xs; 2) Teacher says the word and reads the sentence exactly as it is in the text; 3) Teacher gives dictionary definition; 4) Teacher gives student-friendly definition/example; 5) Teacher highlights one feature of the word- that it is polysemous, cognate, tense, prefix, root word, etc.; 6) In pairs, students ping-pong 5-6 uses of the word in a provided sentence frame (most important step); 7) Teacher assigns opportunity for students to practice the new words in writing, reading, exit tickets.

In this lesson, students learn about the skeletal system by designing and building an exoskeleton or endoskeleton for an animal of their own invention.

A 3rd-grade lesson plan implementing the 8 phases of explicit instruction for writing by Calderon and Slakk (2018): 1) Pre-teach the most important vocabulary; 2) Use a Mentor text for reading before writing; 3) Present the text structure to use; 4) Model it (Model each phase of the writing process); 5) Memorize it (Ensure that students memorize the language and steps of the strategy); 6) Support it (Scaffold according to student need); 7) Ample use of student interaction (Collaborate and cooperative writing strategies with other students); and 8) Differentiated assessment

A 3rd-grade lesson plan that covers: Newcomer Writing using the 8 SIOP components by Short, Echevarria, and Vogt (2016).

Skeletal and Muscular Unit - Collection of resources, tasks and experiments for exploration and discussion