LAFS.3.W.3.7Archived Standard

Students will use a real-world problem solving situation to determine the best types of light bulbs to maintain an appropriate environment for a captive lizard. 

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

Rocking through the Regions (of the United States) is a 27-day third grade research project on the five regions of the United States and the states that are located within the regions. Students will begin by writing letters to states" Departments of Tourism requesting information about their state. Then, students will work in groups to use the information received along with other print and digital resources they locate to gather information about their region. Once all information is gathered, students will begin writing an informative report and publish their report in an engaging presentation. By the end of this unit, students will be able to identify all five regions on a blank map of the United States and label all 50 states.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will learn how to classify animals. First, they will learn vertebrate versus invertebrate. Next, they will learn the animal classifications: mammal, bird, fish, reptile, amphibian, and arthropod. They will practice sorting these animals by different attributes and then do a short research project on one animal classification, which they will share with the class.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a week long lesson which helps children explore the three states of water: solid, liquid, and gas. Students will explore examples of where and what conditions the states of matter occur and investigate how to collect observations on the various states of water.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this resource, students will create questions about an assigned nonfiction topic, and then use text-based evidence to answer their questions. The teacher modeling and guided practice activities use the text Reptiles by Melissa Stewart. In the independent practice activity, teachers will need to gather multiple books on the same topic for students to conduct research with.

Type: Lesson Plan

This teaching idea describes a project third grade students participated in after studying Native Americans. Students created their own illustration page and described the artwork with descriptive paragraphs.

Type: Teaching Idea

This teaching idea describes a project for third graders integrating science and writing. After studying astronomy, students created a magazine with articles about astronomy, crossword and word search puzzles, comics, stories, etc.

Type: Teaching Idea

This teaching idea describes a project completed after an investigation on natural disasters. Each student researched and wrote a descriptive summary on a natural event. Students used colored pencils and oil pastels to create drawings of each disaster, and the summaries and artwork were made into trading cards using the Comic Life computer program.

Type: Teaching Idea

Science captures even the most reluctant readers and writers. Students are naturally drawn to the colorful photographs and layouts of nonfiction science texts. This lesson supports students in grade 3 as they explore the organizational features of nonfiction texts, such as labels, captions, headings, fonts, and so on. Students then have an opportunity to work together with their classmates to create a two-page spread using those features to present information about their local environment.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

These activities provide a foundation for using nonfiction resources for developing and answering questions about gathered information. Using a wide variety of nonfiction literature, students learn to sort and categorize books to begin the information-gathering process. Then, working with partners and groups, using pictures and text, students are guided through the process of gathering information, asking clarifying questions, and then enhancing the information with additional details. Students complete the lesson by collaboratively making "Question and Answer" books for the classroom library. This is a high-interest foundation builder for using nonfiction literature in research as well as for pleasure reading.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence