Grade 3 social studies, unit by unit

What should third grade social studies cover, and how do you teach it?

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Third grade social studies is one question asked eight ways: how do people live together, and why does it look different from place to place? Communities Near and Far has eight units and 21+ hours. Your child starts with groups they already belong to and ends by writing a proposal to fix a real problem in their own town.

The eight units

What Makes a Community. Map and Globe Skills. Communities Around the World. Communities Across Time. Rules, Laws, and Government. Goods, Services, and Trade. Connected Communities. Being a Contributing Community Member.

A crowd at a bus stop is not a community

Unit 1 defines a community as people who depend on each other, not just people in the same place. Your child sorts groups into community and not-a-community, and tells a need from a want by asking whether losing it would make them sick or unsafe, or only sad.

Why Greenland looks bigger than Africa

Unit 2 teaches compass roses, map keys, scale, landforms, the seven continents and five oceans. The guide has your child put a flat map next to a globe, and peel an orange in one strip to see why a flat map has to stretch somewhere.

Same need, different answer

Unit 3 compares at least three real communities, such as desert, coastal or river, and cold or mountain, and how land and climate change the way each meets a need. Unit 4 uses the same move across time, with primary and secondary sources and a then-and-now chart of homes, work and transport.

Rules, trade and a long way from home

Your child learns the difference between a rule and a law, a mayor and a council, and a right and a responsibility. Goods, services, scarcity and opportunity cost follow, and then the journey of a banana, phone or t-shirt back to where it came from.

The proposal

In Unit 8 your child picks a real local need, proposes a rule change, maps where it applies, and gives a cost and a benefit. They defend it out loud, pulling a fact from each of the seven units before.

What this is not

It is not a course about your own state or town in particular. It studies communities in general, and the guide has your child choose one local or regional community for Unit 4 and a local need for Unit 8.
It is not a light unit. The guide plans five 50-minute sessions a week, about 168 days across the year.
It is not a course to reorder. The guide says that moving Unit 2 after Unit 3 or Unit 5 before Unit 1 breaks a later objective, and that only Units 3 and 4 can safely swap, at the cost of teaching the comparison chart from scratch.

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Read what we collect and why

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What we collect from your child: the first name and sign-in you choose, their answers, time on lessons and progress, and their chat with Clara. Used to run the lessons, build their transcript and show you how they are doing.
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Questions parents ask

What does my child need first?

To name two groups they belong to and one job someone has in each, to see that a hand-drawn map leaves things out on purpose, to compare two things out loud, and to use the words fair and unfair about rules. The guide gives a question for each.

What does a day look like?

Five minutes pulling back a word from an earlier unit, then 20 to 30 minutes of new content or a hands-on task such as sorting cards, building a chart or drawing a map, then a short written or spoken answer.

What do I keep up on the wall?

A word wall, which can be one sheet of paper taped up. The guide asks you to add terms from every unit, since Unit 8 needs a fact from each of the previous seven.

What does it cost?

$29 a month or $290 a year for every child. The first 30 days are free with no card.

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