New Jersey Science — Grade 3
Comprehensive Course Syllabus
Course Overview
Our New Jersey Grade 3 Science course is designed around the New Jersey Student Learning Standards for Science (NJSLS-S). The curriculum develops students’ understanding of forces and motion, magnets, weather, climate, life cycles, inherited traits, adaptations, ecosystems, scientific investigation, and engineering design.
Students learn through observation, experimentation, data analysis, evidence-based reasoning, STEM activities, and real-world problem solving.
Scientific Investigation & Engineering
Scientific Questions
Students learn to ask questions about natural events, objects, organisms, and everyday phenomena that can be investigated.
Observation Skills
Students make careful observations using their senses and simple scientific tools to identify characteristics and patterns.
Data Collection
Students collect information from investigations and organize observations, measurements, and results using simple tables and charts.
Evidence & Conclusions
Students use observations and investigation results as evidence to explain what they discovered.
Engineering Design
Students identify problems, develop possible solutions, test designs, compare results, and improve their solutions.
Forces & Motion
Pushes & Pulls
Students investigate how pushes and pulls can make objects move, stop, or change direction.
Strength of Forces
Students explore how the strength of a force can affect the speed, distance, or movement of an object.
Direction of Forces
Students investigate how the direction of a push or pull can affect the direction in which an object moves.
Balanced & Unbalanced Forces
Students develop an introductory understanding of how forces acting on an object can affect its motion.
Patterns of Motion
Students observe moving objects and identify patterns in their speed, direction, and movement.
Magnets & Non-Contact Forces
Magnetic Forces
Students investigate how magnets can push or pull certain objects without directly touching them.
Magnetic Attraction
Students identify materials and objects that are attracted to magnets and compare them with objects that are not.
Magnetic Repulsion
Students explore how magnets can push away from one another depending on the orientation of their poles.
Magnetic Strength
Students investigate how the distance between magnets and magnetic objects can affect the observed magnetic force.
Motion, Collisions & Energy
Object Collisions
Students observe what happens when moving objects collide and investigate how motion can change.
Force & Motion Changes
Students explore how forces can cause an object to speed up, slow down, stop, or change direction.
Predicting Motion
Students make predictions about how objects will move when different forces are applied.
Motion-Based Design
Students apply their understanding of forces and motion to design and test simple devices.
Weather Patterns
Weather Observations
Students observe and record temperature, precipitation, wind, cloud cover, and other weather conditions.
Weather Patterns
Students analyze weather information to identify patterns and compare conditions across different days.
Weather Data
Students use tables, charts, graphs, and maps to represent and interpret weather information.
Weather Predictions
Students use observed weather patterns and data to make simple predictions about future conditions.
Climate & Seasonal Patterns
Seasonal Changes
Students investigate how temperature, precipitation, daylight, and other conditions change during different seasons.
Weather & Climate
Students develop an age-appropriate understanding of the difference between short-term weather and long-term climate patterns.
Regional Weather
Students compare weather conditions in different locations and identify similarities and differences.
Climate Patterns
Students examine simple long-term weather information to identify patterns in different regions.
Weather Hazards & Safety
Severe Weather
Students learn about thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, winter storms, and other weather hazards.
Weather Hazard Data
Students examine weather information to identify patterns that can help people prepare for hazardous conditions.
Weather Safety
Students learn basic safety procedures and understand how preparation can reduce risks during severe weather.
Reducing Weather Risks
Students explore ways people can design structures, systems, and plans that reduce the effects of weather hazards.
Plant & Animal Life Cycles
Plant Life Cycles
Students explore the stages of plant growth, including seeds, seedlings, mature plants, flowering, and reproduction.
Animal Life Cycles
Students compare the life cycles of different animals and identify common stages of growth and development.
Growth & Development
Students investigate how plants and animals change as they grow and develop.
Reproduction
Students develop an age-appropriate understanding that plants and animals reproduce to produce new organisms.
Traits & Inheritance
Observable Traits
Students identify characteristics such as color, size, shape, markings, and other observable traits in plants and animals.
Parents & Offspring
Students compare parents and offspring and identify similarities and differences in their characteristics.
Inherited Traits
Students learn that some characteristics are passed from parents to offspring.
Variation in Traits
Students observe that individuals of the same type of organism can have different characteristics.
Trait Patterns
Students use observations and simple data to identify patterns in inherited characteristics.
Adaptations & Survival
Animal Structures
Students investigate how physical structures help animals obtain food, stay safe, move, and survive.
Animal Behaviors
Students explore behaviors such as migration, hibernation, group behavior, and searching for food.
Plant Adaptations
Students examine how plant structures and characteristics help plants survive in different environments.
Environment & Survival
Students explain how characteristics and behaviors can help organisms survive in their particular environments.
Ecosystems & Environmental Relationships
Habitats
Students investigate how living things depend on their environments for food, water, shelter, and other resources.
Plants & Animals
Students explore relationships between plants, animals, and their physical surroundings.
Resources & Survival
Students investigate how organisms depend on available resources and how environmental changes can affect them.
Environmental Changes
Students explore how changes to habitats can affect the plants and animals that live there.
Science & STEM Projects
Force & Motion Project
Students design and test a simple device that uses pushes, pulls, or motion to accomplish a specific task.
Weather Investigation
Students collect local weather information, organize the data, identify patterns, and communicate their findings.
Life Cycle Project
Students create a model or presentation showing the stages of a plant or animal life cycle.
Traits Investigation
Students compare observable characteristics in plants, animals, or classroom examples and organize their observations.
Engineering Design Challenge
Students define a problem, develop possible solutions, build a model, test it, analyze results, and improve the design.
Teaching Methodology
Our Grade 3 Science classes focus on scientific investigation, evidence-based reasoning, experimentation, environmental awareness, and engineering design. Students learn through:
Learning Outcomes
By the end of Grade 3, students will be able to:
Assessment & Progress Tracking
Student progress is evaluated through: