3rd Grade Math Lesson Plans

Help your students absorb the details of a text and make inferences about what they read with the strategy of close reading. By reading closely, students will become better able to understand complex themes and nuances in a text.

Teach your students to ask and differentiate between recall questions and inferential questions. This lesson will help build a classroom culture around asking deep, inferential questions.

Use this lesson to teach your students how to determine if they should use addition, subtraction, or both operations to solve a word problem by following four simple steps.

High order thinking skills are critical skills for students of all ages. In this lesson, your students will create word problems about money.

Students will have a ball with this data collection lesson plan where they learn about collecting and plotting data on a chart and line plot.

Motivate your students by engaging them in a competition! In this lesson, your students will review and practice multiplication strategies.

This lesson introduces students to the concepts of mean, median, and mode in a hands-on and visual way.

How are plants’ traits affected by environmental factors? In this integrated science and reading lesson, students will use multiple sources to identify and determine how traits are influenced by the environment.

Teach your students how to use a variety of representations when creating and solving word problems. Simple acronyms and visual aides help make learning multiplication a breeze.

Make division come to life with this hands-on, introductory lesson on the operation of division! Students will use authentic problems and manipulatives to experience division in action.

Support your students' math fluency by teaching them about the relationship between multiplication and division through fact families. This lesson can stand alone or be used as a pre-lesson for the Do You Know Your Math Facts? lesson.

Help your students subtract with confidence by sharing two different strategies. Use this lesson to build on students’ understanding of subtraction and to evaluate this key skill.

Line plots are a great way to introduce your students to graphing data. In this lesson, your students will learn how to create a line plot and also practice interpreting line plots.

Freshen up on your understanding of division word problems with long division and one-digit divisors! Use this lesson to help students identify key division terms and solve word problems.

Use this lesson with your students to practice comparing and contrasting the key details in two texts on the same topic. It can be a stand-alone lesson or a pre-lesson for the What's Similar? What's Different? lesson.

Delicious multiplication! In this sweet lesson, your students will learn how to relate multiplication to repeated addition using candy counters.

It's not enough to just memorize the multiplication table! It helps students to know how to explain their strategy to find the product too. Teach this lesson on its own or use it as support for the lesson Slap and Roll Timed Multiplication.

Allow your students to explore the pros and cons of different strategies used to find the area of rectangles. Use this as a stand alone lesson or as a pre-lesson for the Multiplication and Area in the Community Garden lesson.

Celebrating the Chinese New Year is fun for family and friends! Use this lesson to teach your students some of the holiday's traditions and events as they practice solving word problems, which involve time and all four math operations.

Get your students excited to learn about fractions with this hands on lesson. Working in groups will help students learn from each other and share ideas.

Word problems can be overwhelming to students, but if they have a tool to help them, they can handle it! Use this as a stand alone lesson or alongside Stepping Through Addition and Subtraction Word Problems.

Help your students compare and connect two important multiplication strategies: equal groups and repeated addition. This lesson can stand alone or be used as a pre-lesson for Candy Multiplication.

While memorization is important when it comes to multiplication facts, a foundation of understanding is key, too! Use this lesson on its own or as a pre-lesson for Hands-On Multiplication.

Want to strengthen your student’s multiplication and division skills? This lesson uses fact families to help students practice those skills.

Why make things harder on ourselves? Teach your students to decompose numbers to make math easier! Use this as a stand alone lesson or a pre-lesson for Decompose to Multiply: 6, 7, 8, and 9.

Students will explore varying climates around the world in the form of a virtual tour! Using a jigsaw format, this lesson prompts students to investigate multiple levels of a region’s climate.

This lesson helps students review rounding to the nearest hundred. Your students will practice rounding using manipulatives.

With this lesson, your students will see how the order of the factors does not affect the product in a multiplication expression. Use this on its own or alongside You're On a Roll! Practicing Multiplication Facts.

Teach your students four simple steps to help them solve multiplication and division word problems with confidence.

What is the likelihood that a polar bear will walk into the classroom? Students will consider this and other events using the concept of probability and the terms: Impossible, unlikely, likely, and certain.