3rd Grade - Gateway 3

The materials for Grade 3 provide strategies for informing all stakeholders, including students, parents, and caregivers about the program including suggestions for how they can help support student progress and achievement. There are examples across all units, in the Printable Resources of the Teachers’ Guide:

The NGSS Information for Parents and Guardians section, for each grade level there is an explanation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and how the lessons within the grade level address three-dimensional learning. This document is available in English and Spanish. 

• The Eliciting and Leveraging Students’ Prior Knowledge, Personal Experiences, and Cultural Backgrounds sections, recommend teachers send home a Family Connections Homework assignment. This support provides questions for students to ask their families, so students are positioned to engage in class discussions about class experiences connected to the focal phenomenon. 

The materials also include forms of communication for parents and caregivers, including for families that may speak and read in a language other than English.  

In each grade level’s Teacher Guide, Printable Resources section, there are letters titled NGSS Information for Parents and Guardians about the NGSS that are available in both Spanish and English.

Each chapter of each unit at every grade level includes At-Home Discussion Questions. The At-Home Discussion Questions are offered in both English and Spanish.

The Amplify website has some materials available for caregivers in Spanish and English. While the site does provide some materials in both Spanish and English, it misses the opportunity to support caregivers in other languages. The Amplify website has resources for teachers to send to parents with information about the NGSS standards, unit maps, resources for back-to-school night, and Home Investigations that extend instructional units completed in school. These caregiver and family extension resources are found through a direct search on the website and miss the opportunity to be embedded in the teacher materials. 

In the teacher materials, each grade level has specific examples of strategies for informing stakeholders. For example, in Grade 3, Unit: Weather and Climate, Teacher Guide, Printable Resources includes a resource copy master with optional home learning assignments. In Lesson 1.4 students watch or read a weather report with someone in their family, discuss the weather report with their family and answer several prompts.

The materials reviewed for Amplify Science Grade 3 include some opportunities for teachers to effectively plan and utilize materials with integrity and to further develop their own understanding of the content. The materials are feasible for one school year. The materials within each Unit and Lesson allow students to learn at an appropriate pace for the given grade level. In the Materials and Preparation section of the Unit Overview, it lists the preparation time required for each Lesson, with some Lessons requiring more time to prepare than others.

Examples of information related to feasibility and flexibility include:

• The Program Guide, Scope & Sequence states that Grade 3 consists of four Units made up of 22 Lessons each. In each Unit, two days are allocated for the full session, Pre-Unit Assessment, and End-of-Unit Assessment. Each Lesson for Grade 3 takes approximately 60 minutes “though teachers can expand or contract the timing to meet their needs.” The Program Structure K-5 Trifold provides the same information as the Program Guide.

• In each Unit, the Teacher Guide, Teacher References, and Lesson Overview & Compilation summarize the Lessons and provide suggested time allocations for each Activity within the Lesson. This information is also found in the Lesson Brief and Step-by-Step for each lesson. For example, Grade 3, Unit: Balancing Forces, Chapter 1, Lesson 1.1, Student Write Initial Explanations states, “Students write initial explanations of why the floating train rises, floats, and then falls. (20 min).” 

• In each Lesson, the Lesson Overview and Lesson at a Glance list the activities for the Lesson and the time allocated. For example, Grade 3, Unit: Environments and Survival, Chapter 2, Lesson 2.1 Overview, Lesson at a Glance lists four activities with times allocated ranging from 5 to 30 minutes for a total of 60 minutes.

According to an Amplify Q&A article on the Amplify Help Site, All collections, Amplify Science, Amplify Science K-8 Resources, Amplify Science Pacing Guidance, “Because science is implemented in such varied ways across districts, we do not offer a specific pacing guide. However, the lesson information below will help you determine the best way to fit the program into the structure of your district’s instructional calendar.” 

Lessons for each Unit provide a summary of suggested time frames for each lesson activity. This information is provided within the Lesson Guide for each Lesson. Adaptations for materials or guidance for a range of district constraints due to time and or scheduling differences are not directly available in the materials.

The materials for Grade 3 include some assessments that offer accommodations that allow students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills without changing the content of the assessment. The materials offer some general suggestions to help students demonstrate their knowledge such as allowing more time for writing. Most support is provided for formative assessments as they are embedded within the instructional process. However, the materials miss the opportunity to provide specific examples for access or accommodation for the summative assessments for disabled students or multilingual learners beyond suggesting that teachers think about how to accommodate students who need more support.

In the Materials Overview of each Lesson, a section regarding differentiation provides embedded support for diverse learners, potential challenges in the Lesson, specific differentiation strategies for multilingual learners, and specific strategies for students who need more support and who may experience more challenges. This information is provided at the Lesson level but is applicable to the formative assessments as these assessments are embedded within the lesson structure. To the extent that instruction is supported with accommodation suggestions, most lessons have suggestions for differentiation that rely on the teacher to “make a plan” for special accommodations but do not provide specific guidance or ideas on how to support the students. For example, in Grade 3, Environments and Survival, Print Teacher Guide, Lesson 1.4, Differentiation, Specific Differentiation Strategies for Students Who Need More Support, Work with a Small Group suggests, “Work with a small group. If there are students who would benefit from more support engaging with the Survival Model and completing page 11, Red Squirrel Survival Model, in their notebooks, gather a small group and offer support as they engage with the model and record their data.”

The materials for Grade 3 include varied approaches to learning tasks over time and a variety in how students are expected to demonstrate their learning with opportunities for students to monitor their learning. Lessons are supported with a Google Slide or Powerpoint Presentation rich with images and questions to guide the Teacher Led discussions. Teacher Led discussions introduce the investigative question. The materials state, “Through this routine, students explicitly apply their ideas and experiences to new situations and investigations.” As Lessons progress, students deepen their knowledge as they compile information through collaborative activities including partner reading, hands-on investigations, analyzing data or models in pairs, shared writing of scientific explanations, and Think-Write-Pair-Share. Examples of varied approaches to learning tasks include: 

• Grade 3, Unit: Environments and Survival, Lesson 3.2, Activity 1 demonstrates a Teacher-led discussion. The teacher brings students’ attention to the investigation question and elicits their ideas in relation to the question. Teacher summarizes student ideas and reads aloud to students from the book Environment News. The focus here is on the teacher driving the whole group discussion with suggested prompts. The speech bubbles in the instructional guide indicate what the teacher should say to keep the discussion moving forward. Here are two examples, “I can see that the environment in this area has changed. What caused it to change?” and “This environment was changed by a wildfire. Different plants are growing after the fire. How do you think this change might affect the other organisms in the environment?” 

• Grade 3, Unit: Environments and Survival, Lesson 3.2, Activity 1 demonstrates Partner Read and discussion.  The teacher pairs students up to read a section from the book Environment News. Students read a section and record their inferences in their investigation notebook. The teacher circulates and listens to student responses. 

• Grade 3, Unit: Environments and Survival, Lesson 3.2, Activity 3 demonstrates the Think-Write-Pair-Share routine to consider changes in the environment that affected the population they read about in Environment News. Teachers project the steps for the routine onto the board so that students may refer to it while working with their partners. 

Resources provide information about regular opportunities for students to assess their own learning. One specific example is in the Unit: Spinning Earth, Teacher Guide, Teacher References, Assessment System, Student Self-Assessments, describes the role of student self-assessments and an example from Unit: Weather and Climate, Teacher Guide, Teacher References, Assessment System, Student Self-Assessments, describes the role of student self-assessments and an example from the unit, “At the end of each chapter, students are invited to check their progress toward understanding weather and climate, using the following prompts:

• I understand how to measure temperature and precipitation in such a way that I can make comparisons.

•  I understand how I can predict the temperature of a place for the next few days.

•  I understand how I can predict the temperature and precipitation of a place in future years.

• I understand what it means for different places to have different climates.

• I understand that I can predict future weather events by looking at maps of past weather events.

• I understand that scientists can answer some questions but not others, and that this depends on the kind of evidence they have.

This quick yet important activity asks students to reflect on whether they understand or don’t yet understand about the core concepts from the unit (both the Disciplinary Core Ideas and the application of crosscutting concepts to the phenomenon under investigation).” 

Additionally, the Student Notebook resource indicates that student self-assessments are optional, however, this is not indicated in the Teacher Guide.

The materials for Grade 3 include limited opportunities for teachers to use a variety of grouping strategies and limited guidance for grouping students. The different groupings promote interaction, engagement, and learning. Teacher guidance on how and when to use groupings is provided; however, there is a missed opportunity to provide suggestions on how to form the different groupings strategically. In all units, pairs of students engage in Partner Reading, exploring simulations on digital devices, and the Think-Write-Pair-Share routine. During hands-on investigations, students may be encouraged to work in groups of four. Examples of teacher guidance on how and when to use a variety of grouping strategies to increase interaction, engagement, and learning include: 

• Grade 3, Unit: Environment and Survival, Unit Overview, Planning for the unit, Getting Ready to Teach informs teachers to make a plan for how students will move between individual, partner, and group work within the lessons. Some lessons require individual work or partner discussions. Other lessons may require the teacher to build groups of four.

• Grade 3, Unit: Inheritance and Traits, Lesson 2.6 Differentiation Brief, Potential Challenges in this Lesson, suggests strategic groupings/pairings for the discussions involved in the lesson. 

• Grade 3, Unit: Balancing Forces, Lesson 2.4, Reading Partner Read, Step-by-Step directs the teacher to refer to the Partner Reading Guideline; however, it does not provide any instructions on how to locate this document which is found in the Digital Resources for Lesson 1.3. 

• Grade 3, Unit: Balancing Forces, Lesson 1.2, Activity 2 suggests the teacher distribute bags of investigation materials to pairs of students, and states, “If students need guidance on how to take turns, give those instructions before you distribute the materials.”

The materials for Grade 3 include a balance of images or information about people, representing various demographic and physical characteristics. The materials provide examples of various demographic and physical characteristics in the books and slideshows. The images show students engaging in and able to do the work related to the context of the learning. Depictions of people in the materials and books represent many different characteristics.

Examples include:

• Grade 3, Unit: Inheritance and Traits, Book: Scorpion Scientists portray Esposito and her family in a positive light. This book is about a scientist, Lauren Esposito, who studies scorpions. The book refers to Esposito’s girlfriend and their children, including images of Esposito and her girlfriend on a hiking trip,

• Grade 3, Unit: Environments and Survival, Book: Cockroach Robots contains an image of the team which includes two male-presenting and three female-presenting people with diverse physical characteristics. This book depicts a diverse team of engineers using biomimicry to build robots based on cockroaches.

• Grade 3, Unit: Weather and Climate, Lesson 3.2 Slideshow, Slide 17 depicts a drawing of four students looking for patterns in graphs. The students have different skin and hair colors,  One student is male-presenting and the other three are female-presenting. One person presenting as female is wearing a hijab.

• Grade 3, Unit: Balancing Forces, Lesson 1.4 Slideshow Slide 11 depicts a drawing of two students participating in the investigation. Both students have different skin colors, one student is male-presenting and the other is female-presenting wearing a hijab.

The materials for Grade 3 provide some guidance to encourage teachers to draw upon student home language to facilitate learning. This is evidenced in the teacher-facing guidance documents, specifically the Teacher Guide section that includes a section titled Differentiation of English Learners. A specific strategy that is identified in some lessons across all Grades 3-5 is the use of Spanish cognates. Teachers are encouraged to show Spanish cognates for certain science terms discussed in lessons to support English learners in developing meaning. Students are provided language support in their Investigation Notebooks in the form of bilingual and multilingual glossaries. The materials guide teachers to use the student’s preferred language and previous exposure to everyday and academic English strategically in instruction.  However, there is a missed opportunity to provide guidance to teachers with strategies for using home languages, other than English or Spanish, to facilitate learning. 

Examples of using home language to facilitate learning include:

• Grade 3, Unit: Environments and Survival, Lesson 1.4, Lesson Overview, Differentiation, Strategies for English Learners Leveraging Primary Languages encourages students to use their primary language while engaging with the Survival Model being used during the lesson. The materials encourage students to use their primary languages as they engage in the Survival Model, both to help each other understand the procedures and to assist in discussing their results. Intentionally creating partnerships that allow for students to use their primary languages, if they choose, may be supportive for students during Activity 2 when they are working in pairs, using the Survival Model.

• Grade 3, Unit: Environments and Survival, Lesson 1.4, Lesson Overview, Differentiation, Strategies for English Learners presents how to use students’ home language strategically for learning how to negotiate text in the target language. This section provides information about how many of the academic words in the lesson are Spanish cognates. It lists the relevant Spanish/English cognates, such as population/población and reproduce/reproducir. It provides instructional guidance on how to support students by keeping a running list of cognates on a chart paper and encouraging students to keep their own list and to refer to it as needed. 

• Grade 3, Unit: Balancing Forces, Teacher Guide, Lesson 1.1 Brief, Differentiation, Specific Differentiation Strategies for English Learners, Alternative means of expressing ideas guides teachers to use the preferred family language strategically in instruction, “After students have recorded their responses, you may wish to invite them to elaborate orally as you record their ideas. It is very appropriate for students to express their ideas in their primary language. Providing students with this opportunity allows them to show what they know about the science concepts, rather than whether or not they can express their understanding of concepts in English.”

The materials for Grade 3 provide some guidance to encourage teachers to draw upon student cultural and social backgrounds to facilitate learning. For instance, in every unit in Grade 3, the Teacher Guide, Printable Resources, Eliciting and Leveraging Students’ Prior Knowledge, Personal Experiences, and Cultural Backgrounds, there is an explanation for teachers for why eliciting and building upon student prior knowledge, personal experiences, and cultural and social backgrounds is important to the learning process. Teachers are encouraged to collect student ideas on “What We Think We Know Charts” and to return and connect student prior experience to what they are learning multiple times per chapter. Every chapter of every unit contains this guidance which includes the following:

“Prompts for eliciting students’ funds of knowledge. While leading discussions, the following prompts may be helpful in eliciting contributions from students: 

• What does… remind you of from your own life? 

• When have you had an experience related to…? 

• When have you observed something similar to…? 

• Can you connect… to something in your family or neighborhood? 

• What have you heard from your family about…? 

• Is there another word you would use for…? 

• What words do you know in another language about this topic? 

• Have you ever visited somewhere that reminds you of…? 

• Have you ever seen a TV show or read a book that’s similar to…? 

• Is there anything in our city/town that reminds you of…?

There are example student responses and suggested actions for teachers based upon these prompts.

The materials for Grade 3 provide consistent general literacy supports for students; however, they miss the opportunity to provide information and/or supports for students at varied reading levels. 

The materials provide multiple entry points to help struggling readers access and engage in grade-level science.  Examples include:

• Grade 3, Unit: Environment and Survival, Lesson 3.2, Lesson Overview, Differentiation, Embedded Supports for Diverse Learners demonstrates gradual release of responsibility. In Activity 1, the teacher models how to make an inference from the book Environmental News before allowing the students to do so with a partner.

• Grade 3, Unit: Environment and Survival, Lesson 3.2, Activity 2 suggests a jigsaw activity. Although the materials do not explicitly name the strategy as jigsaw, the lesson similarly asks pairs of students to choose one section to read and discuss before sharing what they’ve read with a new partner. 

• Grade 3, Unit: Environment and Survival, Lesson 4.1, Activity 2 demonstrates partner reading. Students read the book Cockroach Robots with a partner and the teacher encourages the students to make inferences as they read. In the Lesson Overview, Differentiation section, Supports for Diverse Learners, the materials provide a brief description of partner reading. The materials state that “when students read with a partner they can assist each other with reading, such as using the reading strategy that is modeled, decoding, and comprehension. Through partner reading students are encouraged to discuss what they read, which can aid in comprehension per the materials.” 

• Grade 3, Unit: Environmental and Survival, Lesson 4.1, Activity 2 suggests summarizing for students of what the book is about before distributing the books to students. The teacher should elicit ideas from the students regarding engineering designs or science ideas that affect everyday life.

The materials for Grade 3 integrate interactive tools in ways that support student engagement in the three dimensions. In the Program Structure and Components Trifold, Program Components, Slide 5, and Amplify’s digital tools overview indicate that Grades K-1 include the digital teacher’s guide and videos, while Grades 2-3 also include student practice apps and Grades 4-5 include all resources including practice apps and simulation tools.

Examples include:

• In Grade 3, Unit: Weather and Climate, Programs & Apps icon, Tools, Elementary Student Apps, Weather and Climate, this digital practice tool is available to students in four lessons in this unit. The purpose of the practice tool is for students to investigate patterns that are found in weather and climate. Students use the patterns they see to make predictions during the activities. Students also analyze and interpret local weather patterns and create graphical models of those patterns. 

• In Grade 3, Unit: Environments and Survival, Chapter 4, Lesson 4.4, Activity 2, students are directed to the Student Apps Page to use the RoboGrazer simulation to test and revise their design for a robot that can grind up invasive plants. Students may change neck length and type of teeth to optimize their solution based on data they collect. 

• In Grade 3, Unit: Environments and Survival, Chapter 2, Lesson 2.5, Activity 1, students are directed to the Student Apps Page to use an interactive model to show their ideas about survival and traits. Based on the traits of particular organisms, students use the model to predict the survival of organisms by placing them on a continuum from most likely to least likely to survive.

The materials for Grade 3 include or reference digital technology that provides opportunities for students to collaborate with each other in some instances. In all cases students are focused on learning how to use the technology in collaboration with other students in a face-to-face format.

The materials for Grade 3 include a visual design that supports students in engaging thoughtfully with the subject. The materials are neither distracting nor chaotic. Teacher materials are arranged uniformly throughout the grade levels, each unit beginning with an overview, then providing chapters of each unit with chapter sections in a labeled grid format (e.g. 3.1, 3.2, 3.3). Section grids are followed by resources for the teacher and are organized similarly for all Units. 

Resources are organized in the following order: 

• MENU TAB: Printable Resources; 

• MENU TAB: Planning for the Unit; Unit Map, Progress Build, Getting Ready to Teach, Materials and Preparation, Science Background and Standards at a Glance; 

• MENU TAB: Teacher References; Lesson Overview Compilation, Standards and Goals, 3-D Statements, Assessment System, Embedded Formative Assessments, Books in This Unit; 

• MENU TAB: Offline Preparation.

Materials are predictably accessible throughout each unit as the format remains consistent from unit-to-unit, grade-to-grade.

Student materials are similarly consistent. Each unit includes a Student Investigation Notebook that provides documents from the chapters in the corresponding unit. There is a table of contents and consistent and repeated Safety Guidelines for students in each investigation notebook followed by the pages for each chapter. Each notebook contains a glossary and provides the students ample room to write and/or type responses/observations.   

Student readers are presented digitally and easy to manipulate for students online, or for classroom presentation using a digital screen. The books are colorful and contain appropriate illustrations and utilize easy to read font (format and sizing).

The materials for Grade 3 provide teacher guidance for the use of embedded technology to support and enhance student learning, when applicable. As a broad approach to providing guidance, every Lesson of every Unit in Grade 3 contains a Lesson Brief, Materials and Preparation, and Before the Day of the Lesson section that tells teachers which digital resources should be used and how to prepare them for each Lesson.  

In addition to general preparation guidance, examples of teacher guidance for technology use in Grade 3 can be found within Lesson Briefs such as in Unit: Balancing Forces, Lesson 3.4, Lesson Brief, Diagramming Forces which states, “2. Project the Force Diagramming Tool and model making a diagram. Go to the Students Apps Page. Model how you select the image of the train to get to the Balancing Forces unit. Then, select the train, which represents the Balancing Forces unit, and select Box 3—3.4 Force Types A. Remind students that they used the Force Diagramming Tool as a class to diagram forces. Let students know that today, they will work in pairs to make diagrams (using the tool) to show forces. 3. Preview the four diagrams that students will complete. Let students know that they will work in pairs to create four diagrams of forces that are similar to forces they might have created in their chain reactions. Project each of the four activities (B, C, D, and E), one at a time, that students will complete. To do this, navigate to the numbered box for each activity (Box 4, Box 5, Box 6, and Box 7). When you select a box, each activity will open in a new tab. Show students how they can navigate back to select other activities by pressing the first tab in their browser, or they can press the Activity Select Menu (in upper-left corner of the screen) to select the individual activities for this lesson. Press INSTRUCTIONS to show which object is OBJECT 1 in each activity. Explain that if students are labeling gravity, then OBJECT 2 is Earth, and the purple OBJECT 2 label can be placed anywhere on the ground.”

Similar guidance can be found in the Unit: Weather and Climate, Lesson Brief, Lesson 3.5, Activity 2, Graphing the Local Climate activity and the Unit: Inheritance and Traits, Lesson Brief, Lesson 3.5, Activity 1, Modeling How the Environment Affects Traits.