Third grade is an important time for building foundational math skills that your learner will use for the rest of elementary school—and beyond! Multiplication, division, and fractions will be core concepts for your 3rd grader this school year.
Duolingo’s 3rd grade course uses fun, interactive lessons to teach your learner everything they need to succeed.
Understanding rounding and magnitude
Rounding is an important skill used to mentally solve math problems. It can be used by learners to check their work and see if an answer makes sense, and they’ll use it in many real-life situations, such as figuring out prices when shopping or trying to calculate how long something might take.
Duolingo’s 3rd grade course includes the unit Rounding and magnitude, in which learners will learn to round to the nearest 10 and to the nearest 100. After cementing this skill, your learner will work on mentally adding, subtracting, and multiplying numbers in the Rounding with operations unit, which they’ll find makes complex computations easier to solve—for example, 46+23 can be estimated as 50+20.
Building multiplication skills
Multiplication is a key skill for your 3rd grader. They’ll start with foundational concepts and will advance to practicing multiplication facts in many different ways. In Intro to multiplication, your learner will work through lessons demonstrating how addition is related to multiplication (for example, 2x3 can be solved by counting by 2s: 2, 4, 6).
In Multiply 1-digit numbers, lessons build factual skills by multiplying by numbers up to 9. In addition to practicing facts, your learner will use number lines, solve word problems, and find missing numbers. Lessons also help your 3rd grader connect facts together (for example, 2x3 is presented together with 2x4 and 2x5 on the same screen).
Your 3rd grader will also work through the section Multiply large numbers, where they’ll practice multiplying by powers of 10 (10, 20, 30, etc.) and 25. These problems might appear more challenging, but your learner will discover how to solve them mentally—for example, once they understand that 3x5=15, they can solve 30x5 by adding a zero (it’s 150!).
Practicing division
The Intro to division section practices division facts from 2-5. In these lessons, your learner will find multiplication problems that overlap with division problems, so that they’re able to connect that division is the reverse operation of multiplication (for example, that 5x9=45 and 45÷5=9). Your 3rd grader will apply the beginning multiplication facts they’ve learned to understand division facts.
Combining multiplication and division
In the Duolingo unit Multiply and divide, your learner will connect what they’ve learned about multiplication and division to apply it conceptually to new problems. For example, your 3rd grader will study the commutative property and the associative property.
It’s important for young learners to understand these properties so they can solve complex problems beyond 3rd grade. For example, they’ll learn new ways to solve division problems by splitting objects into groups and counting backwards by a number.
Learning about fractions
In the 3rd grade curriculum, fractions are introduced by using pictures to show how a whole can be divided into parts. Your learner will practice visualizing fractions through pictures, groups, and number lines in the units Intro to fractions and Number sense and fractions.
They’ll also learn about Equivalent fractions in the Duolingo units through images representing how a whole can be divided into different numbers of parts and have the same value. Once your 3rd grader has built this foundation, they’ll learn to Compare fractions without pictures and fractions with similar numerators or denominators.
Duolingo Math helps your 3rd grader build new skills
After practicing all these skills in Duolingo’s 3rd grade units, your learner will have the confidence and knowledge they need to be successful in rounding, multiplication, division, fractions, and beyond!