What do children learn in Year 3 in Norway? Start with the school bag. It is heavier this year. There may be a sheet of numbers on the fridge, and a first chapter book read entirely alone. A lot happens in third grade. Yet if you open the Norwegian curriculum, LK20, to find the goals after Year 3, most of the pages are empty.
What does the curriculum say about Year 3?
LK20 sets most of its competence aims after Years 2, 4, 7 and 10. Think of a marked hiking trail with cairns a few hours apart. Your child passed the Year 2 cairn last summer. The next one stands after Year 4.
So in science, arts and crafts, and music there are no aims after Year 3. Across those three subjects and maths, there are 42 aims after Year 4. A direction, not a checklist for Christmas.
One subject breaks the pattern. Mathematics has 11 aims of its own after Year 3. Four are about multiplication, and the first says children should "explore multiplication through counting". Not "know the times tables". Explore, and count. The sheet on the fridge is a map of something your child gets to discover.
The idea behind this way of learning is the same one behind STEAM learning: children meet the world with a question and come back with an explanation.
Why does it matter?
Multiplication is counting in jumps. Three rows of four eggs are four, and four, and four. A child who sees that can picture 3 × 4 instead of just remembering a sound. That is why another aim asks children to show multiplication in different ways and move between them: a sum, a drawing, an egg box and a story can all be the same number. In Year 2 the new skill was explaining how you found something out, as we described in what second graders learn.
Try it at home: The Row Hunt
Suitable for ages 7–9. You need an egg box or muffin tin, 20–30 buttons or dried pasta, squared paper and a pencil.
- Hunt the kitchen for things arranged in rows.
- Pick one. Count the rows and how many are in each row.
- Count everything in jumps: four, eight, twelve.
- Lay the same number of buttons in rows on the paper.
- Guess first, then turn the paper a quarter turn and count again.
- Write what you found as two sums and stick it on the fridge.
Keep small buttons away from children under three. Then try seven buttons. Can you lay them in rows of equal length?
Questions to wonder about
- How many rows can you find at home in one minute?
- Why is the number the same when you turn the paper?
- If some numbers cannot be laid out in equal rows, what makes them so special?
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