Nebraska Technology: 3rd Grade
- Level Elementary School
- Number of Lessons 33
- Grade 3rd
This course is designed to provide computer science and technology instruction for Nebraska 3rd Grade students. Students learn programming and technology concepts, including: computing systems, networks and the Internet, data analysis, algorithms and programming, and impacts of computing.
See the full syllabus for all topics and activities, or explore the course to try it out.
UNITS - 7 (33 lessons)
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It's a one-year computer science course for 3rd grade that introduces foundational programming concepts through a block-based programming language. Students build on earlier coding skills to develop computational thinking and problem-solving while creating interactive projects, animations, and games, with an emphasis on creativity and collaboration.
The course totals 36 contact hours, with each lesson running about 45 minutes. Teaching one lesson per week covers a full school year. It is teacher-led, using ready-to-use lesson plans that follow a consistent Introduction, Guided Practice, Independent Practice, Extension, and Reflection structure.
Students use a block-based programming interface where they write and run programs saved in their own accounts. In this course, students explore parallel programming and broadcast messages to coordinate interactions between multiple sprites at once.
Students build sequences and events using parallel programming and broadcast messages, apply loops, and are introduced to conditionals, variables, functions, and comparison operators to control program behavior. A self-directed culmination project has them modify a game for accessibility. Digital literacy gets significant attention, and productivity software introduces named tools like Google Docs/Microsoft Word, Slides/PowerPoint, and Sheets/Excel.
3rd grade's Digital Literacy unit runs 11 weeks and goes deeper than earlier grades, covering cyberbullying and its impact on others, building a positive digital identity and footprint, creating strong usernames and passwords, recognizing common cybersecurity threats, collaborating safely with others online, and giving proper credit when researching and using online sources.
