• Third-Grade Learning Objectives

    Reading

    Reading Process (Comprehension, Vocabulary, Connections, & Independent Reading)

    • Explain how specific aspects of a text’s illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story
    • Draw conclusions and support with textual evidence
    • Summarize a story’s beginning, middle, and end 
    • Determine its central message, lesson, or moral
    • Monitor comprehension and making corrections and adjustments when understanding breaks down
    • Decode and identify the meaning of common prefixes and suffixes and knowing how they change the meaning of root word
    • Use sentence-level context to determine the relevant meaning of unfamiliar words or distinguish among multiple-meaning words
    • Use homographs and homophones
    • Distinguish the literal and non-literal meanings of words and phrases in context
    • Determine the meaning of the new word formed when a known affix is added to a known base word
    • Use a dictionary or a glossary to determine the meanings, syllabication, and pronunciation of unknown words
    • Discuss analogies
    • Determine the meaning of the author’s use of similes and metaphors to produce imagery
    • Use conversational, general academic, and domain-specific words and phrases
    • Connect text to text (ideas and information in various fiction and nonfiction works, using compare and contrast)
    • Connect text to world (text ideas regarding experiences in the world)
    • Read text that is developmentally appropriate
    • Produce evidence of reading

    Comprehend, Analyze, and Evaluate Fiction, Poetry, & Drama

    • Summarize and sequence the events/plot and explain how past events impact future events
    • Describe the personality traits of characters from their thoughts, words, and actions
    • Describe the interaction of characters,including relationships and how they change
    • Paraphrase the big idea/themes and supporting details of texts
    • Compare and contrast key elements in various types of fiction
    • Explain cause-and-effect relationships
    • Distinguish their own point of view from that of the narrator or those of the characters
    • Use examples of alliteration
    • Identify basic forms of poetry
    • Explain the elements of plot, setting, and character as presented through dialogue in scripts that are read or viewed
    • Identify language that creates a graphic visual experience and appeals to the senses

    Comprehend, Analyze, and Evaluate Nonfiction

    • Explain the author’s purpose
    • Identify the details or facts that support the main idea
    • Use text and graphic features to locate information and to make and verify predictions
    • Follow and explain a set of written multi-step directions
    • Describe the relationship between events, ideas, concepts,or steps
    • Distinguish the difference between a biography and an autobiography
    • Distinguish fact from opinion
    • Distinguish point of view from what the author is trying to persuade the reader to think or do
    • Explain examples of sound devices, literal and nonliteral meanings, and figurative language 
    • Describe relationships among events, ideas, concepts, and cause and effect in texts
    • Explain the relationship between problems and solutions
    • Use information gained from illustrations and words to demonstrate understanding of the text
    • Explain the author’s purpose
    • Compare and contrast the most important points and key details presented in texts on the same topic

    Media Literacy

    • Understand how communication changes when moving from one genre of media to another
    • Explain how various design techniques used in media influence the message
    • Compare various written conventions used for digital media
    • Identify text structures and graphics features of a web page

     

    Reading Foundations

    Phonics

    • Decode multisyllabic words in context and independent of context by applying common spelling patterns
    • Decode words that double final consonants when adding an ending
    • Use the meaning of common prefixes and suffixes
    • Use the meaning of homophones
    • Decode known and unknown words by spelling patterns
    • Read irregularly spelled high-frequency words
    • K-5 Phonics Scope and Sequence

    Fluency

    • Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary

     

    Writing

    Writing Process

    • Use a simple prewriting strategy when given the purpose and the intended audience
    • Generate a main idea to support a multiple-paragraph text using a variety of sentence types, including imperative and exclamatory
    • Support the topic sentences within each paragraph with facts and details (from sources when appropriate)
    • Categorize, organize, and sequence the supporting details into a text with a clear beginning, middle, and end
    • Address an appropriate audience
    • Develop and strengthen writing by revising: main idea, sequence (ideas), focus, beginning/middle/end, details/facts (from sources, when appropriate), word choice (related to the topic), sentence structure, transitions, audience and purpose, voice
    • Edit for language conventions
    • Use a variety of conventional tools and technology (including keyboarding skills) to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others

    Write Opinion Texts

    • Introduce a topic or text being studied, using connected sentences
    • State an opinion or establish a position and provide reasons for the opinion/position
    • Use specific and accurate words that are related to the topic, audience, and purpose
    • Contain information using student’s original language except when using direct quotation from a source
    • Reference the name of the author(s) or name of the source used for details or facts included in the text
    • Use transitions to connect opinion and reason
    • Provide clear evidence of a beginning, middle,and, concluding statement or paragraph

    Write Informative/Explanatory Texts

    • Introduce a topic or text being studied
    • Develop the topic with simple facts, definitions, details, and explanations
    • Use specific, relevant words that are related to the topic, audience, and purpose
    • Use the student’s original language except when quoting from a source
    • Use transition words to connect ideas within categories of information
    • Create a concluding statement or paragraph

    Write Fiction or Nonfiction Narratives and Poems

    • Establish a setting and situation/topic and introduce a narrator and/or characters
    • Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue and descriptions
    • Establish and organize an event sequence to establish a beginning/middle/end
    • Use transition words and phrases to signal event order
    • Use specific and relevant words that are related to the topic, audience, and purpose

    Research Process

    • Generate a list of subject-appropriate topics
    • Create an individual question about a topic
    • Decide what sources of information might be relevant to answer these questions
    • Locate information in reference texts, electronic resources, interviews, or visual sources and literary and informational texts
    • Determine the accuracy and relevance of the information related to a selected question
    • Take simple notes in own words and sort evidence into provided categories or organizer
    • Use quotation marks to denote direct quotations when recording specific words and sentences from a source
    • Create a resource page from notes
    • Present and evaluate the information in a report or annotated display, using previously established teacher/student criteria

     

    Language

    Grammar

    • Use regular and irregular verbs and simple verb tenses
    • Use helping verbs with irregular verbs
    • Use complete subject and complete predicate in a sentence
    • Use comparative, superlative, and demonstrative adjectives and adverbs
    • Use subject/verb agreement in sentences
    • Produce simple and compound imperative, exclamatory, declarative, and interrogative sentences
    • Use 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-person pronouns and their antecedents

    Conventions

    • Write legibly (print, cursive)
    • Use an apostrophe to form possessives
    • Demonstrate and use commas and quotation marks in dialogue
    • Capitalize dialogue correctly
    • Use commas for greeting and closing of a friendly letter
    • Capitalize names of places
    • Capitalize titles of books, stories, and songs
    • Use spelling patterns and generalizations to spell compound words
    • Spell words that double the consonant
    • Spell plural words that change y to ies
    • Consult reference materials to check and correct spellings
    • Arrange words in alphabetical order to the third letter

     

    Speaking & Listening

    Listening

    • Follow classroom listening rules
    • Ask questions to check understanding of information presented, staying on topic, and linking comments to the remarks of others
    • Follow three-step instructions, according to classroom expectations
    • Demonstrate active listening through body language and eye contact with the speaker, according to classroom expectations

    Speaking

    • Come to discussions prepared, having read or studied required material; explicitly drawing on that preparation and other information known about the topic to explore ideas under discussion
    • Respond appropriately to discussion in a variety of settings, according to classroom expectations
    • Express opinions of read-alouds and independent reading topics

    Presenting

    • Use presentation skills and/or appropriate technology
    • Present information with clear ideas and details while speaking clearly at an understandable pace
    • Give an informal presentation,using a variety of media
    • Choose words and phrases for effect (adjectives, action verbs, figurative language)
    • Use academic language and conventions