Third grade is a big reading year! Your child’s reading skills already strong but will continue to improve and become even stronger. Although there is still a focus on building their decoding and fluency, this year students learn to really understand the meaning of what they are reading. Books become more challenging, students read more nonfiction and articles, and become more independent in learning to research online with less help from teachers and parents.
In River Edge, we use the Reader's Workshop model which gives the students the opportunity to read, explore and learn at their independent reading level. Teachers model a skill or strategy and student are able to practice this skill/strategy on the level that they are currently reading. Teachers also pull small groups for guided reading and skill groups, as well as meeting with students to conference about how their reading is going.
The units we will be working on this year are:
Unit One: Careful Readers Have Good Habits
Unit Two: Analyzing the Relationship Between Character and Plot in Fiction and Biography
Unit Three: Interpreting Text Through Discussions of Story Elements / Book Clubs
Unit Four: Strengthening Comprehension Skills and Strategies in Informational text
Unit Five: Mystery Genre Study
Unit Six: Demonstrating Text Comprehension in a Variety of Genres
Unit Seven: Strengthening Comprehension Skills and Strategies in Content Area Reading
"Skills and strategies we will be working on this year will include:
Asking and answering questions about the five W’s — who, what, when, where, and why — to show both understanding and an ability to find answers in a book’s text or illustrations;
Identifying the main topic and then naming key details and explaining how those details support the main idea;
Explaining how specific images — like a diagram of the parts of a flower — contribute information to what they’re reading;