Activities To Try at Home

Phonological Awareness Activities:

Phonological Awareness activities are those that help children hear, recognize, and manipulate the sounds in spoken language. In third grade, your child will spend most of their year practicing manipulating these sounds to make new words. 

See below for some activities from the Florida Center for Reading Research that you can do at home with your child to build their phonological awareness.

Phonics Activities:

Phonics is the ability to match the phoneme to the corresponding grapheme, or sound to letter.  A child with string decoding skills uses this knowledge to read familiar and unfamiliar words. In third grade, your child is building more sophisticated decoding skills, with a large emphasis on syllable types.

The following are a few things that you can do at home to support your child's phonics progression:

• Your third grader will use the six syllable types to help them decode unfamiliar words. You can watch the videos from the Neuhaus Education Center to learn more about these syllable types and ways to recognize them.  This will help support your learner when trying to decode difficult, multisyllable words. 

  • Open Syllables

  • Closed Syllables

  • Vowel E

  • Vowel R

  • Vowel Pairs

  • Final Stable Syllables

• Use prefixes and suffixes to help your second grader create new words.  For example, give your child the word heat.  Have them add prefixes and suffixes to make new words such as reheat, heated, heater, heating.  Then talk about how the meaning of these words are different from one another.

See below for a few additional activities from the Florida Center for Reading Research that you can do at home with your child.

Fluency:

Reading fluency is a child's ability to read a text accurately, with reasonable sped, and appropriate expression. A fluent reader doesn't spend time decoding words and can focus more on what the text means.

• Read Regularly - Reading daily is the best way to help children practice reading and build their fluency.

• Model fluent reading with your child. Change your expression throughout the story so that your child can hear how you raise your voice at the end of the question or how you get excited when you see an exclamation mark.

• Choose the right books. Help your child choose books that they can comfortably read when practicing fluency.  They should be able to read about 90 percent of the words in the book. When they struggle with a word or phrase, help them sound it out and then have them reread that section so it is read smoothly.

• Record it! Have your child make their own audio book to share with friend and family by recording themselves reading their favorite story.  This can be done with a tape recorder or app of your phone.

Here are a few more activities from the Florida Center for Reading Research that you can try at home to support your third grader as they continue on their journey to becoming a fluent reader:

Vocabulary Activities:

Children with larger vocabularies understand more of what they read and hear.  You can help your child develop a greater vocabulary by reading with them at home.  Here are a few other ideas of ways you can help your child develop a larger vocabulary:

• Word Collecting - Have your child(ren) collect interesting words that they have heard throughout the day.  At the dinner table, have everyone share their words and what they think they mean.  If your child shares an incorrect meaning, guide him/her to the correct meaning. Then try to use some of these interesting words in upcoming conversations with your child.

• While reading, asks your child to use the word clues in the sentence to help them figure out the meaning of difficult words.

• Encourage your child to use synonyms (words the mean the same thing) to describe every day events. For example, when you ask your child how their day was and they say "good", encourage them to use another word besides good, such as great or wonderful.

Here are a few more activities from the Florida Center for Reading Research that you can try at home:

Comprehension Activities:

Your third grader is continuing to develop their reading skills as they learn more complex words and read longer, more rigorous texts. They are reading a variety of genres, including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.  They are also able to  talk more about what they are reading and develop more advance ideas about the topics.  Here are a few ideas of ways you can help your child with their reading comprehension:

• Try to read at home together every day.  Even though your third grader is reading more independently, reading aloud introduces your learner to more complex texts and greater vocabulary.

• Read stories and text that expose your learner to more complex words, such as three syllable words, homophones, and words with affixes.

• Read words with common prefixes and suffixes, such as pre-, re-, un-, -able, and -er.  Talk about how these prefixes and suffixes change the meaning of the root word.

• Help your third grader make connections from the text they are reading to real life events taking place around them. Ask them questions while they read, prompting them to make these connections.

• While reading, ask your child to make predictions about the story. 

• Compare characters in the story and discuss ways they are similar and different from one another.

• Compare different versions of the same story, such as two versions of a classic fairy tale.

• Point out the text features with the books they are reading, especially the non-fiction books.  Features like captions, graphs, subheadings, maps, and illustrations can provide a wealth of knowledge that will enhance the understanding of the text.  Encourage your child to look at these features and ask them questions that come directly from them.

Here are a few other activities from the Florida Center for Reading Research  that you can do at home to help your child with their reading comprehension:

"My Child Can" Booklet from ALSDE

The Alabama Department of Education has released a series of "My Child Can" booklets for each grade level. Inside each booklet, you can find an overview of skills that your child should master by the end of the year.  Included within are also several activities and resources for you to use with your child at home.