All of the children in third grade are being taught using a literature based reading approach in conjunction with leveled books to help them develop independent reading and thinking skills.

Reader’s Workshop will include the following:

• Interactive read aloud

• Mini lesson

• Independent reading

• Conferring and small groups

• Phonics word study

• Reading at home

Comprehension Skills:

• Story elements are analyzed so that a child understands and uses plot terms. These include: character, setting, problem, solution, sequencing of events, and conclusion.

• Main idea and supporting details

• Fact and opinion

• Cause and effect relationships

• Compare and contrast

• Making analogies

• Visualizing

Vocabulary, Decoding, and Accuracy:

• Vocabulary study is taught within the context of reading, content area lessons, and through skill exercises

• Children will learn strategies in order to become proficient readers

• Syllabications and structural analysis (prefixes, suffixes, contractions, and compound words)

• Using dictionaries and reference materials

• Understanding multiple word meanings (synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms)

Fluency:

• Pays attention to punctuation

• Reads the words smoothly

• Reads at just the right pace, loud enough to be heard by audience

• Pays attention to dialogue

At Home:

It is extremely important for students to read on a regular basis outside of school. Students should be reading for 20 minutes or more on most nights. This would be a great time for your child to read the books he/she has taken out of the school library. We will encourage students to read books from a variety of genres (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, magazines, etc.). It is also important that students read books at an appropriate level of difficulty. If students are reading books which are too hard, they will spend more time decoding individual words as opposed to gaining a complete understanding of what they are reading. For your child to continue to grow as a reader, writer, or speller, it will be critical that he/she takes the time to interact with books at home as well as in school.

Key Ideas and Details

• Develop and answer questions to locate relevant and specific details in a text to support an answer or inference.

• Determine a theme or central idea and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize portions of a text.

• In literary texts, describe character traits, motivations, or feelings, drawing on specific details from the text.

• In informational texts, describe the relationship among a series of events, ideas, concepts, or steps in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.

Craft and Structure

• Determine the meaning of words, phrases, figurative language, and academic and content-specific words.

• In literary texts, identify parts of stories, dramas, and poems using terms such as chapter, scene, and stanza.

• In informational texts, identify and use text features to build comprehension.

• Discuss how the reader’s point of view or perspective may differ from that of the author, narrator or characters in a text.

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

• Explain how specific illustrations or text features contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a text (e.g., create mood, emphasize character or setting, or determine where, when, why, and how key events occur).

• Explain how claims in a text are supported by relevant reasons and evidence.

• Recognize genres and make connections to other texts, ideas, cultural perspectives, eras, personal events, and situations.

Phonics and Word Recognition

• Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.

Fluency

• Read grade-level text with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.