Reading:

Students in third grade will be receiving instruction from Words Their Way, Readers' Workshop, and Wonders programs. By combining these we are continuing the use of strategies that students learned in K-2 and then enhancing it with Wonders for comprehension and literature aspects. Students will receive a weekly list of words to review and practice for spelling.

Writing:

Students will be working with SRSD writing curriculum to help publish narrative, informative, and persuasive writing pieces.

Handwriting:

Students in third grade will be using Zaner-Bloser to help them formulate cursive writing. We will solidify our print writing in the beginning of the year and then move onto cursive after the holiday break in December.

What's Happening?

Students will start the year practicing complete sentences, restating the question in their responses, and using best third grade effort to respond to writing prompts. We will also practice narrative writing!

Words Their Way

Third Grade Fundations builds on the basic skills that were learned in Kindergarten, First, & Second Grade. Through the program, students learn fluent decoding and encoding skills to the level of mastery. This will be practiced with a wide variety of text experiences that will expose students to poetry, narrative, and informational texts.

In third grade we will be focusing on the procedures, concepts, and applications for the following areas:

-Phonemic awareness
-Decoding and word study
-Sight word recognition
-Spelling
-Fluency
-Vocabulary
-Oral expressive language development
-Comprehension

Reader's Workshop

Throughout our reading block students will participate in Reader's Workshop using the Wonders Curriculum. Reader's Workshop consists of different components developing the readers ability through small group work.

• Mini-lessons on some aspect of literature or a reading strategy.

• Independent Reading Time, where students respond to the literature in terms of what they think or how they feel about what they are reading.

• Sharing Time where students share with another person their writing responses and their peers give feedback.

During Independent Reading Time, the teacher engages in student conferences on an individual or group basis. Teachers can also engage in guided reading with groups of students who need additional support.