Reading Curriculum
The third-grade units of study for reading were written to support the crucial transition children make from learning to read to reading to learn. The opening unit, Building a Reading Life, launches your students’ lives as upper elementary school readers. Children ramp up their reading skills by immersing themselves in within-reach fiction books while working on word solving, vocabulary development, envisioning, and prediction. The students will also have a unit focused on Mysteries, which are the perfect vehicle for teaching foundational skills that lie at the heart of engaged reading. Students leap at the chance to do the work required to “get” the mystery, following ideas across their texts, seeing cause-and-effect relationships, and predicting outcomes. Mysteries naturally push kids to infer—to notice clues and to wonder more about them.
Building a Reading Life Strategies
Skills:
-choosing books wisely
-reading a lot
-keeping track of how reading is going
-addressing problems along the way
-talking about books with others
-applying comprehension strategies
-synthesizing all the parts of the text
*****
Readers should...
~give themselves a comprehension check at the end of each chapter (Who is in this part? What is happening? Does it fit with something earlier in the text?)
~envision (make a mental movie)
~predict (tell what will happen and give evidence)
~identify tricky words and what they mean
Mysteries Strategies
Skills:
-actively monitor for sense, orient themselves to a new book, envision, predict, decode, read fluently, and retell in order to understand a story
-know that mystery books have a crime (problem), crime solver, clues, a victim, suspects, and a solution
-understand characters by thinking who they are (character traits) and why they might act as they do
*****
Readers should...
~identify the crime solver
~identify the mystery
~look for clues
~identify suspects (motives and opportunities)
The second trimester will include the unit Reading to Learn: Grasping Main Ideas and Text Structures which addresses essential skills for reading expository nonfiction, such as ascertaining main ideas, recognizing text infrastructure, comparing texts, and thinking critically, as well as the skills for reading narrative nonfiction, such as determining importance by using knowledge of story structure. This trimester will also include a unit on Character Studies which lures children into fiction books, teaching them to closely observe characters, make predictions, and sharpen their skills in interpretation.
Reading to Learn Strategies
Skills:
-identify the structure of the text
-summarize the sections of a text
-categorize information
-grasp main idea while identifying supporting details
-identify the author’s point of view
-identify nonfiction story lines
-read with different lenses (information and story)
-identify character traits (narrative nonfiction)
-decode words using the way they look and textual clues
*****
Readers should...
~identify main idea and details
Character Studies Strategies
Skills:
-learn lessons alongside characters and think how they can apply those lessons to their own life
-develop theories about characters that change as they read
-read closely and refer back to the text as a basis for our thinking
-expand understanding through collaborative discussions
*****
Readers should...
~identify character traits & changes
The third trimester focuses on Research Clubs: Elephants, Penguins, and Frogs, Oh My! This unit shows youngsters how to turn to texts as their teachers. Children work in clubs to gather, synthesize, and organize information about animals, and then use this information to seek solutions to real-world problems.
Research Club Strategies
-Organize and understand what they are learning by noticing and using text structures.
-Use questioning techniques to grow ideas about nonfiction.
-Use the structure of nonfiction text to talk like an expert on the topic.
-Compare and contrast the traits of animals within a topic and across topics; for example by noticing some ways a tiger is like a spider.
-Develop theories about what they are learning and apply their theories to real-world problems.
-See patterns across topics and pursue questions about those patterns.
-Think deeply about a topic by reading closely and noticing cause and effect relationships.