Grade 3

Language Arts

I. READING AND WRITING

A. READING COMPREHENSION AND RESPONSE

·Independently read and comprehend longer works of fiction (“chapter books”) and nonfiction appropriately written for third grade or beyond.

·Point to specific works or passages that are causing difficulties in comprehension.

·Orally summarize main points from fiction and nonfiction readings.

·Ask and pose plausible answers to how, why, and what-if questions in interpreting texts, both fiction and nonfiction.

·Use a dictionary to answer questions regarding meaning and usage of words with which he or she is unfamiliar.

·Know how to use a table of contents and index to locate information.

B. WRITING

· Produce a variety of types of writing – such as stories, reports, poems, letters,

descriptions – and make reasonable judgments about what to include in his or her own written works based on the purpose and type of composition.

· Know how to gather information from basic print sources (such as a children’s encyclopedia), and write a short report presenting the information in his or her own words.

· Know how to use established conventions when writing a friendly letter: heading, salutation (greeting), closing, and signature.

· Produce written work with a beginning, middle and end.

· Organize material in paragraphs and understand

o how to use a topic sentence,

o how to develop a paragraph with examples and details,

o that each new paragraph is indented.

· In some writings, proceed with guidance through a process of gathering information, organizing thoughts, composing a draft, revising to clarify and refine his or her meaning, and proofreading with attention to spelling, mechanics and presentation of a final draft.

C. SPELLING, GRAMMER AND USAGE

· Spell most words correctly or with a highly probable spelling. Use a dictionary to check and correct spellings about which he or she is uncertain.

· Use capital letters correctly.

· Understand what a complete sentence is, and

o identify subject and predicate in single-clause sentences;

o distinguish complete sentences from fragments.

· Identify and use different sentence types:

o declarative (makes a statement)

o interrogative (asks a question)

o imperative (gives a command)

o exclamatory (for example, “What a hit!”)

· Know the following parts of speech and how they are used:

o nouns (for concrete nouns),

o pronouns (singular and plural),

o verbs: action verbs and auxillary (helping) verbs,

o adjectives (including articles: a before a consonant, an before a vowel, and the),

o adverbs.

· Know how to use the following punctuation:

o end punctuation: period, question mark, or exclamation point,

o comma: between day and year when writing a date; between city and state in an address; in a series; after yes and no,

o apostrophe: in contractions; in singular and plural possessive nouns.

· Recognize and avoid the double negative.

D. VOCABULARY

· Know what prefixes and suffixes are and how the following affect word meaning:

o Prefixes:

§ re- meaning “again” (as in reuse, refill),

§ un- meaning “not” (as in unfriendly, unpleasant),

§ dis- meaning “not” (as in dishonest, disobey),

§ un- meaning “opposite of” or “reversing an action” (as in untie, unlock),

§ dis- meaning “opposite of” or “reversing an action” (as in disappear, dismount).

o Suffixes:

§ -er and -or (as in singer, painter, actor),

§ -less (as in careless, hopeless),

§ -ly (as in quickly, calmly).

· Know what homophones are (for example, by/buy; hole/whole) and correct usage of homophones that commonly cause problems:

o their, there, they’re

o your, you’re

o its, it’s

o here, hear

o to, too, two

· Recognize common abbreviations (for example, St., Rd., Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr., U.S.A., ft., in., lb.)

II. POETRY

Adventures of Isabel (Ogden Nash)

The Bee (Isaac Watts)

By Myself (Eloise Greenfield)

Catch a Little Rhyme (Eve Merriam)

The Crocodile (Lewis Carroll)

Dream Variations (Langston Hughes)

Eletelephony (Laura Richards)

Father William (Lewis Carroll)

First Thanksgiving of All (Nancy Byrd Turner)

For Want of a Nail, the Shoe was Lost…. (traditional Mother Goose rhyme)

Jimmy Jet and His TV Set (Shel Silverstein)

Knoxville, Tennessee (Nikki Giovanni)

Tress (Sergeant Joyce Kilmer)

III. FICTION

A. STORIES

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (adapted from Lewis Carroll)

From The Arabian Nights:

Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

The Hunting of the Great Bear (an Iroquois legend about the origin of the Big Dipper)

The Husband Who Was to Mind the House (a Norse/English folk tale, also known as “Gone is Gone”)

The Little Match Girl (Hans Christian Andersen)

The People Could Fly (an African American folk tale)

Three Words of Wisdom (a Mexican folk tale)

William Tell (a Swiss legend)

Selections from The Wind in the Willows: “The River Bank” and

“The Open Road” (Kenneth Grahame)

B. MYTHS AND MYTHICAL CHARACTERS

· Norse Mythology

Asgard (home of the gods)

Valhalla

Hel (underworld)

Odin

Thor

Trolls

Norse gods and English names for days of the week: Tyr, Odin, [Wodin], Thor, Freya

· Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome

Jason and the Golden Fleece

Perseus and Medusa

Cupid and Psyche

The Sword of Damocles

Damon and Pythias

Androcles and the Lion

Horatius at the Bridge

C. LITERARY TERMS

Biography and autobiography

Fiction and nonfiction

IV. SAYINGS AND PHRASES

Actions speak louder than words.

His bark is worse than his bite.

Beat around the bush

Beggars can’t be choosers.

Clean bill of health

Cold shoulder

A feather in your cap

Last straw

Let bygones be bygones.

One rotten apple spoils the whole barrel.

On its last legs

Rule the roost

The show must go on.

Touch and go

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.