What Language Arts Should a 3rd Grader Know?
In third grade, students should be fluent readers who are ready to dive into chapter books and take their reading comprehension skills to the next level. Typically, third grade language arts studies will include:
Use a number of comprehension strategies to answer questions.
Compare and contrast information.
Understand idioms, prefixes, and suffixes in order to expand their vocabulary .
Use transition words when writing.
Use proper punctuation and capitalization.
First Grade Reading Goals/Objectives
Now that phonics and reading skills are pretty much mastered, it’s time for your child to focus on their comprehension skills. Using the right strategies to break down text, ask questions, make inferences and summarize are all concepts that students will focus on this year.
The ideal language arts curriculum for third grade will help your child address these and many more objectives, including but not limited to:
Describe characters, identify the main idea and use supporting details.
Read and understand a variety of genres such as fiction, non-fiction, poetry, fables, etc.
Use context clues to understand what a word means.
With the basics down, students are now moving on to writing longer, more detailed copy. This year, students will continue to grow their vocabulary and use these new words and phrases to make their writing as clear and concise as possible. A thorough third grade language arts curriculum will also help students with the writing objectives listed below.
The writing process: planning, drafting, revising, editing, publishing
Write longer text in chronological order using transition words
Write different types of text: opinion, informative, narrative, etc.
Writing Goals/Objectives
Grammar Goals/Objectives
Good writing isn’t possible without a solid understanding of grammar rules. This year, students will gain a deeper understanding of concepts that will help them communicate more effectively, both in writing and orally. Your language arts curriculum for third grade should teach your child how to:
Use proper punctuation, capitalization, and noun and verb forms (singular/plural)
Understand parts of speech, prefixes, suffixes, homophones, etc.
Know the different sentence types
A third grade language arts curriculum will build on what students have learned in the last few years. Your child’s grammar, and writing skills are also expected to expand as they write longer copy with more detail and transitions.
This page will give you an overview of the objectives and goals your child’s third grade language arts curriculum should aim to achieve.