Introduction to 3^rd Grade

Students in grade 3 continue to strengthen their foundational reading and writing skills while also starting to build the critical reading and writing skills needed to proficiently read increasingly complex literary and informational texts. Students ask relevant questions and answer inferential questions, using text evidence, summarizing, and engaging in collaborative conversations. They analyze texts for literary elements and devices, point of view, and structure. Students continue to practice the writing process by writing narrative, informative, and opinion pieces. Students in grade 3 expand their grade-level vocabularies, including homophones and homographs, multiple-meaning words, and words with Anglo-Saxon roots, and apply their knowledge of those words as they communicate through speaking and writing. Students write simple and compound sentences and recognize and correct fragments. They use adjectives, prepositions, and adverbs to add detail and clarity to their writing. Students understand texts more clearly with the aid of graphic and text features and use that understanding to find, organize, and share relevant information. Students in grade 3 analyze different combinations of multimodal content to determine how best to communicate ideas and feelings. Students develop stamina for longer periods of reading and writing and autonomy in choosing what kinds of texts to read or pieces to write.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a research-based framework for improving student learning experiences and outcomes through careful instructional planning focused on the varied needs of all students, including students with visible and non-visible disabilities, advanced and gifted learners, and English learners.

Some general ideas for implementing the UDL lens in an ELA lesson, PK-12, are provided in this chart.

These exemplar lesson plans showcase best practices for English language arts. These lessons are aligned to the Oklahoma Academic Standards and bundle together multiple objectives to showcase the recursive nature of ELA. Each lesson plan includes helpful explanations about the instructional plan and steps. Teachers can review these sample lessons on their own, with a colleague, and/or with their professional learning community, to reflect on the highlighted ELA practices and how they mesh with their own current classroom practices.

Lesson plans are available for each grade featuring texts from the following genres: fiction, nonfiction, & poetry.

Moreover, an exemplar lesson plan sequence regarding Standard 6 research is available for each grade band.

This suite of writing resources includes:

• student-friendly checklists for the narrative, informative, argumentative, and research modes
• editing checklists for the beginning and middle of the school year
• examples of teacher feedback on student writing
• a peer feedback lesson plan with a slideshow and handout

• Engagement Strategies
• Family Guide
• 3rd Grade ELA Standards (pages 44-52)