This parent guide supports parents in helping their child at home with the 3rd grade English Language Arts content.

In this lesson, students read Pink and Say by Patricia Polacco to identify words that are unfamiliar to them. Working collaboratively in small groups, they discuss the meaning of these new words, using context clues from the text, prior knowledge, and both print and online resources. Students then apply their knowledge of the new vocabulary to further their understanding of the text.

This lesson is for Grade 3 on literacy. At Home Learning Lessons are a partnership between the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, PBS North Carolina, and the William and Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation.  Each lesson contains a video instructional lesson, a PDF lesson plan with a transcript, and a PDF file of extension activities.

This lesson is for Grade 3 on literacy. At Home Learning Lessons are a partnership between the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, PBS North Carolina, and the William and Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation.  Each lesson contains a video instructional lesson, a PDF lesson plan with a transcript, and a PDF file of extension activities.

In this lesson, students read Aunt Flossie's Hats to learn about family traditions and stories and how they keep families united across generations. Students discuss the text and respond to questions using the text to support their answers. Lesson opens to a Word document.

Awareness and true understanding of other cultures can create the desire to take action. In this lesson, students learn about Palestinian Arabs. After exploring the culture in a book and online, students identify a current social issue that concerns them. In a formal letter written to an appropriate official, students identify these issues and discuss suggestions of ways the problems might be addressed.

This interactive resource helps students make a diamante poem. Students work with the computer to create a diamante poem using specific words and/or adjectives. Students can print or save their work when finished.

As a way to support teachers with English Language Arts (ELA) instruction during the pandemic, the NCDPI ELA team created choice boards featuring standards-aligned ELA activities.The intended purpose of these choice boards is to provide a way for students to continue standards-based learning while schools are closed. Each activity can be adapted and modified to be completed with or without the use of digital tools. Many activities can also be repeated with different texts. These standards-based activities are meant to be a low-stress approach to reinforcing and enriching the skills learned during the 2019-2020 school year. The choice boards are to be used flexibly by teachers, parents, and students in order to meet the unique needs of each learner.Exploration activities are provided for a more self-directed or guided approach to independent learning for students. These activities and sites should be used as a way to explore concepts, topics, skills, and social and emotional competencies that interest the learner. 

This activity for gifted learners might serve as a culminating activity as part of a larger poetry unit. Students will take part in close readings of a variety of poems throughout the unit. In this activity, gifted learners would work either individually or with a partner to close read “Autumn” by Emily Dickinson.  They will then work to decipher the poem and it’s meaning, resulting in an audio recording of the original poem and visual display to complement their knowledge/understanding of the poem. They will then create their own humorous adaptation of  “Autumn” by translating the poem into their own nonliteral language, slang, phrases with a newly “remastered” audio recording of the poem and visual display to complement their knowledge/understanding of the poem in their own words. This lesson was developed by NCDPI as part of the Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project. This lesson plan has been vetted at the state level for standards alignment, AIG focus, and content accuracy.

Paraphrasing helps students make connections with prior knowledge, demonstrate comprehension, and remember what they have read. Through careful explanation and thorough modeling by the teacher in this lesson, students learn to use paraphrasing to monitor their comprehension and acquire new information. They also realize that if they cannot paraphrase after reading, they need to go back and reread to clarify information. In pairs, students engage in guided practice so that they can learn to use the strategy independently. Students will need prompting and encouragement to use this strategy after the initial instruction is completed. The lesson can be extended to help students prepare to write reports about particular topics.

This activity for gifted learners might serve as part of a larger poetry unit. Students will take part in close readings of a variety of poems throughout the unit.  In this activity, gifted learners would work individually to close read “Fireflies” by Paul Fleischman.  They will then work to decipher the poem and it’s meaning, resulting in a new “Firefly Job Posting” (created in verse) to complement their knowledge/understanding of the poem.  They will then participate in a “Networking Event for Fireflies” with their peers and listen to others’ “firefly job posting” ideas, share their own ideas, and give/receive feedback regarding their ideas, word choice, metaphors, etc, which will culminate in a “Classified Ad” page for fireflies…. a compilation of the students’ work / poetic reinterpretations of “Fireflies.” This lesson was developed by NCDPI as part of the Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project. This lesson plan has been vetted at the state level for standards alignment, AIG focus, and content accuracy.

This resource supports English language development for English language learners. This article explains the proper usage of the phrase "used to" in English. The article gives a definition, proper sentence structure for use, and examples. Students read this article.

In this lesson, students combine vocabulary exploration with word play by planning their own vocabulary parade, modeled on the activities in the text after a read-aloud of the picture book, Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster. Students brainstorm a list of vocabulary terms from a recent unit of study and then design concrete ways to illustrate the terms. The presentation of terms can be in the form of a parade, or a video, which might play during parent conferences or open house.

This lesson encourages students' natural curiosity about spiders and builds on their prior knowledge. After a shared reading of Diary of a Spider by Doreen Cronin, students work cooperatively using a strategy called Fact–"Faction"–Fiction to identify what they know, gather information, and create their own multimedia diaries using PowerPoint. Although the topic example used here is spiders, this lesson is easily adaptable to any content area topic.

This lesson teaches students to select personalized vocabulary words based on their interests and aspects of their everyday lives. Students work in groups to discuss and create their own vocabulary word lists and research their meanings. They create a "My World of Words Journal" with definitions and proper usage information and participate in an interactive journal share to receive feedback from their classmates.

I bribed my family with brownies to participate in an educational game night! In this video, we play a farm-themed word association game called Expression Connections taken from the Food, Land, and People curriculum. Try it out with your own family or classroom, and discover how many connections exist between you and the food that you eat!

Correlations to NC Essential Standards: Depends on how the lesson is adapted, but there is a lot of flexibility in this activity to be adapted to many standards in Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies.

This lesson, "Skim, Scan, and Scroll," taken from a research skills unit, is a step towards students completing a written research report. Here, students learn to read informational text, looking for supporting details. After the skills of skimming and scanning printed and electronic texts are modeled by the teacher, students practice the skills on their own.

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 3rd Grade ELA.

This resource accompanies our Rethink 3rd Grade ELA course. It includes ideas for use, ways to support exceptional children, ways to extend learning, digital resources and tools, tips for supporting English Language Learners and students with visual and hearing impairments. There are also ideas for offline learning.  

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 3rd Grade English Language Arts.