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 author study, students listen to four books by author Leo Lionni over the course of multiple days. Each reading is followed by discussion focusing on literary elements and comparing characters, themes,settings, and plots. After discussion, students participate in creating and organizing information on a large matrix which depicts the main elements of that day’s story. During the lessons, the matrix helps students review and retell each story and to compare details of two or more stories at a time. On the final day of this lesson, individual students choose any two books to compare using a Venn diagram.

This is a remix of https://goopennc.oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/192 by Martha Levey and Toni Luther.  This is a multi-day unit on Cinderella and the many versions of the fairy tale. Students will listen to/read four versions of Cinderella identifying elements of culture and then compare/contrast two in groups. Then students will perform a reader's theater of one Cinderella story.  The whole class will remix the Cinderella story to write a modern-day version that takes into account their own cultures. 

In this lesson, students begin by working in small groups to analyze differences and similarities among a selection of comics from a variety of subgenres. Based on their discussion, they determine what subgenres are represented and divide the comics accordingly. Students then analyze the professional comics' uses of conventions such as layout and page design. Finally, they create their own comics using an online tool.

Experiencing the language of great poets provides a rich learning context for students, giving them access to the best examples of how words can be arranged in unique ways. By studying the works of renowned poets across cultures and histories, students extract knowledge about figurative language and poetic devices from masters of the craft. In this lesson, students learn about personification by reading and discussing poems that feature this writing device. Then they use the poems as a guide to brainstorm lists of nouns and verbs that they randomly arrange to create personification in their own poems.

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. 

In this lesson, students compare and contrast stories in the Magic Tree House series.

The teacher will read and lead a discussion of A Long Walk to Water, by Linda Sue Park. As part of the discussion of the book, teacher and students will identify character traits of Nya and Salva that helped them rise above their difficult circumstances. For Nya, those traits were necessary for survival; for Salva, in addition to helping him survive years as A Lost Boy, his character traits helped him become an inspiration and hero to thousands of his fellow countrymen when he returned to build wells in his homeland. This lesson was developed by Amber Honeycutt as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.            

In this exercise, students will compare two books of the same genre and similar topics using questions that require students to demonstrate understanding of a text by referring explicitly to the text as the basis for answers.

Students will read two passages from a book and infer the author's message about two differente settings. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

 Using Wonders text and their Reading/Writing Companion, students will learn why people immigrate to new places. Students will learn the difference in primary and secondary resources and why it is important to know where to get information. After reading texts from Wonders, students will use Google Earth to explore the places mentioned in the text and complete a Padlet discussing what they notice and wonder about the different locations. Students will be given an interactive note taking sheet on Jamboard to utilize as they read “The Castle on Hester Street”. Students will once again use Google Earth to explore Ellis Island as they begin to read “Next Stop, America!” and will complete a PearDeck text feature hunt. This will lead to a formative assessment where students will use FlipGrid to create a journal entry portraying themselves as an immigrant coming to America in the 1800’s.

In this lesson, students examine and discern the writing structure of various alphabet books and improve their writing skills by creating an alphabet book using one of the structures examined.

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. 

 In this lesson, students will be going through the Wonders Literature Anthology, reading “The Talented Clementine” and “Clementine and the Family Meeting”. Before reading the texts, students will review story elements by listening to the YouTube link posted below. The teacher and students will then go through reading the texts, pausing throughout reading to place sticky notes in their text to annotate the plot of the story (including setting, characterization and key events). Students will show their understanding by completing assignments in their reading/writing companion, and will then create a “Storyboard That” showing beginning, middle, and end of both texts for their formative assessment.

Students will learn the difference between theme and main idea; when to use them and with which genre. Students will be able to determine the central message by refering to the text as a basis for the answers. By understanding themes, students will be able to compare and contrast themes within and between stories.