Third grade is a big year for reading comprehension. Your child will gather a deeper understanding of the meaning of what they are reading as they expand their vocabulary skills and build knowledge. They will also be exposed to more challenging books, articles, poetry, and online research. They will also learn to be more independent learners and thinkers as they receive less assistance from adults. Before the end of third grade, your child should be reading with greater accuracy and fluency. The following activities should assist you as you help your third grader improve his literacy skills.
1. Sticky Notes Project
3rd grade kids will love this sticky note project that teaches them about character traits. Providing students with a visual representation allows them to more easily compare the traits of different characters. This fun activity will help students think more deeply about characters which will allow them to more deeply understand the meaning of the story they are reading.
Learn more: education.com
2. Book Squares Activity
Sequencing events in a story can often be difficult for 3rd grade students, and this book square activity will help! This activity is a great way to help your child take essential story details and place them in chronological order. Another great thing about the book square is that it can later be used as a bookmark!
Learn more: education.com
3. Beach Ball Comprehension
This beach ball activity will quickly become one of the favorite games of your 3rd graders. All you need is a permanent marker and a few beach balls. Write questions on the balls for your students to answer about their favorite book. Include comprehension questions about setting, characters, predictions, connections, problems, and solutions.
Learn more: conversationsinliteracy.com
4. Teach Students to Visualize
This 3rd grade reading comprehension activity allows students to focus on text visualization which is a crucial strategy in increasing reading comprehension skills. This lesson utilizes an anchor chart, listening skills, and a descriptive book. Learn more about the details of this activity here.
Learn more: raisethebarreading.com
5. Creepy Carrots Inference Activity
This engaging activity is great for entertaining readers. Your 3rd graders will have a lot of fun as they learn about inference skills. This one-day lesson plan includes a lesson script, questions, and writing task instructions.
Learn more: thelemonadestandteacher.com
6. Animal Style Reading Comprehension Strategies
These engaging and fun reading comprehension strategies teach 3rd graders how to ask questions, make predictions, and draw conclusions. They are able to use animals to learn essential reading skills through entertaining poems. Learn more about these strategies here.
Learn more: ateachableteacher.com
7. Main Idea and Details Sentence Sort
This engaging activity can help students understand how details support the main idea of a story. Students will be given sentences from a paragraph that are out of order, cut apart from one another, and all mixed up. Your 3rd grader must use critical thinking skills to put the paragraph together correctly.
Learn more: thriftyinthirdgrade.com
8. Sentence Frames for Reading Responses
An essential skill for 3rd grade students to master is effectively responding to the text they are reading. Often, students struggle with writing accurate and meaningful responses to the texts they are reading. Providing the students with sentence frames teaches them how to write more accurate and meaningful responses.
Learn more: upperelementarysnapshots.com
9. Reading Comprehension Book Marks
This is one of the best reading comprehension tools you will find. These free bookmarks are terrific for helping 3rd graders improve reading retention as well as aid students in the practice of note-taking. These bookmarks are terrific for fiction stories and non-fiction books.
Learn more: 123homeschool4me.com
10. Cootie Catcher for Reading Comprehension
This 3rd grade level activity is an engaging and fun lesson that will definitely entertain your readers. The cootie catcher activity contains three versions and can be used with any fictional book. Find out more about this activity here.
Learn more: classroomgamenook.blogspot.com
11. Listening Comprehension
Listening comprehension benefits our kiddos in so many ways. This allows students to focus on how well they can really listen. It also helps teachers to assess and understand where their kiddos are at. While audiobooks are a great choice, this Youtube reading passage has been specially formulated to help your kiddos develop 3rd grade reading concepts and skills.
Learn more: Listen and Learn English
12. Main Ideas and Details
Save time while preparing for your next lesson and tune into this video. This video not only gives a great overview of the main ideas and details but also provides plenty of structure to build some classroom visuals with your class.
Learn more: Carson Dellosa Education
13. Hamster Hide and Seek Poem
Reading poems is quite a fun and engaging fluency project. This video is great because it walks you and your kiddos through a repeated reading lesson. It's great to also be sent home with struggling readers and parents can easily work through the video with them!
Learn more: Astute Hoot
14. Third Grade Test Prep
It's never easy teaching test prep to third graders. Especially when you have a class of 20, on all different levels. Finding advanced stories, while also working with your lower levels can be difficult. This video provides a great video that will help to enhance your digital classroom by incorporating critical thinking skills and comprehension prep.
Learn more: Hype Math
15. Guess Who? Guess What? Guess The Word!
This is a super fun twist on the classic Guess Who game. Help your third grader practice their reading skills in a fun and engaging way. This can work with centers and games for free time. Students will absolutely love when this board game comes out.
Learn more: My Class Bloom
16. Context Clues and Cookies
Providing students with plenty of visuals is vital to a successful reading space. This activity helps boost literacy skills among your third graders. Make this poster together as a class and then pair it with some favorite comprehension activities to practice context clues.
Learn more: The Teacher Next Door
17. Predict It
Is it time for teaching predictions? But you can't seem to find the perfect book for your classroom? Sparky! Is an amazing book for teaching predictions in the third-grade classroom. Students will love reading along and predicting what is going to happen next.
Learn more: Starts with a Story
18. Fluency Reminders
If you have a fluency center, then this is a great addition to that. If not, you can totally still use this reminder sheet. Whether you create your very own classroom poster or send it home with kiddos to remind parents about focusing on fluency. Whichever works for your classroom, it's a great resource to add to the books.
Learn more: Literacy with Aylin Claahsen
19. Lucky Days
If you're looking for the perfect Saint Patrick's Day activity, here it is! Include this in your March madness activities. Focusing on Main Idea and key details, these printable worksheets will be engaging to all of your students.
Learn more: Hands On Learning LLC
20. Practice Transitions
Get your third grade class moving with their transitions! Use a book that is directly aimed toward the 3rd grade reading level like How to Catch a Leprechaun. Your students will be engaged and totally ready to fill out the worksheet.
Learn more: The Donut Class
21. Compare and Contrast
Comparing and contrasting is one of the most important concepts your kiddos will learn about in third grade. It's important to provide students with books that they will both be engaged in and easily be able to compare! These two books along with this simple worksheet are great for exactly that.
Learn more: Abram Academics
22. Teaching Vocabulary
Teaching vocabulary and sight words can get more and more difficult as your students get older. Not only are the words more challenging, but students need a bit more stimulation to be totally engaged. These vocabulary vipers are amazing to teach both vocabulary and sight words! They also make a super cute classroom decoration for a word wall.
Learn more: Life of a Former Third Grade Teacher
23. Flip Books
Who doesn't love a good flip book? I swear by them because my students love making them. This flipbook is filled with different comprehension passages. Whether you need a fiction or non-fiction reading passage, equip them in your very own flipbook! Watch students work vigorously to finish and decorate their beautiful books.
Learn more: Hands On Learning LLC
24. Vocabulary Assessments
There's no doubt that assessments are a pretty big controversy right now, but sometimes they're just necessary. Especially when it comes to vocabulary. Vocabulary can be really difficult for students, but also essential for them to have proper reading fluency skills.
Learn more: Third Grade Word Bird
25. Informational Reading
Sand Cat is the perfect brief, non-fiction passage for any third grade classroom! It comes with comprehension questions as well. If you're looking for a quick comprehension package, then here it is. Low prep and engaging for your kiddos.
Learn more: Teachers Pay Teachers
26. Improve Fluency
Improve your students reading fluency with these reading bookmarks! They can either be used solely as bookmarks or they can be used to follow along while reading. Students will love the different colored films to help highlight what is being read.
Learn more: Natalie in Third
27. Build the Word
Building on your student's phonics skills is another important aspect of teaching reading comprehension. When students are able to quickly put together words, their fluency skills are automatically heightened. This is a great activity to work with your students on suffixes.
Learn more: The Literacy Lady
28. Story Maps
As students become more and more skilled with their comprehension strategies, it's time to put them to work. Use a story map to combine all of the skills learned throughout a comprehension unit to assess students' skills and levels.
Learn more: The Teacher Next Door
29. Reading Detective
Although this may not be a freebie, it's totally worth it. Your students will absolutely love to become detectives and make inferences from different texts. This is highly engaging for all students.
Learn more: Teachers Pay Teachers
30. Social Studies Reading
This reading passage is great for integrating cross-curriculum lessons into your classroom. Students will love to mark up their papers.
Learn more: Ashleigh Education Journey
31. Book Reports
Book reports are super beneficial for third graders. Not only do they help readers to understand what they've read, but to also put it into words and pictures. This hits all of the different reading comprehension skills and students will also love to share their book reports with others.
Learn more: Terrific Teaching Tactics
32. Novel Studies
Novel studies have so many benefits it's hard to list them all in such a short paragraph. Not only do they build on different comprehension skills, but they also build a special community in the classroom. Providing students with novel studies packets and stories will keep them talking, working together, and best of all, reading together.
Learn more: Miss Kyla's Star Students
33. Vocabulary Puzzles
Vocabulary puzzles are super fun and engaging. They can really be created using any words. Type your words on a paper and use puzzel.org to play around with creating different puzzle pieces. It's super simple to laminate and to use again and again.
Learn more: Miss Vin 3
34. Author's Purpose
Building anchor charts in the classroom are beneficial for both you and your students. It's mainly important to stay on task throughout the entire lesson and allow your kiddos to add their input as you go. Don't forget to refer back to the anchor chart throughout your entire unit.
Learn more: Keever's Crew
35. K.W.L. Chart
Balloons Over Broadway is a great introduction to K.W.L. charts for your students. This is something that students do have some background knowledge about and they also can easily come up with questions to ask! There's no doubt your students will use these charts for many years to come.
Learn more: Mrs. Homuth
36. Book Talk Wall
Building a book talk wall will help to enhance students' vocabulary. Whether you go over the word daily, refer to them throughout your lessons, or just want students to look during downtime, the book talk wall is sure to have a positive influence on them.
Learn more: The Kentucky Teacher
37. Flower Vocabulary
Finding different ways to break down vocabulary words is an easy way to help students gain fluency. With better vocabulary knowledge, comes better fluency, and with better fluency comes better comprehension. It's all connected. Find different ways to enhance your student's vocabulary-building skills, like these flowers.
Learn more: Guide, Teach, Inspire
38. Random Wheel
Last, but certainly not least is the random wheel. This wheel can be created and modified to whichever words you're using in your lessons. Whether you want to use it for a game show, bingo or just to practice reading aloud students will love when you pull up the random wheel on your classroom smart board or projector.
Learn more: Worldwall
Concluding Thoughts
Hopefully, these exciting activities will assist you as you help your 3rd graders to more deeply develop their reading comprehension skills. You can supplement these terrific activities with fun stories that will keep students engaged and interested throughout the school year as you prepare them for the 4th grade.
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