Elementary Concepts: Third Grade Reading

By the third grade, a child's vocabulary is growing and so is their ability to read. Parents are often are unsure of how they can measure their child's reading skills. This article provides parents with an estimate of the skills their child should have mastered by the end of their grade three reading lessons. Your state may have slightly different guidelines, so it is a good idea to check with your student's teacher or local school board before making any final judgments on your child's academic progress.

Comprehension is Key

The earlier teachers and parents can correct miscomprehension, the faster children will learn to read. Contextual clues give children tools to explore the text and seek out its meaning. By the end of third grade students should be able to use textual features to predict and comprehend content. This includes tables of contents, indexes, captions and keywords in bold type. Third graders should also be able to discover contextual and comprehension clues in the text formats, main ideas or plots and elements from similar readings.

Building a Vocabulary

The texts used in grade three use longer, more complicated words and the subject matter becomes more complicated also. Before entering the fourth grade a child will understand and be able to identify synonyms, antonyms, homophones, affixes and roots, all of which can be used in strategies designed to help with vocabulary acquisition.

Stay Motivated

Children need to learn the purpose of reading so they will have motivation to continue learning how to do it. This is especially true in third grade when reading lessons become very demanding and it's much easier for a child to fall behind. Third graders should be able to understand that fiction is meant to entertain whereas textbooks and non-fiction can be read for facts or used to answer questions. At this level children should also be able to determine the author's purpose for writing. Understanding the author's purpose will help the student extract as much information as possible out of the text and will make the reading a more meaningful and rewarding experience.