Reading Lesson Plans for Third Grade Students

Creating Lesson Plans for Third Grade Reading

Lesson plans for third grade reading often have three components, including pre-reading, reading and post-reading. A lesson plan that includes all three of these components will give students the opportunity to fully comprehend and interact with texts.

Pre-reading Activities

Being able to make accurate predictions is an important reading comprehension skill. Pre-reading activities often involve activating background knowledge and making predictions about the upcoming text.

To start, choose a book to use in the lesson; a picture book works best. Show your students the book at the beginning of the lesson. Read them the title and discuss the cover illustration and the pictures. Invite your students to write down predictions about what's going to happen in the story.

Reading Exercises

Read the book out loud a few pages at a time. Stop every few pages and discuss what has happened to check your students' understanding of the text. For longer books, you can check for comprehension by having students write a brief summary for each chapter.

At the end of these discussions, encourage your students to update their predictions. Readers who make predictions about what's going to happen next are fully engaged in the reading process. They are constantly monitoring their comprehension and updating their predictions.

Post-Reading Practice

When the story is finished, divide the class into groups and let them compare their predictions with their classmates. You can also lead them in a discussion about how their predictions helped them understand the text.

Sum up the text with a concluding activity. These activities often work well when students can be creative. Ask students to write an alternate ending, act out a scene or create a diorama.

For homework, assign a short text that's divided into segments. Ask your third graders to read each segment separately and write down a prediction about what will happen in the next segment. Tell them to write what really happened in each segment at the end of the text.

Additional Tips

In addition to comprehension, 3rd graders must become fluent readers. A simple way that you can help your class accomplish this is by increasing the number of sight words they know. Sight words are words a child can read automatically, like 'said' or 'have,' without trying to sound them out. Write a number of sight words that appear in a text on flashcards. Go through the flashcards with your third graders both before and after reading the text.