Third Grade Grammar Concepts and Practice

Teaching Grammar to Third Graders

Parts of Speech

Not only can third graders identify various parts of speech, such as nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, they can also explain their functions. To practice, give your child a sentence, and ask him to underline each part of speech in a different color. For instance, consider the following sample sentence:

Janice gracefully walked her big, furry dog through the park.

In this sentence, 'Janice,' 'dog' and 'park' should be marked as nouns. 'Her' is a pronoun. 'Walked' is a verb, and 'gracefully' is the adverb that modifies the verb. Finally, 'big' and 'furry' are adjectives.

Irregular Verbs

In third grade, students can conjugate and use irregular verbs, such as 'bind,' 'break' and 'drink.' These verbs are irregular because they don't follow the normal conjugation patterns. For instance, a regular conjugation pattern would be: 'The cat breaked the vase.' However, the correct usage is: 'The cat broke the vase.' Similarly, 'I drinked the water' is grammatically incorrect. Instead, you would say, 'I drank the water.'

If you notice your child has difficulty conjugating some verbs in particular, use flashcards to review the proper usage. Alternatively, make review into a game by challenging your child to write a paragraph using only irregular verbs.

Forming Sentences

Third graders are expected to form simple, compound and complex sentences. Variation in sentence structure helps students become better, more effective writers. At home, begin by going through the different types of sentences. It often helps if you provide an example.

Simple sentences are independent clauses that include a subject and a verb.

Tony went to the store.

Compound sentences combine two independent clauses using a conjunction.

I ate ice cream, and my sister ate cookies.

Complex sentences have both an independent and dependent clause.

Because I was hungry, I ate ice cream.

Photocopy a page out of a book that your child has already read. Then, ask her to underline the simple sentences with a straight line, underline the compound sentences with a squiggly line and circle the complex sentences. Afterward, comment on the variation of sentence structure, and point out that authors usually vary the structure of their sentences to keep the readers interested.

Have your child apply this knowledge by writing an excerpt of her own. First, she should just write without thinking of sentence structure. Then, go over the writing with your child and look for sentences that could be made more complex.