Reinforcing Reading

Happy Wednesday Third Grade Familes!

We have been having a great week in third grade so far! Every one is working diligently on his or her travel brochures, division facts, and biography writing. As I am sure you have noticed, we are taking a short break from our reading curriculum to focus on some trade books. We  have been reading more non-fiction this month, which has caused many of you to ask questions about reading support. I know it may seem daunting to support your third grader in non-fiction reading because there are no narrative plot elements. To relieve some of your stress and to encourage you to continue your support of your child's reading, I wanted to provide you with a few online resources. The following websites will help you find more ideas for supporting your child as he or she reads non-fiction texts!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and concerns. As always, please email me if you have questions about what we are learning in third grade, or if you would like some other resources!

Happy reading!

Reading Rockets
This website is filled with many great tips for supporting your emergent reader. There are articles written specifically for parents like you, and strategies to try with your child. I love the extra extensions this website offers. I get many emails from parents asking for ways to extend their child's thinking about a piece of text. This site will help provide you with many new ideas to try with your child. The hotlinks on the left of the website will take you to almost any topic you want information about. For non-fiction, check out this article: Non-Fiction Reading

ReadWriteThink
As a teacher, I love this website! ReadWriteThink has so many great resources on a variety of content areas. The main focus is literacy, hence the Read and Write part of the name, but integrating the content areas is also abundant in their resources. This specific link will take you to extension activities for 3rd and 4th graders. There are some games to test your child's comprehension skills, printouts for you and your child to use to track his or her reading selections, and tips to help your child boost his or her reading skills. I highly recommend you use this website as a resource this year!

Spaghetti Book Club
This website is loved in our classroom! When the students are looking for a new book to read, they often visit the Spaghetti Book Club for recommendations from other students. The reviews are done by students all over the world and they are done for a multitude of books. All genres are represented, making it easier for students to find a new book they will enjoy. As a class, we are considering creating our own reviews of books, so this would be a great site to become familiar with this year.