Grade 3 · secular · Common Core-aligned
This is a full-year, 5-day-a-week reading and writing course for third grade. Your child will read short stories and nonfiction pieces, learn to back up every answer with the exact sentence that proves it, and end up writing three kinds of pieces: an opinion, an informative report, and a personal story. Nothing here is abstract grammar drilling — grammar gets taught right inside whatever they're reading or writing that week. By spring, they'll be pulling facts from two different sources, comparing them, and writing multi-paragraph pieces on their own, which is exactly what 4th grade assumes they can already do.
The whole year, in plain English. Tap any unit to see every skill inside, nothing is hidden.
This is where the whole year starts: your child learns that an answer about a story is only as good as the exact sentence that backs it up. They'll practice the six question types (who, what, when, where, why, how), find the one sentence that answers each, and learn to tell a complete sentence from a fragment.
Given a one-sentence question about a short passage, students locate and underline the single sentence in the text that answers it.
Students classify a question as a who, what, when, where, why, or how question by identifying its question word.
Given two candidate sentences from a text, students determine which one better supports a given answer, and explain why the other is not sufficient.
Students determine whether a given sentence is a complete sentence or a fragment by checking for a subject and a verb.
Students explain, in a written sentence, why a given fragment is missing a subject or a verb.
Given a short passage and two different but each-supportable answers to the same question, students identify the separate evidence sentence that supports each answer.
On a brand-new 150-250 word passage never seen before, students answer six text-dependent questions and copy the exact sentence supporting each answer.
Now they move from pointing at what's stated to figuring out what the story means when the author never says it outright. They'll separate what a character did from why, and build a 'lesson' out of a character's choice plus what happened because of it. Two fables get compared side by side before naming the pattern.
Recount the key events of a fable in the order they happened, using at least three past-tense verbs correctly.
Identify the sentence in a fable that states a character's action, and distinguish it from the sentence that reveals why the character acted.
Infer a character's motivation in a new short fable by combining what the character does with details about the situation.
State the central lesson of a fable and identify the one line of text that would make the lesson false if it were untrue.
Compare the lessons of two different fables that share a similar character choice, and explain what makes the lessons alike or different.
Judge which of two proposed lessons for the same fable is better supported by evidence, and justify the judgment.
Correctly use past tense verbs to recount completed story events and present tense verbs to describe a story's stated lesson.
Explain how a character's choice causes a specific later event in the fable.
Switching from stories to nonfiction. Your child learns that a nonfiction paragraph has one main idea with details supporting it, and that authors also use headings, captions, diagrams, and glossaries to carry information — not just sentences. A short daily grammar thread on subject-verb agreement runs alongside.
Given a 3-5 sentence nonfiction paragraph, state the one sentence or idea that all other sentences support.
Sort a mixed set of sentences from a paragraph into 'main idea' and 'supporting detail.'
Explain why a detail from a paragraph does or does not support the stated main idea.
Name the text feature (heading, caption, diagram, glossary, or bold word) that would answer a given question fastest.
Locate the specific answer to a factual question inside a diagram or caption, not the body text.
Identify the subject and verb in a sentence and fix a subject-verb agreement error.
Compare two nonfiction pages on the same topic and judge which text feature better answers a given question.
On a completely new one-page informational text never seen in class, state the main idea, list two supporting details, and answer two questions using text features.
This unit pushes Unit 3's feature-spotting into actually combining information — connecting what a diagram shows to what the sentences say. Your child also learns to tell apart cause/effect from sequence-of-steps, two structures that look similar and are easy to mix up. Grammar adds future tense and irregular verbs in small daily doses.
Given two sentences describing an event and its result, state which sentence is the cause and which is the effect.
Sort a mixed set of sentence pairs into 'cause and effect' or 'sequence of steps' categories.
Explain how a diagram's label adds a specific fact that the surrounding sentences do not state.
Answer a comprehension question that requires combining one fact from the sentences with one fact from a diagram or photo caption.
Produce a sentence describing a future action using correct future-tense verb form, including at least one irregular verb.
Identify the correct past-tense form of an irregular verb from three answer choices.
Given a new two-page informational passage with an unfamiliar diagram, decide which questions the sentences alone can answer and which require the diagram.
Recall the definition of a text feature term (heading, caption, diagram, glossary) taught in Unit 3.
Compare a cause/effect passage and a sequence passage on the same topic and state which structure each uses and why.
Your child learns to compare two texts on the same topic — two stories or two nonfiction pieces — and notice what each author chose to include or leave out. They'll take brief notes from each text, sort ideas into a comparison chart, and write sentences using 'and,' 'but,' or 'or' to state a similarity or difference, each one backed by evidence.
Sort a list of details from two texts into 'both,' 'only text A,' or 'only text B' on a comparison chart.
State one detail found in both of two informational texts and one detail found in only one.
Combine two related sentences about compared texts using and, but, or or, choosing the conjunction that matches the relationship.
Explain why two accurate texts about the same event can emphasize different details.
Compare the lessons two characters learn in two different stories on a similar theme.
Judge which of two provided details would most weaken a stated similarity claim if it were false.
Write 4-5 sentences comparing two new texts on the same topic, stating one similarity and one difference each with evidence.
Recall the meaning of the terms compare and contrast as used for two texts.
Your child writes a 4-paragraph opinion piece: a stated opinion, two reasons each backed up by something from a short text, and a closing. This is the first unit where they're producing a full piece of writing graded against everything built so far — especially 'evidence' from Unit 1.
State an opinion as a complete sentence that names the topic and takes a clear side.
Sort a list of sentences about a topic into 'reason' (supports opinion, can be argued) versus 'fact' (true statement, not an opinion) versus 'feeling' (restates emotion, gives no support).
Select the sentence from a short provided text that best supports a given reason, and explain why it supports that reason rather than a different one.
Combine a reason and its supporting detail into two sentences using a linking word (because, also, another reason).
Plan a 4-paragraph opinion piece using a graphic organizer that separates opinion, reason 1 with support, reason 2 with support, and closing.
Draft an opinion piece independently from a planning organizer and a new short text, stating an opinion and supporting it with two reasons.
Check a partner's draft for one specific issue: does each reason have a supporting sentence from the text, or is it a restated feeling.
Revise a sentence with an incorrect or shifting verb tense so the tense is consistent across the paragraph.
Write a complete opinion piece on a new topic, with a new short text, choosing which of three provided facts best supports each reason without being told which one fits.
Informative writing as the flip side of nonfiction reading skills built since Unit 3. Your child gathers facts from short sources, groups them into three paragraph topics, writes topic sentences, and adds a heading plus one text feature (a diagram or caption) they design themselves.
Label a heading, caption, diagram, and topic sentence in a short sample text.
Sort a list of 10-12 facts about one topic into 3 groups by shared subtopic.
Write a topic sentence that names the shared idea of a group of facts.
Record facts from a short provided source using short phrases, not copied sentences.
Write a heading that fits all 3 paragraphs of a given draft and check it against each one.
Design a diagram or caption that matches one fact stated in an original paragraph.
Edit a paragraph for subject-verb agreement, correcting each mismatched verb.
Edit a paragraph so verb tense stays consistent across all sentences.
Choose which of two facts is a better fit for a given paragraph's topic sentence.
Compose a 3-paragraph informative piece on an unfamiliar topic with a heading and one text feature.
The final unit: writing an original narrative with a clear starting situation, an ordered middle, and an ending that shows change. It's not new from scratch — it pulls together sequencing from Unit 2, motivation vocabulary from Unit 2, the compare structure from Unit 5, and grammar built across Units 1-4, and combines them for the first time into one piece.
Student identifies whether a given three-sentence story excerpt is in chronological order or scrambled.
Student arranges four events from a picture-based story prompt into a beginning-middle-end sequence chart.
Student rewrites a sentence that names a character's feeling directly into a sentence that shows the feeling through an action.
Student selects the temporal word (first, next, then, finally) that correctly signals the relationship between two given story events.
Student compares a character's choice at the story's beginning to the same character's choice at the story's end, explaining what changed and why.
Student combines two short related sentences into one sentence using a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, so).
Student corrects a verb tense error in a sentence so that tense stays consistent with the surrounding paragraph.
Student plans and drafts an original 3-paragraph narrative with a clearly established situation, a sequenced middle using temporal words, and an ending, including at least one motivation detail.
From the parent guide
This is a full-year, 5-day-a-week reading and writing course for third grade. Your child will read short stories and nonfiction pieces, learn to back up every answer with the exact sentence that proves it, and end up writing three kinds of pieces: an opinion, an informative report, and a personal story. Nothing here is abstract grammar drilling — grammar gets taught right inside whatever they're reading or writing that week. By spring, they'll be pulling facts from two different sources, comparing them, and writing multi-paragraph pieces on their own, which is exactly what 4th grade assumes they can already do.
Unit 1 · what to expect
This is where the whole year starts: your child learns that an answer about a story is only as good as the exact sentence that backs it up. They'll practice the six question types (who, what, when, where, why, how), find the one sentence that answers each, and learn to tell a complete sentence from a fragment.
The full guide covers all 8 units: where kids get stuck, what to say, and how to tell it's working. Included with the course.
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