Grade 3 Writing: goals and how we get there
Writing starts in grade 3. A grade 3 writing student at Learn To Be does three things:
- Works through the Sentence Mastery Grade 3 course.
- Writes about what they read.
- Practices a little every day (at home!).
The goal and what success looks like
By the end of grade 3, a student writes one clean paragraph. Give them any topic they know about. In about 15 minutes, they write:
- a topic sentence,
- a few real detail sentences,
- an ending sentence.
The paragraph is easy to read. It has capital letters and end punctuation in the right places.
Grade 3 is the year of the sentence. Good writing starts with good sentences.
Typing goal: the student types 20 words per minute. Typing makes it easier to write more.
The course
Sentence Mastery Grade 3 has 55 lessons. It covers sentence fragments, sentences with "because", and the WHO and WHAT of a sentence.
- Find the start. Try the first few lessons. If they are easy, skip ahead to where the student starts making mistakes.
- Do not skip lessons after that. A student moves on only after they master a lesson.
This course builds the sentences that a paragraph needs. When the student finishes it, the next step is Sentence Mastery Grade 4.
What they write about
Kids cannot write about nothing. They write about what they read. The topics come from this grade's reading program. The 3rd Grade Reading course also has short science and history passages that give them things to write about.
- Classic Tales
- Animal Classification
- The Human Body: Systems and Senses
- Ancient Rome
- Light and Sound
- The Viking Age
- Astronomy
- Native Americans: Regions and Cultures
- Early Explorations of North America
- Colonial America
- Ecology
A typical session
- Warm-up, about 10 minutes. Quick sentence practice. Make a short sentence longer. Join two sentences into one. Finish a sentence that starts with "because", "but", or "so".
- Course lessons. This is the main part of the session. Do one or two lessons together.
- Write about what they read. The student writes a short piece about something from their reading. The reading gives them something to say.
Between sessions (at home)
Daily practice happens at home, not in your session. A little every day works better than a lot once a week.
Tell the parent:
"Every day, have your child sign in at learntobe.org and do a lesson in their writing course. A little every day helps most."
Show the parent and the student how to sign in and find the course during your first session.
Other resources
- IXL. If your student has an IXL account through our pilot, its diagnostic shows the grade level your student works at in each part of English language arts. Use it as an extra check, not instead of the course. See How should tutors use IXL?