Grade 3 – Language Arts Skills

TERM 1 The Grade Three students, having completed Grades One and Two, are being exposed to various strategies and skills of Language Arts, that will further their understanding of how language works. In this unit, the students will be given opportunities to practise their listening and speaking skills through a variety of engaging activities. In reading, they apply previously learnt skills to improve word recognition and vocabulary. As students improve fluency, they apply the strategies learnt to increase their comprehension. They will also demonstrate their understanding through the use of graphic organizers and outlines. They use self-questioning strategies to engage in active reading. Students incorporate the use of negative forms of the verbs “to be” and “to do”, and the use of the conjunction “but” in a range of contexts to show the opposite or conflicting ideas. Their writing incorporates the use of descriptive adjectives to show comparison when comparing two or more things. Students continue to use the structures of the English Language to write simple Language Experience Stories. They develop their pre-writing skills with the aid of graphic organizers. Their drafts are more detailed and application of skills learnt across strands is evident.

TERM 2 After completing one term in Grade Three, the students are now equipped with the necessary skills that will allow them to become more independent as learners. They will continue to apply previously learnt skills across the strands. In this unit, further opportunities are given for students to share opinions, to ask and answer questions using the listening and speaking skills. There is emphasis on application of skills and concepts learnt that will better enable them to decode and encode words to increase fluency and understanding. They continue to use the writing process to express their ideas and utilise a variety of prewriting strategies in the selection of topics and organization of ideas. They write fully developed paragraphs that reflect essential paragraph elements. Writing checklists are used to edit documents for the traits of quality writing. On completion of this unit, the students would have been exposed to activities that would have allowed them to scaffold on learnt skills and concepts that will greatly impact the development of the language skills.

TERM 3 As students approach they end of Grade Three, they show signs of maturity and are becoming more responsible for their own learning. In listening and speaking they use the SJE to clarify information and to justify their response to instructions and information. In Word recognition and fluency, there is greater focus on structural analysis, with the purpose of using encoding and decoding skills to acquire meaning. As they interface with text, they continue to make connections with self, text and the world. There is in depth investigation of text features in non-fiction texts. As students communicate through writing, they employ the skills learnt in process writing. They are exposed to varied strategies that can be used to edit documents. In this unit, the students are given many opportunities to review and revise their writings before publishing. At the end of this unit, the Grade Three students would have completed three years of the Language Arts Programme at the primary level. They would have exhibited mastery of listening and speaking skills; be exposed to a range of encoding and decoding skills to increase fluency and derive meaning; demonstrated the use of varied reading strategies to gain understanding and used the structures and mechanics of the SJE learnt, to communicate their ideas through different formats. Thus, the Grade Three students would have been adequately prepared to begin the Grade Four Language Programme.

PRACTICE QUIZ