Pearson Reading Street Grammar skills for 3rd grade

Do you use Pearson's Reading Street with your third graders?  We've used it for years, and I really do like the series.  I hear lots of negative stuff about using a basal, but I like the stories, the kids seem to enjoy most of them and the majority of the accompanying resources are really strong.  In Indiana, the Pearson company also makes our end of year state test, so the curriculum is lined up really nicely to prepare the kiddos for that.   It doesn't matter how much you like or dislike using a basal, state testing, or following a more strict schedule for teaching, they are facts of life for many of us.   We do throw in 4 novels through the year, but that's another post.  

I created a series of worksheets to accompany each of our stories with the assigned grammar lesson for the week.  Even if you don't use Pearson Reading Street, these are appropriate grammar skills for 3rd graders and you could use them supplementary to any series or novel studies you might use. 

Find Unit 1 here

When Charlie McButton Lost Power- Complete Sentence

All About Me- Subjects and Predicates

Kumak’s Fish-Declarative and Interrogative Sentences

Supermarket- Imperative and Exclamatory Sentences

My Rows and Piles of Coins- Compound Sentences

Find Unit 2 here

Penguin Chick- Common and Proper Nouns

I Wanna Iguana- Singular and Plural Nouns

Prudy’s Problem and How She Solved It- Irregular Plural Nouns

Tops and Bottoms- Singular Possessive Nouns

Amazing Bird’s Nests- Plural Possessive Nouns

Find Unit 3:

How Do You Raise A Raisin- Action and Linking Verbs

Pushing Up the Sky- Main and Helping Verbs

Seeing Stars- Subject Verb Agreement

A Symphony of Whales- Past, Present, and Future Tense

Around One Cactus- Irregular Verbs

Unit 4

The Man Who Invented Basketball- 
Singular & Plural Pronouns
Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest-
Subject & Object Pronouns
Rocks in His Head- Possessive Pronouns
America’s Champion Swimmer: Gertrude 
Ederly- Contractions
Fly, Eagle, FLy- Prepositions

Unit 5

Suki’s Kimono- Adjective and Articles

I Love Saturdays y Domingos- Adjectives That Compare

Good-Bye, 382 Shin Dang Dong- Adverbs

Jalapeno Bagels- Adverbs that Compare

Me and Uncle Romie-Conjunctions

Unit 6

The Story of the Statue of Liberty- Capital Letters

Happy Birthday Mr. Kang- Abbreviations

Talking Walls: Art for the People- Combining Sentences

Two Bad Ants- Commas

Atlantis: The Legend of a Lost City- Quotations and Parentheses

Or Save over $6 with the Bundle Pack

Each unit comes with a  worksheet for each of the grammar skills for the five stories in that particular unit. 

Answer keys are included, although there is usually an open ended skill application piece towards the end. 

Come see me at TPT!  

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Bundle Pack- save money by purchasing them together!

singular and plural possessive noun noodle glaring activity

Do you teach singular and plural possessive nouns?  It can be a tricky skill for elementary kiddos.  Need a free hands-on activity?  

Come see me at Teachers Pay Teachers for a free download!

those stick chains- another test break

We used this as another brain-break last week or so when we were doing all that state testing.  Have you seen how you can lay down tongue depressors so that they overlap just do to build up tensions.  Then you release the end stick and they fly up like dominoes?  My students are super into them.  They've learned tricks and loops and all kinds of fancy stuff. 

It's our favorite indoor recess thing now that yo-yos have run their course.  First it was yo-yos, then dominoes, now sticks.  Here's the youtube video we watched over and over to learn how to set them up.  this friend in the photos is the class go-to guy for stick questions. His mom bought him 800 sticks, so he pretty much runs the stick show. 

test break- ice skating in the classroom!

We just finished up our first round of our state tests.  Blah.  Our brains were drained!  It's exhausting even to give it, let alone take it.  I gave my poor little tired friends lots of breaks.  Our favorite was ice skating!

We used to do this in preschool, but the bigger kids love it just as much! The only supplies we needed were wax paper and some appropiate skating music!  We have just the right carpet, short bur-bar style.  The kids saved their sheets and we repeated at indoor recess that day. 

wax museum

I must not have written about the wax museum last year.  Frankly, last year, I was lucky to be wearing clean clothes and have run a brush through my hair.  It was survival mode at least.  The new teacher on our third grade team is brand new this year and also a brand new mama.  Double wammie!  She confessed she's barely keeping her head above water too.  No doubt!

 

Anyway, our school does this awesome wax museum project.  It's during book week and there are events each day.  The wax museum is the big event hosted by Third and Fourth grade. Fourth grade is a historical character that they've researched through reading a biography.  Bee was Anne Frank. 

Here she is with some of her buddies Hellen Keller and Annie Oakly.   We don't do Halloween at our school, so this is our event to dress up.

Third grade dresses up as a character from a book and they report on the author they have studied.  Here is my costume winner, The lorax.

 

Third and Fourth grade dresses  up, creates an informational board, presents for the class and then works it at the wax museum, sharing their presentation many, many times.

 

First grade practices by dressing up as a bible character and sharing with their class a little about their person.  Second grade researches an animal, dresses up as that animal, and gives a one minute report to their class.  Lou was a tyrannosaurus rex and wouldn't be photographed.  He was a grumpy t-rex.
 

I try to dress up as a character too, but not many teachers do. I love an excuse to dress up a little. My Lorax and I found a cat and the hat at lunch. 

It's one of those projects that's tons of work or everyone, but super fun and everybody learns a lot.

3rd grade assembly line project

 My third graders got to do my favorite school project of all times, the assembly line!  Learning about assembly lines and production is a third grade social studies standard and just fits in so well with the chapter in our book on production.  We've been reading about factories, production, assembly lines, specialization and different types of resources. 

While they were gone to music class, I lined up a bunch of same height desks, made a butcher paper belt around it and readied the fruit in bowls.  When they came back I welcomed them to their first day on the job at the fruit salad factory.  I explained how the assembly line worked and what the jobs were. 

Everyone was assigned a job and we set to work.  Someone pulled the paper slowly to move the line down (girl kneeling at the end of the line), someone placed the bowls onto the line, others added one spoon each of their particular fruit as the bowls moved down.  One child at the end was in charge of shipping and receiving and he unloaded them from the belt and gathered them on a few empty desks.  In about three minutes it was all over and we could enjoy our fruit salad and discuss the process.  We talked about what different specializations we had, what natural resources we used- both renewable like the fruit and non renewable like the plastic spoons.  We discussed the capital resources, like the assembly line machine and  the building as well as human resources- us. 

 

 

I was shown this project by another teacher my first year and have done it several times since.  At my old school, we were able to do it in the cafeteria and line up several really long tables.  We have 3 third grade classes work at once and it was a big production  This was a scaled back version for sure, but just as fun and memorable.  



a few other school items

Here are a few other school related pictures.  Just cleaning out some picture files while I have a minute.  I mentioned the other day that I share my classroom with just about every community group possible so I have a lot of restrictions.  One side is pretty plain.  I actually had to move those black science boxes since this picture because... well, I was told to. 

 

I can decorate the back wall.  On Sundays, the desk and all my stuff gets pushed against this wall.  The library folds up and the stuff on top of it gets moved.  It's a lesson in flexibility.  I learned today, our first Monday back, that I'm going to have to allow extra time on Monday morning for setting back up.  It was a bit chaotic this morning. 

 I have cute little  kites that will go on the AR kite wall. 

 
This is the front of the room (and Lou).  I can leave up the two big yellow bulletin boards, but everything else has to get put away in a closet or shoved against the wall.  I've already abandoned the clip chart for class dojo.  I'll talk about that another day.

Here's the back wall.  The calendar stuff stays up, but everything else has to go on the weekend.  The chair was a garage sale find and has replaced the need for taking the rocker into school.  I had to rub the wood down with coconut oil and remake the cloth parts, but it was an easy fix for a $2 chair.   We use calendar math and it changes each month what items are on the board.  Some items are staples, but most change out.

My sister picked these book boxes up for me at IKEA.  The kiddos decorated them and they are storing their books for daily five and AR time.  The back to school pennants were a fun little sheet from TPT.  Now the clips are holding unfinished kid work.



I wrote on facebook last week that the thing that's changed the most in the 6 ish years that I've been out of the elementary classroom is technology.  Here's my desk.  I'm running the document camera through my desktop to show on the projector.  I've got my ipad running class dojo and I was using my phone moments before this to enter lunch count and email back a parent.  I don't even have a smart board yet, one thing at a time.

I made up this 'show what you know' board this summer.  I intend to have the kids write a short answer on a post-it-note and use this as an 'exit ticket'. I have had it in my plan to use for two days now though and didn't get to it. 

 
 This was a first day of school gift from one of my students.  It was full of markers and pens, etc.  Cute idea!

 
Bee's teacher gave the kids these bags with this poem...

filled with these items.  Cute.

Our new to this year checklist system is in place for the mornings.  Bee and I leave the house at 6:45am,  so our morning has to be pretty smooth.  We wake Lou up a few minutes before and daddy gets him to school at 7:30.  The boys are using this to make sure nothing gets forgotten too

I like not having to nag.

It took till the third day of school for me to get my act together and get a little something for my teammates.  I had planned to do this and then it turned out we only had slightly mushy apples until the third day of school.  That was just my first sign that working full time was going to be an adjustment. 

 

 
Back to my sweet little 3rd graders.  One of the girls asked me if she could keep a bible at her desk.  They don't really fit in there well and I keep them on a shelf, but she insisted and here she is reading away.  Also, one day I had on some soft music and they were working and just singing along.  They know all the words to the songs on our Christian station.  Gonna love this class!

I already miss my old preschool crew, but  love my new co workers!

First day-

 
Bee's off to 3rd grade. For her birthday she asked for the Vera lunch bag and messenger bag- she's too trendy for us!

 
Lou's off to first grade.  He also had to have a messenger bag and was happy to use one of daddy's. 

 
I'm off to 3rd grade too.  It's my favorite grade to teach! 

(It sort of looks like I'm pushing Lou out of the picture.  It was probably the opposite.)

 
These cute girls are my team mates in the world of third grade.  The one in pants is Bee's teacher.  She loves her!  Her classroom is super beautiful, I'll try to get some pictures.

Ok, so first day and these kiddos are awesome.  It's probably too early to call it, but I think this is going to be a great year. 

We're all graduating

My little friends graduated last week.  The school year is over for us.

It was a great year with them.  They were a delightful group and man oh man, did they learn and grow this year.  It was one of the most years of growth I'd say I've seen from a class o'mine.  Probably for me too as a teacher.

They graduated and left... and I'm doing the same. 

I'm leaving preschool too. I found a job teaching third grade. I'll miss my little bitty friends, but I'm ready to get back to the big kids.  I've taught third grade before, but it's been awhile... I'm excited. 

That's me in the firefighter gear at preschool waving bye. 

I spent some time after preschool was out observing different teachers and spending time in the new building.   I get my curriculum in a few days and have all summer to get into it.  I'm learning all about common core but was pleasantly surprised to find the science and social studies standards are the same ones I taught with years ago.  I am thankful for pinterst.  I told my sister (also a teacher) back when I started teaching, we really didn't even use the internet as a resource- you had to use magazines and books.  It's different now!  My summer reading list is already filling up with books about daily 5 an the CAFE strategies.  There are a lot of great things about this new opportunity, but one of the best parts is that many of the families and friends I've made at preschool will go to my school and I'll see them again! 

I still have a few preschool related things from this spring to share here, but there won't be anymore sensory bins and table activities and preschool finger plays around here after the next few weeks.  In the summer, my blog turns to garden and travel and things about my own kids anyway.  In the fall though, I guess I'll start sharing big kid school stuff.