Words are the wondrous building blocks in language. This unit increases students’ word knowledge by introducing more challenging vocabulary and exploring how words are related. Learners will also discover some of the ways words are constructed using derivational root words, prefixes, suffixes, and compound words. Students will get to explore and create fun literary devices such as similes, idioms and metaphors.

As students become more sophisticated writers, they begin to understand that words have different “jobs” in a sentence. These jobs can be thought of as parts of speech. In this word study unit, students will learn about the work that transition words, prepositions, verbs, adverbs and adjectives do. Students will also explore how certain kinds of words work together, like verbs and adverbs.

Sentences are the building blocks of paragraphs. A sentence is a complete thought that can stand alone and in this unit students will learn what comprises a complete sentence and how to identify a fragment, or incomplete sentence. They will explore different kinds of sentences and how to punctuate them. And, to sharpen their craft, students will learn how to spice up their own writing by adding sentence pattern variety.

Letter writing is a very engaging and authentic way to learn formatting, punctuation and grammar. The activities in this unit should be learned in tandem with actual letter writing to aunts, uncles or other special far-away people. That way, students can learn and practice the letter writing skills and then apply them in their own letters. It would be especially rich to include their thoughts about books they are reading.

Words are like legos - they can have interchangeable parts. In this unit students will study the construction of words including roots, prefixes and suffixes. Students will also explore how to modify words to make them possessive, a different part of speech and adjust to signify singular and plural. Understanding the basic building blocks of words, will increase students’ vocabulary, improve their spelling and add strategies for decoding unfamiliar words.

Geometry in third grade introduces kids to the idea that shapes have different categories (rectangles, rhombuses, etc..) attributes (four-sided, etc...) and areas of different values. This lesson, designed by our curriculum experts, provides the guided instruction and practice that third graders need to conceptualize shapes in a deeper way. For more practice, download and print the third grade geometry worksheets recommended as part of this lesson.

Second grade writers often need extra support with the rules of capitalization, puncuation, apostrophes, and proper nouns. The exercises in this guided lesson cover these four key grammar rules, and provide kids with targeted exercises to help them practice writing with correct grammar usage. To help gain even more practice with new writing skills, download and print the capitalization and punctuation worksheets suggested as part of this lesson.