Reading and writing
By Grade 3 the mechanics should be largely automatic, and the year is about what you do with them: reading so a listener understands, writing that was thought about before it was written, and using grammar to make meaning clearer rather than to be correct.
What Alberta asks for by the end of Grade 3
The subject: English language arts and literature
- Explore how oral traditions show respect for traditional shared knowledge.
- Use eye contact, posture, gestures and movement to make speaking clearer.
- Read complex words, phrases and passages fluently and with expression.
- Relate their own experiences to people and information in books, poems and plays.
- Use writing strategies to create texts drawing on a variety of sources of inspiration.
- Use grammar, spelling and punctuation that make written communication clearer.
The first outcome is new in Grade 3 and easy to skim past. Oral traditions are not stories that happen to be spoken — they are a way of holding and passing on knowledge, with its own protocols about who may tell what, and treating them as folklore misses the point.
The words, first
These are the terms a teacher will use at a parent interview, defined before anything below uses them.
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Oral tradition | Knowledge held and passed on by speaking rather than writing: histories, teachings, laws, songs. In many First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities it is the primary record, not a substitute for one. |
| Fluency | Reading at a natural pace, in phrases, with expression. It frees attention for meaning, which is why it matters. |
| Expression | Letting the voice follow the punctuation and the sense. It is evidence of comprehension, because you cannot phrase what you have not understood. |
| Prosody | The technical word for the rhythm and melody of speech. Teachers may use it at an interview. |
| Writing strategy | Something a writer does on purpose: planning, drafting, rereading, revising, editing. Grade 3 is where writing stops being one pass. |
| Draft | A version that is not finished yet, and is not meant to be. Treating a first draft as the final one is the habit that makes writing painful. |
| Revise / edit | Revising changes what it says; editing fixes how it is written. Doing them at the same time is why neither gets done well. |
| Source of inspiration | Where an idea came from — a memory, a picture, another book, something overheard. Alberta asks for a variety, which is a way of saying the blank page is not a starting point. |
| Mark | What the voice does |
|---|---|
| . a full stop | Voice drops. Stop. |
| ? a question mark | Voice rises at the end. |
| ! an exclamation mark | Louder, faster, more. |
| , a comma | A small pause, and keep going. |
| — a dash | A break, then something added. |
What to do at home
- Let them read to an audience — A younger sibling, a grandparent on the phone, the dog. Reading with expression only makes sense when somebody is listening.
- Read the punctuation — “Your voice went straight through that full stop — try it again.” Expression is following instructions already on the page.
- Separate revising from editing — First ask what it says, then fix the spelling. Doing both at once is why children hate revising.
- Ask where the idea came from — Every piece of writing came from somewhere. Naming the source makes the next idea easier to find.
- Listen to an elder or a recording — Oral tradition is best met by hearing it. Many Alberta First Nations and Métis communities share teachings publicly, and libraries hold recordings.
- Notice gesture and eye contact — Watch someone explain something well and name what their hands and eyes were doing. It is an outcome and it is invisible until pointed out.
Sheets you can print for this
- Read it so it sounds like something — punctuation is an instruction
- Plan it first — writing is not one pass
- Revise, then edit — two different jobs
- Make it clearer — capitals, punctuation and lists
- A story from a picture — somewhere to start
The expectations above are paraphrased from Alberta Education's New K–6 curriculum fact sheets, which publish a snapshot of each grade rather than the complete program of studies. Alberta's full programs are at alberta.ca/curriculum.