English Language Arts Grade 3
Educational Links

Writing Standard 8

Recall information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources; take brief notes on sources and sort evidence into provided categories.

• Biographies: Creating Timelines of a Life
  Studying biographies is of interest and value to young learners. This lesson from ReadWriteThink supports students' exploration of sources to create a timeline about the life of a person. The experience requires students work together and research and resolve conflicting information. Extension activities include developing essays from the research.
• Engaging Students in a Collaborative Exploration of the Gettysburg Address
  This lesson plan invites groups of students to learn more about the historical significance of President Abraham Lincoln's famous speech as well as the time period and people involved. Students will work together, participating in inquiry projects based on the speech, using the words and phrases of the speech itself.
• Go West: Imagining the Oregon Trail
  After this lesson, students will have learned about the pioneer experience on the Oregon Trail,compared and contrasted modern-day travel experiences with travel experiences of the 19th century, and synthesized historical data through creative writing.
• Great American Inventors: Using Nonfiction to Learn About Technology Inventions
  Students use technology every day, but do they ever stop and wonder about the inventors who made certain technology possible? This lesson encourages students to investigate three American inventors (Alexander Graham Bell, George Washington Carver, and Stephanie Kwolek) through research and readings of their biographies.
• How Big Are Martin's Big Words? Thinking Big about the Future
  Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Caldecott Honor book, Coretta Scott King Honor book, and an Orbis Pictus Award winner, tells of King's childhood determination to use "big words" through biographical information and quotations. Using this book as well as other resources on Dr. King, students explore information on King's "big" words. They discuss both the literal and figurative meanings of the word "big" and how they apply to Dr. King's words. They read an excerpt from Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech and note the "big" words. Students then choose one of two options: (1) they write about their own "big" words and dreams in stapled or stitched books, or (2) they construct found poems using an excerpt from one of King's speeches.
• Not 'Indians,' Many Tribes
  In this unit, students will heighten their awareness of Native American diversity as they learn about three vastly different Native groups in a game-like activity using archival documents such as vintage photographs, traditional stories, photos of artifacts, and recipes. One factor influencing Native American diversity is environment. Help your students study the interaction between environment and culture.
• Not Everyone Lived in Castles During the Middle Ages
  After completing this lesson, students will be able to: compare common perceptions of medieval Europe with the realities of life during that period in history; and list elements of the daily lives of various classes of people living in medieval Europe.
• Peace Poems and Picasso Doves
  This lesson, from ReadWriteThink, supports third-grade students as they apply think-aloud strategies to reading, as well as to the composition of artwork and poetry. Activities include collaborative as well as individual work. Technology tools are integrated as students research symbols of peace and as they prewrite, compose, and publish their poetry.
• Question and Answer Books - From Genre Study to Report Writing
  This lesson looks at question and answer books as a genre. Through read-alouds and independent reading, students explore the content and format of these books, establish how they are different from and similar to other nonfiction texts, and discuss their possible uses for doing and presenting research.
• Remember the Ladies: The First Ladies
  Through the lessons in this unit, students will explore the ways in which First Ladies were able to shape the world while dealing with the expectations placed on them as women and as partners of powerful men. Students will answer the following questions: What does a First Lady do? Who have some of our First Ladies been? How have they helped shape the social history of our country?
• Research Building Blocks: "Organize This!"
  Research skills can help students find answers for themselves. In this mini lesson, students organize the information they have compiled through the research process by using sentence strips.
• STAR Search: How Do I Find the Book I Need?
  This lesson from ReadWriteThink introduces the STAR Search Process, which provides a set of steps and thinking processes for intermediate students to use in finding a library resource relevant to a specific information need. Modeling and presenting the process will assist students in becoming confident, independent library users.
• The First Amendment: What's Fair in a Free Country?
  After completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to summarize the contents of the First Amendment, and give an example of speech that is protected by the Constitution and speech that is not protected by the Constitution.
• Voting! What's It All About?
  Students explore a variety of sources for information about voting. They evaluate the information to determine if it is fact or opinion, and then create a graffiti wall.
• What Was Columbus Thinking?
  With this lesson students will understand the purposes of Columbus's voyages, the change in those purposes over time, the native peoples encountered, and the results of Columbus's voyages.

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