Third Grade Language Arts
PEIMS Course Title/Number: English Language Arts 3 / 02630030
Prerequisite Requirements: Grade-level placement by K12 placement exam.
Course of Instruction/Lesson Description:
K12's Grade 3 Language Arts program provides a comprehensive sequence of lessons on Language Skills, Literature, and Spelling. Students are expected to read and write with a greater degree of fluency, proficiency, and independence, and participate meaningfully in discussions.
The instructional plan includes readings and activities on a range of topics and skills including literature, composition, grammar, usage and mechanics, spelling, test readiness, vocabulary, and handwriting.
Composition: Students generate ideas and work through a series of activities that inculcate the stages of the writing process (prewriting, organizing, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing). Topics include opportunities for creative writing as well as personal narratives, letters, research and book reports, writing to a prompt, and writing instructions.
Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics: A typical GUM lesson includes a "Get Ready" teaching activity to review previous concepts and explain new ones, a "Try It" section to provide students with an opportunity to practice skills taught in the lesson, and a workbook exercise. Lesson and unit assessments are provided.
Literature: Lessons include varying combinations of the following components:
Get Ready: A brief activity to encourage interest in the reading and often to introduce new vocabulary words.
Questions: Students write brief responses to questions in a Reading Notebook.
Discuss: Students discuss ideas and issues in the readings, in response to questions provided in the lesson.
Activities: Students complete a variety of activities designed to deepen understanding and enhance enjoyment, such as dramatizing part of a story, writing a creative or analytical response, or completing a supplied activity page on comprehension skills (e.g., describing characters, inferring and drawing conclusions, or comparing and contrasting).
Assessments are provided at the unit level. Assessments contain both objective and short-answer questions.
Spelling: Each of 36 units begins with a Spelling List composed of words spelled according to a specific concept or pattern. These words are further divided into three categories: words that follow the rules, words that need to be learned by heart, and words that present a challenge. Students complete dictation exercises, practice pages, word puzzles, and assessments to help them achieve mastery.
Vocabulary: The Wordly Wise program provides 10 word lists, with 10 words in each list. For each word list, the workbook provides illustrated definitions and sample sentences, followed by a series of exercises distributed across four lessons. These exercises include:
Identifying the meanings of words
Matching words and definitions
Writing sentences to answer questions on a reading selection that uses the words in context
Completing a crossword puzzle or decoding a hidden message
Handwriting: K12 supplies the Handwriting Without Tears program. This gentle, multisensory approach focuses on careful practice at a pace that matches the student's development of fine motor skills.
Test Readiness: Workbooks from Curriculum Associates provide practice in standardized test-taking question formats in reading comprehension, sentence completion, grammar, usage, and mechanics.
Major course expectations include the following:
Composition
Progress from manuscript to cursive writing, with increasing proficiency.
Use prewriting strategies to generate ideas for diverse kinds of writing (e.g., letters, stories, essays) and consider audience expectations.
Use writing processes including organizing, drafting, revising, and editing to write compositions on a variety of self-selected or assigned topics.
Use published pieces as models for own writing.
Evaluate model compositions.
Select a topic, generate questions for inquiry, and complete research.
Take notes from media sources.
Organize notes in charts or tables.
Publish clean, error-free final copy of written work to share with audience.
Write creative and expository pieces.
Maintain a writing portfolio.
Prepare and deliver oral presentations, adapting language, tone, and pacing for subject, audience, and purpose.
Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics
Differentiate among sentence types.
Identify various punctuation marks and demonstrate correct usage.
Use appropriate capitalization for proper names, beginnings of sentences, etc.
Use correct agreement, including subject-verb and pronoun.
Write sentences with correct verb tenses.
Identify relationships among words that are synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms.
Literature
Demonstrate fluency and comprehension of a diverse variety of traditional and contemporary texts including drama, poetry, novels, short stories, and nonfiction.
Distinguish among and recognize the defining characteristics of various literary forms, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, fable, and informational texts.
Read independently.
Read aloud with appropriate expression and intonation.
Establish purpose for use of resources and references such as dictionaries, glossaries, tables of contents, etc.
Compare and contrast literary characters or selections.
Identify problems and solutions in plots.
Analyze character traits and motivations.
Make inferences and draw conclusions.
Describe setting and recognize its effect on plot.
Retell (summarize) a story plot.
Describe characters using context clues.
Listen, take notes, and demonstrate comprehension of oral text.
Read stories and recognize similarities of the experiences of characters across cultures.
Spelling
Demonstrate mastery of regular and irregular patterns in multisyllabic words.
Analyze the relationship between sounds and spellings.
Demonstrate comprehension of rules for adding suffixes.
Analyze how prefixes and suffixes affect meaning.
Vocabulary
Develop vocabulary through reading.
Develop vocabulary by identifying the meanings of words in context.
Develop vocabulary by writing sentences using new words.
Lesson Numbers/Duration:
There are 180 Language Arts lessons, which combine components of the following:
Composition: 71, including 17 optional
GUM: 108, including 20 optional
Vocabulary: 50, including 10 optional
Test Readiness Reading: 25, including 2 optional
Test Readiness Language Skills: 15
Spelling: 180
Literature: 115 lessons, including 14 optional and 24 novels units from which four are chosen for study. Novels units contain between 6 and 10 lessons, depending upon the length and complexity of the novel.
Online Importance:
K12's English Language Arts program provides step-by-step guidance in each lesson. Most activities are presented offline, although some of the "choice" novels lessons are presented online.
Most of the language arts program is delivered with the assistance of a Teacher Guide, which provides an outline of the lesson as well as information about assessment and supplemental material that can help support each student. The Teacher Guide is available as printed material as well as online.
Monitoring Student Progress:
Most units end with an assessment. The assessment helps the teacher gauge whether the student has met the unit objectives. Assessment results are entered online, to be tracked by the Online School application.
Students and parents can access student-specific screens to determine (1) progress in the number of lessons completed, (2) the lesson assessment (percentage mastered), (3) the semester assessment (percentage mastered), and (4) the number of times the student has taken the assessment instruments. Families who enroll their children in the eCP program have the benefit of help and guidance from an experienced teacher. The teacher will contact students daily through email and phone conferences. Consistent progress monitoring by the teacher will be utilized throughout the project period.
Schedule for Monitoring Student Progress:
Each teacher will establish a daily contact schedule for their assigned students at a time of day that is reasonably convenient for both parties. Contacts may be asynchronous/synchronous or one-on-one/groups. The avenues of teacher initiated contact will be adjusted as determined by the progress a student makes through their learning plan. Parent- and student-initiated contact with teachers can happen at any time. The Acting Director, or their designee, will monitor the communication logs to ensure that parents are being routinely supported and informed regarding the student's ongoing progress and participation.
In addition, teachers will monitor progress in mastery of objectives and lesson completion on a weekly basis. Continuous progress monitoring by the assigned teacher ensures that parents are informed on a regular basis regarding progress and participation.
Required Instructional Materials
Materials K12 provides:
White Dry Erase Board
Exercises in English, Book C from Loyola Press
Wordly Wise 3000, Book B from Educators Publishing Service
Writing in Action, Books A and B
Handwriting Without Tears: Teacher Guide, Cursive Handwriting and Cursive Success
Language Skills Teacher Guide and Student Pages
Test Ready Language Arts, Book 3
Classics for Young Readers, Volumes 3A and 3B-anthologies from K12
George Washington: Soldier, Hero, President by Justine and Ron Fontes
Civilizations Past to Present: Greece by Kevin Supples
The Declaration of Independence by Patricia Ryon Quiri
Test Ready Plus: Reading—Book 3 from Curriculum Associates
Test Ready Reading Longer Passages—Book 3 from Curriculum Associates
Language Skills Student Materials—Semesters 1 & 2
Language Skills Teacher Materials—Semesters 1 & 2
Spelling Student Materials—Semesters 1 & 2
Spelling Teacher Materials—Semesters 1 & 2
Literature Student Materials—Semesters 1 & 2
Literature Teacher Materials—Semesters 1 & 2
Students have a choice to read four novels from among specified titles readily available at most libraries. K12 provides lessons on ALL of the selections, but students need only choose four to study throughout the year.
Standardized Assessment Instruments:
End-of-Course Exams developed by Texas Tech, University of Texas, or K12 Inc.
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Compliancy:
Side-by-side comparisons of TEKS and the content of each course have been developed and reviewed to ensure that the online curriculum meets or exceeds the TEKS.
Grading/Credit Award Criteria:
The Texas Virtual Academy at Southwest Schools issues formal report cards every nine weeks. Students who complete a significant amount of coursework after the conclusion of the final term will receive a supplemental report card in July. The final grade in each content subject, English/Language Arts, mathematics, Social Studies, and Science, is determined by a combination of the grades from each reporting period and the proctored course completion (CCE) exam. The average of the grades for each reporting period is comprised of 90% of the final grade. The scores of the CCE comprise 10% of the final grade.
The final grade for electives is based on cumulative progress recorded in the Online School (OLS). A grade of Completed, or C, is reported for 80% or more of the lessons marked as completed. A grade of Incomplete/Unacceptable, or I, is reported when less that 80% of the lessons are marked as completed. No Grade, or NG, is assigned if the student has administrative approval to waive the course requirements in a particular elective course.
To be promoted to the next grade, the student must meet the Student Success Initiative requirements for that grade. Additionally, the student must have a final score of 70 or above on at least three content courses and the average of the four content courses must be at least 70. For each reporting period, the grade in a content area subject is the average of at least six distinct grades. Those grades include, but are not limited to, the progress in the OLS converted to a numerical grade, response to the daily questions, online quizzes following the weekly grade-level study halls, work samples, and benchmark assessments.
Contact Information:
Students will be assigned a teacher upon acceptance into TXVA@SW. The teacher will provide the student and family telephone and email contact information. The student and/or family may contact a help desk at 1-886-YOUR K12 for additional technical, material, or logistical support. Students will be provided with online assistance 24/7 through the TXVA web site.