Grade 3 ELA Activities

When students are in the third grade, they learn to identify the main ideas in stories they read. In order to figure out the main idea or central message of a story, your child will often need to summarize the events in the plot, use details to draw conclusions, and make observations about characters and situations. In other words, your child will need to use his understanding of different parts of the story to come up with the main idea.

This activity provides a fun way for thinking about a story’s main idea. Using well-known formats (a T-shirt, a bumper sticker, or a poster) for presenting slogans, sayings, or messages, your child will first determine the main idea and then capture it in brief, catchy language.

	Some of your child’s favorite stories or articles

	Arts and crafts materials such as T-shirt paints or markers; glue; construction paper; paper plates; button-making materials; blank stickers; and cardboard

When we want to learn about a book, we often ask “What is the story about?” When asking your child this question, you may get a description of what happens in the story. This is a good starting place, but you should encourage him to name the ideas that stand out and what he thinks the author is trying to teach him. The questions below will help your child focus on determining the main idea:

	Who is the main character and how does this character change in the course of the story? What do these changes teach us about people more generally?

	Is there a particular lesson the main character learns?

	What lessons is the author hoping to teach the reader?

	Are there important ideas that come up often in the story?

It takes practice to do a good job at identifying the main ideas or central lessons of a story. One way to practice is to ask your child to sum up the theme of a story such that it will fit on a bumper sticker. For example, a main idea that states, “Alex and his mother talk about the rewards of achieving his goal” might become a bumper sticker slogan that says “Alex Achieves = Alex Receives.” If the main idea of a story is “Jason’s pet parrot escapes but then comes back to him because the parrot is loyal,” you might make a T-shirt design with a picture of a parrot under which it says, “The parrot always returns!” or a fortune-cookie message that says, “What may seem lost forever will one day return.”

Once your child has developed a new medium for a message, have him explain why the message is effective.

When your child shapes main ideas into new messages for an advertisement, a button, a fortune cookie, or any medium of his choice, he must identify the main idea and then rephrase it into a short yet precise phrase. That type of rephrasing is challenging: It requires your child to be very clear about the ideas so that he can present them in a new (and shorter) way. Also, as he works on turning main ideas into short messages, encourage him to consider the unique qualities of each medium. What is the purpose of a message in a fortune cookie? What is the purpose of a message in an advertisement? Understanding the role of each medium will help your child come up with a message that best suits the medium.

 Grade 3 ELA Activities