Year 3 Supporting English

Reading

Read every day
Make daily reading fun with silly voices for each character, act it out with siblings, make a puppet show or cartoon to re-tell the story.
Ask questions about their reading; who as the main character? What did they do? Why do you think that? Would you do the same thing? What do you think happens next?
Encourage relatives and friends to give books as gifts.
Join your local library.
Keep an eye out for the themes that catch your child's imagination at school - help follow it up with more reading.
Read all kinds of materials – stories, poems, newspaper articles, magazines and comics.
Let them be the teacher: you read their books and they correct you!
Encourage and praise!!

Writing

Practise telling stories at home, this will help with sequencing and development of story language eg ‘all of a sudden the Big Bad Wolf came back!”
Play ‘Guess Who’ describing games. Children could describe different members of the family using specific words and phrases for appearance. On the way to school who can be the first to spot a green car, a large building etc. ‘I spy’ works very well for this too! Eg ‘I spy some thing that looks like…’
How many words can you think of that mean the same as big? Small? Hot? Ugly? Write the words on cards or post-its and try and arrange them in order of size or strength.
Sentence pyramids. Choose a basic sentence (eg The man walked down the lane) and extend it using how/where/why/when prompts.

E.g.

The man walked down the lane

The man walked slowly down the lane

The postman walked slowly down the dusty lane

The postman walked slowly down the dusty lane looking for his lost keys.

Children could be encouraged to keep story ideas in their writing journals and record any interesting describing words they have come across in their reading, eg: ‘The castle glittered in the sunlight’.
Take a simple sentence, for example, ‘the dog barked’ and try to extend it by asking your child questions such as “why”, “when” and “where”.
When reading or writing a sentence, ask your child could they start it in a different way perhaps by saying when the event took place. Eg: I went to the park after I had done my homework.
Ask the children to choose some interesting words from their reading books, can they use those in their writing?

Spelling

Useful Websites

Useful Websites For grown ups:

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/
http://www.lovereading4schools.co.uk/viewschool/6156/favourite (You will be asked to register as a parent and create your own account.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/english
http://www.theschoolrun.com/primary-literacy-glossary-for-parents

For children