In third grade, prefixes and suffixes are a large focus of literacy instruction. Provide students with an activity that will allow them to create different words with given prefixes and suffixes. On the top of a sheet of paper, print a prefix or a suffix; for example, "pre" or "able." Below the prefix or suffix, print words that can and cannot be used with the given combination of letters to create words. The lists should contain words that you have worked on as a whole group. Students must use the given prefixes, suffixes and words to create actual words.
Another focus of third-grade literacy is figurative and literal speech. In this activity, students illustrate the literal and figurative meanings of given phrases. Write a variety of phrases that are often used as figures of speech; for example, "raining cats and dogs" and "heads up." Students select a card, read the figure of speech written on it and draw a picture that illustrates both the literal and figurative meaning of the term. Students can share their illustrations or you can assemble them in a class book.
Have students play a game in which they have to create compound words. On separate index cards, write the first and second parts of compound words. (Add illustrations, if need be.) Place the cards with the first half of the words printed on them in a face-down pile and scatter the second half word cards on a table, face up. To play, one student at a time takes a card from the pile, reads the words and matches it to one of the face-up cards, creating a compound word. For example, a student may match the word "sand" with the word "box" to create the compound word "sandbox." If a student cannot make a match, she passes her card to the next player, who tries to make a match. The student with the most cards wins the game.
In this literacy station activity, students must replace ordinary nouns with proper nouns. On paper, write a variety of sentences that features common nouns. Common nouns to consider including in the sentences may be "store," "city," "state" or "girl." On index cards, write a variety of proper nouns that can be used to replace the common nouns. Students read the sentences and place a proper noun card over the common nouns. In this example, they could choose "Macy's," "Chicago," "Illinois" and "Jennifer."