Third grade students are given lists of spelling words throughout the year. Teachers can provide students with lists of high frequency words and assign the students spelling and reading homework related to these lists. For example, teachers might start with a list of 10 words and require the students to write these words numerous times. From there, the teacher can assign students to look in a magazine or newspaper for all of the words and highlight the words when they find them.
To help students learn sight words, the teacher can split the class into two teams to play word games, such as hangman or melting snowman. The students must guess the sight word based on the letters and blanks. When a team guesses the word, they either draw part of the hanged-man or erase part of the snowman. This helps students identify the words and remember which words are sight words.
In the case of memorization, flashcards are one of the best tools a teacher can use. High frequency words learned in third grade, such as thought, might, sometimes or never, are best memorized by the students so that they can recognize the words immediately after they see them. Flashcards are a valuable tool in sight memorization because the students are shown the word and have a minimal time to identify it before it is considered "wrong" and they must try again. Teachers should assign small numbers of words at a time for the best results in memorization and have the students work in pairs to make using flashcards more interesting.
Interactive tools include online games, such as memory which requires students to listen to the word and find the match. This is helpful because the students learn the word as well as the meaning of the word as they hear it. Students often will know what the word is from the list of third grade high frequency words, such as the word "sometimes," so they are learning how to recognize the written form by hearing and matching up the written word.