Writing Standard 3:
Language Use and Conventions
Spelling
By the end of the year, we
expect third-grade students to:
 ~
Notice when words do not look
correct and use strategies to correct the spelling (for example,
experiment with alternative spellings, look the word up in a
dictionary or word list);
~Correctly
spell all familiar high-frequency words;
~Correctly
spell words with short vowels and common endings;
~Correctly
spell most inflectional endings, plurals and verb tenses;
~Use correct spelling
patterns and rules such as consonant doubling, dropping e and
changing y to i ; and
~Correctly
spell most derivational words(for example, -tion, -ment, -ly).
Punctuation,
Capitalization and Other Conventions
By the end of the year, we
expect third-grade students to:
~Use
capital letters at the beginnings of sentences;
~Use
periods and other end punctuations correctly nearly all the time;
~Approximate
the use of quotation marks;
~Approximate
the use of commas;
~Use question marks;
~Use
capital and lower case letters;
~Use
contractions.
Style and Syntax
By the end of the year, we
expect third-grade students to:
~Use
appropriately a variety of syntactic patterns (for example, equal
weight in compound sentences, subordination in complex sentences) to
show relationships of ideas;
~Incorporate
transitional words and phrases appropriate to thinking;
~Embed
phrases and modifiers that make their writing lively and graphic;
~Use
varying sentence patterns and lengths to slow reading down, speed it
up or create a mood;
~Embed
literary language where appropriate;
~Reproduce
sentence structures from various genres they are reading.
Vocabulary and Word
Choice
By the end
of the year, we expect third-grade students to:
~Use
words from their speaking vocabulary in their writing, including
words they have learned from reading and class discussion;
~Make
word choices that reveal they have a large enough vocabulary to
exercise options in word choice (for example, more precise and vivid
words);
~Extend
their writing vocabulary by using specialized words related to the
topic or setting of their writing (for example, the names of breeds
of dogs if they are writing about dogs). |
