Supporting Your Child's Literacy: Reading to Learn (3rd Grade and Beyond)

As a generalization, 3rd grade is the space during which children make the transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Foundational reading skills like phonemic awareness and phonics are essentially solidified, and now children primarily interact with text for the purpose of gaining knowledge or understanding. They are challenged to grow in their disciplinary literacy, meaning that they have to comprehend and write about content that is specific to different subjects like science or social studies, using the subject’s unique vocabulary. 

Parents and caregivers can still contribute to their child’s increasing complex level of reading proficiency in a variety of ways: 

• Continue to engage your children in conversations about what they are reading so that you can help them become critical thinkers. This means that they become thoughtful about what they read, analyzing the meaning, the author’s intentions, the word choices, and the themes.  

• Encourage your children to explore a variety of texts, both fiction and non-fiction. 

• Maintain in your home or expose your children to text-rich environments like the library. Model for them the importance of literacy. 

• Challenge your children to connect what they read to other things they have read, to themselves, and to their world. 

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