What are Third Grade Writing Skills?

A student in the third grade will be able to write a full paragraph with a beginning, middle, and end at the end of their curriculum. They should also be able to follow the writing process which includes prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.

What Are the Key Third Grade Writing Skills?

To succeed in third grade writing, students should master several essential skills. These include writing complete paragraphs, applying the writing process, using descriptive language, and understanding various types of writing. Additionally, they should demonstrate a grasp of writing structure, mechanics, and conventions.

Instructional Strategies To Develop Third Grade 
Writing Skills

There are a variety of instructional strategies teachers can implement to develop the writing skills of their third grade students. These include:

• Creating Dedicated Time for Students to Practice Their Writing Skills: Dedicating time during the school day to focus on writing is shown to motivate and improve students’ writing.
• Model Writing: Model writing helps cultivate student engagement as they are given the chance to follow along with the instructor and/or write together as a class.
• Guided Practice: This includes the use of creative writing prompts, descriptive writing prompts, fun writing worksheets, sentence starters, and graphic organizers (e.g. Venn diagrams, story maps, and outlines).
• Using Technology: This includes encouraging students to type some of their writing assignments on the computer.
• Encouraging Creativity: This includes creative and fun writing prompts, story starters, and combining writing with other educational subjects such as art and science.
• Writing Celebrations: Implementing celebratory events such as parties and competitions to promote student engagement and motivation. Teachers can also encourage their students to participate in writing school publications such as blog posts and newsletters.

Writing Transition Words in Third Grade

Transition words connect one idea to another. Examples of transition words are: “first, ” finally,” “last,” “furthermore,” “however,” “then” and “for example.”

There are many strategies that can be implemented to teach students about transition words. Anchor charts are a common and effective teaching strategy for students to appropriately implement transition words in their writing. Anchor charts are color-coded charts that connect the different categories of writing to their appropriate transition word. These can be printed out and displayed around the classroom for reference. Other teaching strategies include guided practice (such as fill-in-the-blank exercises and sentence strips), interactive exercises such as Bingo, and even online educational games.

Developing Creative Writing Lessons for Third Grade

There are many styles of creative writing which include fiction writing (novels, short stories, etc.), narrative writing, opinion writing, story writing, poetry, drama, fantasy and science fiction, adventure, mystery, and romance.

Child psychologist Jean Piaget stated, “Play is the work of children.” Children grow, learn, and play through the use of their imagination. Creative writing is a great way to encourage students to use their imagination while working on their writing skills.

Persuasive Writing at the Third Grade Level

Persuasive writing plays an important role in developing the student’s critical thinking, communication, and writing skills. Persuasive writing encourages students to see and view multiple perspectives and develop their own thoughts and opinions. It encourages the use of reasoning and logic in their writing. It also teaches them to organize their thoughts and clearly communicate their positions. Good persuasive writing includes these elements:

• Clear statement of opinion or thesis
• Reasons and supporting details that clearly explain and support the thesis
• Logical organization
• Audience awareness
• Transition words
• Persuasive language
• Conclusive statement

Informative Writing in Third Grade

Informative writing is similar in structure to persuasive writing. The student must write a clear introduction with organized paragraphs in a logical sequence, use strong informative language with supporting details, include transition words, and write a conclusion. Informative writing should be appropriately written for the audience it is addressing. Students should perform research and properly cite their sources. Proper revisions and writing mechanics should be demonstrated in the student’s writing.

While informative writing may not be a student’s favorite style of writing, there are ways to engage students and foster excitement for their informative writing pieces. Strategies include:

• Allowing the students to pick their topics from a specific category (e.g. Presidents—allow the student to choose which president they would like to write about).
• Using various creative modalities for presentations (e.g. PowerPoint presentations, poster boards, and games).
• Celebrate the process and make it fun.

Third Grade Writing: Challenge and Consistency

There are many ways for teachers to foster consistency and challenge their students, such as daily writing routines, setting writing goals, using pre-writing tools, using templates, and encouraging students to journal. Teachers can also use creative or opinion writing prompts and journaling with specific benchmarks in mind to assess their students’ progress over time. This strategy also allows students to see their progress.

Promoting Active Participation With Effective 
Writing Strategies

Educators should look for effective ways to teach writing with hands-on strategies and tools that promote active participation. Step Up To Writing^® from Voyager Sopris Learning^® is a standards-aligned, research-based program that uses explicit instruction to teach writing skills to students in grades K–12. Step Up to Writing’s hands-on strategies can be implemented alongside any curriculum to make writing fun and engaging, helping students create thoughtful, well-written compositions.