The mysterious comma is arguably the trickiest form of punctuation, which is why assigned it it’s own unit in 5th grade. As students become more sophisticated writers they craft more complex sentences. They incorporate independent phrases and clauses, generate compound sentences, and utilize transition words to combine ideas - and the exercises in this unit will teach them how to use commas correctly in each scenario.

This unit not only builds students' vocabulary, it also enables students to explore how words are related, in meaning, sound and construction. Learners will also discover some of the ways words are constructed using derivational root words, prefixes, suffixes, and compound words. Students will also learn strategies we use to shorten words and phrases like acronyms and abbreviations.

Learning parts of speech will help third graders to develop a deeper understanding of written language. This guided lesson teaches about adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections, which is the glue holding most sentences together. Designed by our team of teachers and curriculum experts, the content in this lesson provides instruction and examples that will support kids as they learn these important words.

Third grade writers will be tasked with writing longer and more complicated sentences. This guided lesson in understanding, constructing and punctuating sentences can support kids as they learn to build bigger and better sentences in their writing. Grammar instruction and practical examples were written by our curriculum experts, complete with a list of recommended building sentence worksheets for third graders.

Words are like legos - they can have interchangeable parts. In this unit students will study the construction of words including roots, prefixes and suffixes. Students will also explore how to modify words to make them possessive, a different part of speech and adjust to signify singular and plural. Understanding the basic building blocks of words, will increase students’ vocabulary, improve their spelling and add strategies for decoding unfamiliar words.

Letter writing is a very engaging and authentic way to learn formatting, punctuation and grammar. The activities in this unit should be learned in tandem with actual letter writing to aunts, uncles or other special far-away people. That way, students can learn and practice the letter writing skills and then apply them in their own letters. It would be especially rich to include their thoughts about books they are reading.

Verbs do a lot of the heavy lifting in good writing. Understanding the different kinds of verbs and how they are used enables students to write more compellingly. Students will explore how tenses work and how they must agree with and sometimes work together with other words in the sentence. Students will also learn about adverbs, the "sister" part of speech that enhance, or modify, verbs.