3rd grade reading · Informational Text · RI.3.1

3rd grade nonfiction reading

What is this skill?

Nonfiction reading in third grade is about taking facts from a text and knowing where they came from. Children find the main idea, pick details that support it, work out a new word from the text, and notice why an author wrote a sentence the way they did. The passages here run about 140 to 160 words, each with a title and three or four questions.

The topics are an octopus ("Octopus: The Ocean's Escape Artist"), "Why Does the Moon Change Shape?," "The Life of a Plastic Bottle," "Triceratops: The Three-Horned Face," "How a Thunderstorm Forms" and "The Great Wall of China." Questions ask how many hearts an octopus has, what a bale is, why warm air rises, and why the author calls the wall "a stone dragon." Single paragraphs about honeybees, the length of a day on Venus and the word nocturnal give quick practice with main idea, support and vocabulary. Two questions ask whether a statement is true, such as whether sharks have bones like people do, and one puts the steps of a butterfly's life in order. A sorting question asks children to label sentences as the main idea or a supporting detail.

Why it matters

From now on a growing share of what children read in school is informational: textbooks, articles, directions and reference books. They cannot hold every fact, so they need to know what matters most and where to find the rest. The main idea gives them a hook, and the details give them proof.

It also teaches a habit worth having at any age: ask where a claim comes from. A child who gets used to saying "the passage says" is better prepared for the day they read something online and have to decide whether it is true.

Common mistakes

  • Choosing the most surprising fact as the main idea. An octopus having three hearts is a good detail, but the passage is about more than that. Ask, "Is that what the whole thing is about?"
  • Answering from memory instead of the text. A child who has seen a Moon documentary may answer a question about phases from that. Have them point to the sentence in the passage.
  • Treating a question about the author's choice as a question about the topic. "Why does the author say every bottle in the bin counts?" asks about the writer's purpose, which is to show that small actions add up.
  • Overlooking bold words and how the passage explains them. Many nonfiction texts define a word right next to it, and a child can learn to look there first.

How to help at home

  • After a short article or a page in a library book, ask for the one sentence it was mostly about, then two facts that prove it.
  • Play "prove it." Say something about an animal, and have your child find the page that supports it or argue it is wrong.
  • Cook or build from directions and talk about order: first, next, last. The butterfly question in this practice uses exactly that idea.
  • Look at headings, captions and bold words with your child before reading. They are the signposts of nonfiction.

Worked examples

These are real questions from the Tutorsaurus 3rd grade nonfiction reading practice, with the answers worked out.

  1. Example 1

    What is the main idea of this paragraph?

    Honeybees are hard workers. One bee visits hundreds of flowers in a single trip. Bees in one hive can fly a total of 55,000 miles to make just one pound of honey.

    Choices: Honeybees work very hard, Hives are crowded, Flowers need bees, Honey is sweet

    Answer: Honeybees work very hard. The first sentence states the main idea, and the rest gives examples of hard work.

  2. Example 2

    True or false: The Eiffel Tower was planned to be permanent.

    The Eiffel Tower in Paris was built in 1889 for a world's fair. It was supposed to be taken down after 20 years. Instead, it became useful for sending radio signals, so it was allowed to stay.

    Answer: False. False. It was supposed to be taken down after 20 years but was kept because it was useful.

  3. Example 3

    Why did the author include the last sentence?

    Elephants use their trunks to drink, smell, grab food, and spray water. A trunk has about 40,000 muscles. Your whole body has only about 600.

    Choices: To tell how big elephants are, To explain how people drink, To describe elephant ears, To show how amazing the trunk is by comparing it to our bodies

    Answer: To show how amazing the trunk is by comparing it to our bodies. Comparing 40,000 trunk muscles to 600 human muscles helps readers see how special the trunk is.

Try a 5-question mini-quest

Question 1 of 5

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Why does the Moon shine?

Why Does the Moon Change Shape? Look up at the night sky for a month and you will see the Moon change. Some nights it looks like a thin sliver. Other nights it is a bright, round circle. But the Moon is not really changing shape. It is always a ball. The Moon does not make its own light. It shines because sunlight bounces off it. The Sun always lights up half of the Moon, just as it lights up half of Earth. As the Moon travels around Earth, we see different amounts of its lit-up half. When we see the whole lit half, we call it a full moon. When the lit half faces away from us, we see almost nothing. That is a new moon. It takes the Moon about 29 days to go through all of its shapes, called phases. Then the pattern starts over again.

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