Read-alouds for third grade? Of course! We all do read alouds in our classrooms with ties to the curriculum, but we also need to share good books just to prompt a love of reading. These are a few of my MOST favorite classics to read aloud to my third graders:
The summer Opal and her father, the preacher, move to Naomi, Florida, Opal goes into the Winn-Dixie supermarket and comes out with a dog. A big, ugly, dog with a wonderful sense of humor. She names him Winn-Dixie. Because of this dog, Opal makes friends and learns how precious friends can be. Definitely one of the most favorite read-alouds!
Harriet M. Welsch is a “spy” who keeps a notebook, she writes down everything she knows about everyone, even her classmates and her best friends. Then Harriet loses her notebook, and it ends up in the wrong hands. Before she can stop them, her friends have read the always truthful, sometimes awful things she’s written about them.
Enter the world of ten-year-old Kenny and his family, the Watsons from Flint, Michigan. When Momma and Dad decide it’s time for a visit to Grandma, Dad comes home with a car, and the Watsons head South to Birmingham, Alabama… toward one of the darkest moments in America’s history. This is a perfect text to broaden our students attitudes and perspectives towards diversity. SO great for third grade!
This book is the story of a pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a spider named Charlotte. When Wilbur is in danger of being slaughtered by the farmer, Charlotte writes messages praising Wilbur (such as “Some Pig”) in her web in order to persuade the farmer to let him live.
After you are done with the read aloud, you can throw in a reading party with my Charlotte’s Web, Let’s Celebrate! unit. Tons of hands-on fun, STEM, reading comprehension, and just plain community building!
When Sophie is snatched from her orphanage bed by the BFG (Big Friendly Giant), she fears she will be eaten. But instead, the two join forces to vanquish the nine far less gentle giants who threaten to eat the earth’s children.
Julian, a fibber and wishful thinker, is great at telling stories. He can make people, especially his younger brother, Huey, believe just about anything. Like the one about the catalog cats that come in the mail. Or the fig leaves that make you grow tall if you eat them off the tree. Each fib is a chapter in this book that is like a series of short stories that all fit together.
This is an autobiographical story of Henry “Box” Brown, a slave who dreams about freedom, but that dream seems farther away than ever when he is torn from his family and put to work in a warehouse. Henry grows up and marries, but his family is sold at a slave market. Then one day, as he lifts a crate at the warehouse, he decides he will mail himself to the North. After a difficult journey in the crate, Henry finally has a birthday, his first day of freedom.
Nick Allen really likes to liven things up at school and he’s always had plenty of great ideas. When Nick learns some interesting information about how words are created, suddenly he’s got the idea for his best plan ever…the frindle. Who says a pen must be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle? Things begin innocently enough as Nick gets his friends to use the new word. Then things really get out of hand… a timeless read-aloud for third graders!
This autobiographical novel is about a little girl named Trisha starting school. Trisha could paint and draw beautifully, but when she looked at words on a page, all she could see was jumble. It took a very special teacher to recognize little Trisha’s difficulties, Mr. Falker, who encouraged her to overcome her reading disability.
A young mouse named Ralph is thrown into a world of excitement when a boy and his shiny toy motorcycle check in to the Mountain View Inn. When the ever-curious Ralph spots Keith’s red toy motorcycle, he decides to ride it. When Keith leaves the bike unattended in his room one day, Ralph makes his move. But with all this freedom (and speed!) come a lot of problems.
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