3rd Grade Homeschool Reading and Spelling Curriculum

After sign up, you will be asked what grade your child is currently and whether they are above grade level, at grade level, or below grade level by 1-3 years in their reading skills.

Give your best estimate. If the material you choose is too easy or too hard, contact us and we'll adjust your account.

Additionally, you can choose a couple of sample reading passages at the grade level you think your child is capable of reading proficiently.

Have them read aloud to you. Make a note of any repetitions, substitutions, omissions, or mispronunciations they make. Then ask them at least five comprehension questions.

Instructional level is reading without mistakes with a 93% accuracy and a minimum of 75% comprehension.

The program materials and teaching videos are delivered and accessed online. Each day you will print out a few pages of handouts to use with your kids. Most of the lessons and activities are done offline at a table or outside.

There are a lot of fun activities and games. With grades K-3, most of the activities are done with the parent and child together. For grades 4 and above, there are a couple of activities done with the parent and child together, and the rest the child can do independently.

The short answer is yes!

Each day there are a few handouts to print out and instructional videos to watch. Each day's actual activities should only take 45-60 minutes of actual work.

The first week takes a little bit of time and prep to get up to speed, but by the second week, the activities become second nature.

We often suggest breaking up some of the activities to different parts of the day.

1. Print out the handouts
2. Watch the short videos either by yourself or with your kids to know what to do (about 5 minutes)
3. Do the fluency training with your kids (5 minutes)
4. Activities for comprehension, phonics, brain-body, and executive function rotate throughout the week (20 – 40 minutes)

Many families don’t have plans initially to miss any weeks, but we know that plans change. That is why with the 6-week program you get 8 weeks of access, with the 8-week program you get 10 weeks of access, and with the 10-week program, you get 12 weeks of access.

We can also pause your program for 1 week in the program. Just email us the dates of the week you will be on vacation and we'll set your account to pause and automatically resume when you return.

No. We currently do not have live classes.

We have designed this program to be step-by-step with bite-sized activities. You won't have to worry about missing a Zoom class, being late, or your kids being still in their pajamas. You can do the activities in the program on your schedule and make up missed days at your convenience.

We have video spelling instruction that your kids will follow along with their corresponding worksheets. If you want feedback on your child's work, send us a picture of it via email.

The program was designed by learning expert Bonnie Terry, M.Ed., BCET. The curriculum in the program was designed over the course of Bonnie Terry's 35+ years of teaching from hands-on in her former private learning center and now, in an at-home and online environment. Bonnie has worked with kids of all abilities, whether they are struggling, have learning challenges like dyslexia, auditory processing disorder (APD), and ADD/ADHD, or are just looking to advance faster.

The National Reading Panel has made it clear that the best approach to reading instruction is one that incorporates:

• Explicit instruction in phonemic awareness
• Systematic phonics instruction
• Methods to improve fluency
• Vocabulary instruction
• Ways to enhance comprehension

Scholar Within's summer reading program includes these components through short step-by-step multisensory activities. The program is Orton-Gillingham based and is the perfect way for your kids to not only keep their skills up over summer but to get ahead, make learning easier, and spend less time on homework come the fall.

Reading comprehension is your ability to understand and use what you have read, listened to, or watched.

In our summer reading program, your child will use our custom-designed graphic organizers to organize information of what they have read into a graphical display. This is a critical component in improving reading comprehension. These organizers make note-taking easy. 

Additionally, story structure, summarizing, question answering, and question generation are all critical pieces of comprehension. We also include these components of comprehension in our summer reading program.

Reading Fluency is the ability to retrieve words automatically and easily, almost without thought. When you read nearly effortlessly and accurately, you are able to hold pieces of information (text) in your mind which improves your overall comprehension. 

Dr. Sally Shaywitz, the author of Overcoming Dyslexia, states, “Fluency Training is one of the most important things a parent can do to help their child improve their reading skills.” Improving your reading fluency is one of the easiest things you can do to improve your reading skills.

Our summer reading program includes short reading fluency activities that you will do each day. This activity only takes 5-minutes and your kids will see and chart their progress each day. These specific activities work on eye-tracking skills, visual processing, and rapid automatized naming. In other words, these activities help your kids learn to read faster. You can download the first fluency activity here for free.

Phonics is the ability to match sounds with the letters that they represent. Our summer reading program improves this ability at all ages. Even older students use phonics skills when sounding out larger words they are not familiar with. 

These skills enhance a student's ability to both pull apart and blend together sounds within a word or syllable. Systematically manipulating phonemes (the smallest unit of sound in speech; e.g. the word hat has 3 phonemes /h/, /a/, and /t/) significantly improves reading and spelling abilities. 

Over the years, we have seen that adding this training at every level enhances the reading skills of all students, whether they are primary, middle, or upper-grade students. The National Reading Panel concludes that “phonics instruction produces significant benefits with reading.”

We work on improving phonics skills in several different ways. 

1. Specific spelling, spelling pattern, and phonic activities
2. Interactive spelling and phonics video lessons
3. Reading fluency training that focuses on every phonemic component in the English language
4. Weekly printable card game activities

Research on teaching reading and spelling dates back to the early 1930s, first with Samuel Orton and then later with Anna Gillingham. They developed a teaching approach, the Orton-Gillingham method (OG), to help struggling readers and spellers. Their teaching methods include what is currently considered best practices: sequential, phonics-based systems that teach the basics of word formation before whole meanings.

Learning through all three senses (auditory, visual, and tactile-kinesthetic) is essential. This multisensory approach has been proven effective for students of all abilities, including those with dyslexia and other learning challenges. 

The Scholar Within Reading Program incorporates these OG principles and strategies along with the latest research on learning. 

Orton-Gillingham Instructional Components for Optimal Learning:

• Multisensory: Uses all of the senses (auditory, visual, and tactile-kinesthetic)
• Sequential: Proceeds step-by-step in a logical sequence
• Incremental: Each lesson builds upon prior learning
• Cumulative: Constantly and consistently reviews previously taught concepts
• Individualized: Meets each student’s individual needs
• Phonogram-Based: Words are based on combining letters and letter combinations known as phonograms (the sound-symbol relationship, also known as the Alphabetic Principle)
• Explicit: Stated clearly and in a detailed manner

Our at-home and online reading program integrates research-proven multisensory learning with the Orton-Gillingham approach to teaching reading in a way that will finally work for your child.

We accomplish this with a bite-sized, activity-based approach. Our short activities ensure all children’s success. It's perfect for struggling readers and those with dyslexia, ADHD, or other learning challenges.

This program has been designed by learning disabilities expert and board-certified educational therapist Bonnie Terry, M.Ed., BCET. Bonnie has worked with children and adults of all abilities for over 30 years and has discovered the code for the best way to teach reading and spelling.

In addition to improving reading skills, your children will also improve their overall auditory, visual, and tactile-kinesthetic processing skills to make overall learning easier.

In this reading program, your child will learn through seeing, hearing, and doing. Learning to read through multiple senses builds stronger associations, improves retention and speeds up recall skills.

In other words, learning to read in this way makes reading easier and automatic. This at-home and online reading program is specifically designed with short activities that integrate hearing, seeing, and doing.

We are confident that you and your child will love our spelling program. Your child will make tremendous progress with spelling and they'll love the puzzles and the card games. They will become an accurate and confident speller. This is like having free admission for 7 days.

If you are, however, unsatisfied with the program during the first 7-days, just contact us and we will refund your payment.