Did you know that mice can sing? Have you heard of frogs that can freeze, thaw out, and hop away? Have you heard about the biggest volcano on Earth that’s hidden on the ocean floor? Would you eat tortillas made from ground grasshopeers? Reading Skills 3B is a collection of nonfiction passages with interactive learning activities, written by childrens author Marne Ventura, M.A. and developed by Fred Ventura, Ph.D. This app is one of the Reading Skills Series published by Ventura Educational Systems.
Understanding informational text is essential to literacy. To help young readers develop this skill, twelve fun, high-interest passages about plants, animals, space and technology, written at the third grade reading level, are presented:
• Curb the Carp
• Beads from Outer Space
• Can You Be Too Clean?
• Frozen Frogs
• Is There Life on Mars?
• Mallgulls
• Musical Mice
• Power Flour
• Project Puffin
• How to Hide a Volcano
• Bye-Bye, Voyager 1
• Jenya the Wooly Mammoth
Each passage is followed by three engaging activities based on the following Common Core Standards for Grade 3 Language Arts:
• comprehension
• vocabulary
• main idea and supporting details
• drawing conclusions
• making inferences
• summarizing
• synonyms and antonyms
• multiple meanings words
• fact vs. opinion
• genre
• authors purpose
• compare and contrast
• text features
The Reading Skills 3B follow-up activities for each of the 12 passages are described below:
Word Fun - a clue is given along with the scrambled letters of a vocabulary word from the passage. The challenge is to unscramble the letters to spell the word.
Science Facts - helps improve recall and comprehension. Students read a statement and tap either True or False based on the contents of the passage.
Skills Practice - Students practice reading comprehension skills by answering multiple choice questions.
A record-keeping component keeps track of the student’s scores on all of the activities.