Daily Knowledge Boost with Kids Academy: Phonics and Word Recognition for 3rd Graders
Jan. 27, 2025
As children enter 3rd grade, they become ready to build on their vocabulary and reading skills. This is a great time to introduce more complex word recognition strategies as it helps children decode unfamiliar words and can improve their reading comprehension. In addition, this will help improve children’s vocabulary and support their spelling and pronunciation.
Today’s daily knowledge boost gives children a chance to explore prefixes, suffixes and multi syllable words and start looking at irregular spelling patterns. It will allow students to gain skills needed to be able to have a higher level of reading comprehension and vocabulary.
All the lessons can be accessed in the simple interactive Kids Academy Classroom interface. It allows you to use our ready-made lessons or create new ones, share them with your children and track your students’ progress.
Lesson 1: Prefixes

In this lesson children will start looking into prefixes such as -re, -pre and -mis. They will understand how prefixes can change the meanings of words. Students will also learn to recognize and apply these prefixes to base words thus helping in decoding unfamiliar words.
Activity Overview:
- Prefixes: -re, -pre, -mis Video: Start off this lesson with a fun video that teaches about the most common prefixes.
- Prefix Quiz: Assess your child’s ability for the correct prefix or root word
Brain Break
This fun dancing and singing brain break is a great way to allow your child’s brain to take a little rest but continue learning about prefixes and lead into the next topic, suffixes/
Lesson 2: Suffixes
In these next set of lessons children will explore a reading skill that is pivotal for their literacy development. They will look at adding suffixes and understand how they transform words' meanings and grammatical functions.

Activity Overview:
- Suffixes:-ness,-er Video: Start off with a descriptive video that identifies what a suffix is and practice identifying words with -ness, and -er spelling patterns through a story.
- Suffixes- Phonics and Word Recognition Quiz: In this assessment students will choose the correct suffix or root word to complete a word.
Brain Break
Take another break with this exciting video that gets children’s bodies up and moving.
Lesson 3: Multi Syllable Words
These lessons will give children the chance to deepen their understanding of the skills identifying and pronouncing longer, more complex words. Students will not only practice breaking down multisyllabic words but also enrich their vocabulary. As well as gain strategies to approach unfamiliar words.

Activity Overview:
- Antonym Mix- Up: Start off with a fun video where students will practice breaking down multisyllabic words into parts and learn about antonyms.
- Decoding Multisyllabic Words Quiz: Students will read words and determine the number of syllables.
Brain Break
Take another break and get your students up and moving with this next song and dance. Students will also be able to practice clapping out syllables.
Lesson 4: Irregular Spellings
After doing the previous lesson students should start to become more confident in their word recognition. The next topic to master is spelling. In this next lesson students will explore the irregular way to spell words with gh.

Activity Overview:
- Pegasus Maze Worksheet: Start off with this fun activity spelling. Students will direct Pegasus to Mount Olympus while they follow the digraph -gh.
- Read Words with the -gh spelling Pattern Quiz: Students will assess their understanding of the digraph -gh by reading words with this spelling pattern.
Brain Break
Finish off these lessons with one last brain break where students can apply their word recognition skills they just practiced. This brain break has students identifying common 3rd grade words.
Do you have a learner who is more independent? While the lessons above are designed for guided learning, check out our Talented and Gifted Online web app for a self-paced learning environment. This resource offers comprehensive courses on all the core subjects with a wide variety of activities tailored to keep learners both challenged and engaged!