My 3Rd Grader Is Struggling in Language Arts What Can I Do to Help Him?

I do not think he is lazy or bored, I think he is confused.
Language arts in English can be confusing.. All of the terminology that we use to make up a proper sentence.. is totally new to him..

We use money all of the time so he could understand how all of that worked. He saw it all of the time. It meant something to him.

We never sit around and ask... What pronoun do we use to describe your grandmother?

Also threatening him with having to go back to second grade, is really never the way to motivate someone. It just frightens them. Taking away electronics for being confused by what he is learning, does not make sense.

Instead you could ask for a tutor to work with him at school, if he is not good at having you help him.. (this is not unusual, many times, parents and their children do not do well in these situations) I know i am not a natural teacher. I can only try to teach based on my way of learning.

You could go to a teacher supply store and purchase a work book for this grade level and "play school" with him.

Have him "teach" you about verbs, nouns, pro nouns.. Use the work sheets together. Or you do them in pencil and let him "grade" YOUR work with a red pencil.. Make a few mistakes, so he can find them.

I remember learning a lot of things on Saturday morning, by watching Schoolhouse of rock cartoons.
Watch these with him and let him listen to each sentence of the song.
Listen to the examples the song gives and see if he can come up with examples.

Here is their Noun Cartoon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy72OPgdVuA

Pronoun cartoon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiPJs096bVE&feature=re...

Verb cartoon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU70kFDxg6Q

Adjectives
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpPEQZl6_d4&feature=re...

Laurie and Hazel always give great advice. Worksheets are never as interesting as real life applications of academics. They ARE boring. Wouldn't you be bored too if you had to fill out a math worksheet everytime you tried to buy groceries?

Worksheets are confusing as well. They use a different part of the brain than just counting, reading a watch and writing a story.

When my son was young, I bought him DK (Dorling Kindersley) CD's to help him learn the basics. I think that would help you too. Check out this link and see if something here would help your son:

http://kidsclick.com/dk.htm

Then get him worksheets like the teacher has them work on and show him how the fun stuff and the worksheets teach the same thing.

Your son may be one of those kids who needs to learn "by doing" and that includes having manipulatives - physical things to touch and move in order to grasp a new concept. Use both the worksheet approach, the fun approach (computer games on these CD's) and manipulatives to help him learn.

We ALL struggle with something academically, Mom. Very few people understand everything the first time they look at it. And if you don't understand the basics of a concept, building on it just gets harder.

Instead of telling him that he's going to have to repeat, work with him so that you see at the end of 3rd grade how he is doing. If the admin of the school feels that he should not go to 4th grade, then THAT is something you should pay attention to. Meanwhile, don't put that idea in his head.

Good luck,
Dawn

He has passing grades and his state test scores are in normal range. Why are you so concerned? Let him be unless his teacher is telling you that he needs to make improvements. If his teacher is not suggesting that he be held back, why are you? It's too early in the year to even be considering that. He's in a 2nd/3rd grade split class. If he needed to be doing 2nd grade work the teacher would be providing that.

I suggest that you back off and let him learn as the teacher works with him. Making threats will not help him advance. They will make him anxious and less able to focus.

I urge you to work with the teacher. She will tell you if he needs extra help and will tell you how to provide that. Your post sounds like you've decided he's not doing well, that you want him to be getting top grades and to not complain about being bored.

It's normal for kids to complain about boredom. Not all kids will get top grades. And kids who get only passing grades in the third grade often become better students as they mature.

I suggest that you focus on what he's doing right. Praise him for the grades he does get. Accept him as he is. Positive attention will get you much further than the negativity that you write in this post.

try www.Time4Learning.com

I HATE English. I cannot even express how much. It is the most mind numbingly boring / tedious/ difficult thing. I pick up languages easily, but flop in formal settings... for the same reason. I CANNOT sort "predicate subjunctive" (or whatever).

Yet, I was first published in middleschool. (Thank. God. For. Editors.)

For myself... I'm a visual learner. VERY visual. In fact... in order to remember something I really have to SEE it. In full color and 3d in my mind. Math equations I can "see"... history and science I can "see". I cannot see 'English'. Words to describe other words makes my hair hurt and my mind shut down. I can't get images for them.

Enter homeschooling.

My son is much the same way. Charlotte Mason (google) helped a lot in all aspects except for the awful dreaded formal English training. Gag me. So I looked around at software. T4L actually manages to make the ogre-subject of formal English tolerable. Even fun.

It could be that he is a fast learner, and that the pace of the class IS to slow for him. Maybe the sentences are too simple for him. My sister was this way. She would learn something in a few minutes and when asked to spend 15 minutes a day for a week, it became a problem. Why should she do something on Wed. that she learned on Monday?

He could also be like my son, and get so distracted by other kids and making sure that they are doing what they are supposed to do, that he ends up not doing what HE is supposed to do. I had to tell him that he couldn't be the class policeman until HIS work was done. At home, there are no distractions, so he gets his work done quickly.

I would ask the teacher if he could have a journal, where when he starts to get bored, or finishes his work early, he would be allowed to get out his journal and write. What would he write? His own version of what they were learning. If they are learning to identify nouns and adjectives, the he would write a sentence in the book 'Billy likes to play on his ipod'. Then he would identify the different parts. Noun, verb, etc.

First off, let me just say that his age is clearly not the issue. I say this as the mother of a 3rd grader who is 7 (and my older daughter had just turned 8 at that point in 3rd grade as well - they are both young for their grade). For a teacher to say he is too young to understand how to count money (or whatever the subject may be) - that's a teacher who is making an excuse as to why she's not teaching him. That's not okay. If that's happening this year, you need to meet with the teacher and make clear that while you support her efforts in the classroom, you will not accept your child being treated like he can't do what the other children are doing. Kids pick up on that attitude.

That being said, learning to write sentences correctly and find errors in others' written work is a challenge for all children at this age. The ONLY solution is practice - LOTS of practice. Reading high-quality literature can help (for instance, not Junie B Jones, or other books where words are misspelled on purpose, or grammar is used incorrectly). If he has an interest in books that he's not quite ready to read yet, read TO him so that he remains engaged, and still has the opportunity to hear proper sentence structure, and different forms of syntax (how authors string words together). My third grader loves to read the Judy Moody series to herself. I read the Harry Potter books to her.

Whenever my kids have come up against something in school that presented a big challenge, I've reminded them that the best things in life are often difficult to master. Remind your son of the things he's had to work very hard to accomplish - maybe it was learning to ride a bike, or hitting a baseball, or learning his addition facts. None of those things came instantly the first time he tried. Correcting sentences is the SAME way! He just has to practice until it becomes easier. Third grade is a lot harder than second grade, and I'm sure he is surprised at how much he's having to work now. Encourage him to stick with it. Failure is not an option. :)