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3rd grade · English Language Arts · Unit 11 of 13

Reading Patterns

Cause, order, point of view and the index

What your child practices

Spotting cause and effect and order of importance, deciding who is telling a story, making inferences from clues, and using an index.

Maine Learning Results learning standard: Reading 8 · cause and effect, order and other text structures

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Cause is why something happens. Effect is what happens.
  2. If the narrator says I or we, they are in the story. If they say he, she or they, they are outside it.
  3. An index at the back lists topics in ABC order with page numbers.

Example: A story says, “She opened the door and gasped.” Who is telling it? The narrator says “she,” not “I.” So the teller is not a character. Answer: someone outside the story

Reading Patterns in Maine

In the Maine Learning Results, this is unit 11 of 13 in 3rd grade English Language Arts, after Grammar Gears and before Wonder & Find Out.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Maine Department of Education

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    Why does the heron stand so still?

    The Heron

    Every morning, a great blue heron stood still at the edge of the pond. It watched the water with sharp yellow eyes.

    A frog hopped near the reeds. Quick as lightning, the heron struck.

    • so it can catch a meal without scaring it away
    • because it is sleeping
    • because it is cold

  2. Question 2

    What is an index used for?

    • to find the page where a topic is
    • to tell you who wrote the book
    • to show the story's ending

  3. Question 3

    Who is telling this story?

    The Heron

    Every morning, a great blue heron stood still at the edge of the pond. It watched the water with sharp yellow eyes.

    A frog hopped near the reeds. Quick as lightning, the heron struck.

    • the heron
    • the frog
    • someone outside the story

  4. Question 4

    An index lists topics in alphabetical order. Which of these would come first?

    • Wolves
    • Moose
    • Otters

  5. Question 5

    Which topic is on page 31?

    Index
    TopicPage
    Beavers17
    Eagles36
    Frogs4
    Lynx12
    Wolves31
    • Eagles
    • Wolves
    • Beavers

  6. Question 6

    What does “retracing her steps” mean?

    The Missing Mitten

    When Hana got to the bus stop, she patted her pockets. She had only one mitten. Her ears felt cold, but her heart felt even colder.

    She looked all along the sidewalk, retracing her steps. Then she saw a bright red scrap sticking out of the snow bank. “Found you!” she cried, and tugged it free.

    • counting her steps
    • going back along the way she came
    • running very fast

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