Canadian-Daily-Reading-Comprehension-3.pdf

How You Can Help Your Child at Home

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

Canadian Daily Reading Comprehension Grade 3 © Chalkboard Publishing

1

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Text Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Plants

A Garden on a Roof . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

A Plant That Eats Insects . . . . . . . . . . 6

Where Does Maple Syrup Come From? . . 8

How Does a Greenhouse Work? . . . . . . 10

Ancient History

Pyramids of Ancient Egypt . . . . . . . . . 12

Ancient Cave Paintings . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Natural Forces

Tsunami Alert! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

What Can Wind Do? . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Volcanoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Animals

Slimy, Squiggly Worms! . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Koalas Are Cute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

The Octopus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

The Environment

Eating Local Foods. . . . . . . . . . . . . .28

Earth Hour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Forest Fires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Space

Fact Sheet: The Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

The Sun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Geography

Glaciers and Icebergs . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

The Sahara Desert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Antarctica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42

Occupations

What Does a Zookeeper Do? . . . . . . . . 44

What Does a Pharmacist Do?. . . . . . . .46

What Does an Architect Do? . . . . . . . . 48

Health

Television and Computer Time. . . . . . .50

Caffeine and Kids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Get Your Sleep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Feeling Angry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56

Wash Your Hands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

What Does Your Tongue Do?. . . . . . . .60

Pioneers

A General Store in the 1800s . . . . . . . . 62

Pioneer Farms: Spring and Summer . . . . 64

Pioneer Farms: Fall and Winter. . . . . . .66

Pioneer Life: Building a House . . . . . . . 68

Science

All About Snow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70

Lighting Up the Sky . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Biography

David Suzuki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Elizabeth Blackwell . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Roberta Bondar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Alexander Graham Bell . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Character Education

Saying “I Am Sorry!” . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Gossip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85

Fables and Folk Tales

Old Cat and Little Cat . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

The Ant and the Dove . . . . . . . . . . . .89

The Broken Promise . . . . . . . . . . . . .91

The Happy Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

The Man and the Coconuts . . . . . . . . .95

The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf . . . . . . 97

Miscellaneous

Where Does Milk Come From? . . . . . . 99

Graphic Organizers . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

How Am I Doing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Reading Comprehension Student

Tracking Sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

Achievement Certificate. . . . . . . . . . 113

Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

2

Introduction

Reading comprehension is the cornerstone of a child’s academic success. By

completing the activities in this book, children will develop and reinforce

essential reading comprehension skills. Children will benefit from a wide variety

of opportunities to practice engaging with text as active readers who can self-

monitor their understanding of what they have read.

Children will focus on the following:

Identifying the Purpose of the Text

• The reader understands, and can tell you, why they read the text.

Understanding the Text

• What is the main idea of the text?

• What are the supporting details?

• Which parts are facts and which parts are opinions?

Analyzing the Text

• How does the reader’s background knowledge enhance the text clues to help

the reader answer questions about the text or draw conclusions?

• What inferences can be made by using information from the text with what

the reader already knows?

• How does the information from the text help the reader make predictions?

• What is the cause and effect between events?

Making Connections

How does the topic or information they are reading remind the reader about

what they already know?

• Text-to-self connections: How does this text relate to your own life?

• Text-to-text connections: Have I read something like this before? How is this

text similar to something I have read before? How is this text different from

something I have read before?

• Text-to-world connections: What does this text remind you of in the real

world?

Using Text Features

• How do different text features help the reader?

3

Text Features

Text features help the reader to understand the text better. Here is a list of text

features with a brief explanation on how they help the reader.

Contents

Here the reader will find the title of each section, what page

each text starts on within sections, and where to find specific

information.

Chapter Title

The chapter title gives the reader an idea of what the text will be

about. The chapter title is often followed by subheadings within

the text.

Title and

Subheading

The title or topic is found at the top of the page. The subheading

is right above a paragraph. There may be more than one

subheading in a text.

Map

Maps help the reader understand where something is happening.

It is a visual representation of a location.

Diagram and

Illustration

Diagrams and illustrations give the reader additional visual

information about the text.

Label

A label tells the reader the title of a map, diagram, or illustration.

Labels also draw attention to specific elements within a visual.

Caption

Captions are words that are placed underneath the visuals.

Captions give the reader more information about the map,

diagram, or illustration.

Fact Box A fact box tells the reader extra information about the topic.

Table

A table presents text information in columns and rows in a

concise and often comparative way.

Bold and

Italic text

Bold and italic text are used to emphasize a word or words, and

signify that this is important vocabulary.

4

A Garden on the Roof

Not all gardens grow in the ground. Today, you can find gardens on the roofs of many large

buildings in cities. Even some homes with flat roofs have roof gardens. Why do people grow

roof gardens?

Making Cities

More Beautiful

Flowers, grasses, green

plants, and even small trees

and bushes can grow in

a roof garden. Plants are

much nicer to look at than

a boring, flat roof. You

can find gardens on the

roofs of many different city

buildings.

Creating a Home for Wildlife

A roof garden can be a home for many different types of insects. Butterflies and dragonflies

are two insects that can be seen in roof gardens. Some birds build their nests in a roof

garden. The sound of birds singing is nice to hear in a busy city.

Helping to Clean the Air

Plants help to remove pollution from the air. In some cities, there is lots of air pollution! A

roof garden can help to clean the air.

Saving Energy

Heating a building in winter takes lots of energy. A roof garden helps to keep out the winter

cold, so it saves on energy used for heating. In summer, air conditioning can use up lots of

energy. Roof gardens help to keep the sun from making the inside of a building too warm.

Less air conditioning is needed, so energy is saved.

5

“A Garden on the Roof”—Think About It

1. The author wrote this text to answer a question. What is the question?

________________________________________________________________

2. What are two places where roof gardens can be found?

________________________________________________________________

3. Tell how a roof garden helps people save energy in winter and in summer.

________________________________________________________________

4. How can roof gardens help more birds live in cities?

________________________________________________________________

5. The text has subheadings in bold print. How are the subheadings helpful to readers?

________________________________________________________________

6

A Plant That Eats Insects

Most plants make their own food in their leaves. To make food, they use light, air, water,

and nutrients found in soil. If the soil does not contain enough nutrients, the plant cannot

survive.

The Venus flytrap is a very interesting plant. It grows in soil that does not contain enough

nutrients to help it survive. So how does a Venus flytrap get the nutrients it needs? It eats

insects!

Be Careful—It Is a Trap!

The Venus flytrap has special leaves that are perfect for catching insects. Inside each leaf are

trigger hairs. When an insect such as a fly lands inside a leaf, the insect touches the trigger

hairs. The trigger hairs send a signal to the plant to quickly close the leaf trap.

It takes a lot of energy for the Venus flytrap to close a leaf trap. The plant does not want to

waste energy by trapping tiny insects. It wants a nice, big meal! The leaf traps will not close

unless the insect is big enough to contain lots of nutrients.

When the leaf trap closes, it crushes the insect and kills it. The trap stays closed for one to

two weeks while the plant absorbs the nutrients in the insect. Then the trap opens again,

ready to catch another insect. Each leaf trap can only catch an insect three or four times.

After that, the trap will no longer work.

After eating an insect, the Venus flytrap is not in a hurry for its next meal. The Venus flytrap

can go without a meal for one to two months, but will eat about once a week if it can.

Fly entering a

leaf trap

Leaf trap

closed

7

“A Plant That Eats Insects”—Think About It

1. Why can a Venus flytrap grow in soil that other plants could not grow in?

________________________________________________________________

2. How does a Venus flytrap save energy?

________________________________________________________________

3. Why does a Venus flytrap need to have many leaf traps, and not just one?

________________________________________________________________

4. Why do you think humans need to eat much more often than Venus flytraps? (Hint:

Think about size and energy.)

________________________________________________________________

5. What surprised you about Venus flytraps?

________________________________________________________________

8

Where Does Maple Syrup Come From?

Sap is a liquid that flows inside trees.

Maple syrup is made from the sap of

maple trees. Here are the steps farmers use

to make maple syrup.

Step 1: Drill a hole in the trunk of a maple

tree.

Step 2: Place a metal spout inside the hole.

Then hang a bucket under the spout.

Step 3: Wait for the bucket to fill with sap.

The sap is clear and comes out one drop at

a time. It takes a long time for the bucket

to fill with sap.

Step 4: Boil the sap for many hours. This

makes the sap change from clear to golden.

The sap also turns into a thick syrup.

Step 5: Wait for the syrup to cool. Then

pour some on pancakes or waffles.

Did You Know?

Sap contains lots of water. When the

sap boils, the water turns to steam and

escapes. As steam rises from the sap, the

sap gets thicker and thicker.

9

“Where Does Maple Syrup Come From?”—Think About It

1. How does the sap get from inside a maple tree into the bucket?

________________________________________________________________

2. It takes a lot of sap to make a little bit of maple syrup. What disappears from the sap?

Why?

________________________________________________________________

3. How is maple sap different from maple syrup?

________________________________________________________________

4. Farmers often cover the buckets so no rain gets in. Why would farmers not want rain to

get in the sap?

________________________________________________________________

5. Do you like maple syrup? Tell why or why not.

________________________________________________________________

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