Georgia Milestones Grade 3 ELA cheat sheet

Main idea is what a whole passage is mostly about; a key detail is one fact or event that supports it, while an interesting but minor detail does not.

A retelling must include the important events in the order they happened; skipping a pivotal event breaks the retelling even if the rest is accurate.

A theme is a message about life that applies beyond the story (for example, "hard work pays off"); a main idea is about the specific passage, so theme statements never name the characters.

A character trait is an inner quality shown repeatedly through words and actions; a feeling is a temporary emotion, so one angry moment does not make a character "angry."

A lesson is stated directly when the text says it and implied when the reader must infer it from what happens to the character at the end.

A cause makes something happen and an effect is the result; the effect answers "What happened?" and the cause answers "Why did it happen?"

When two texts cover the same topic, compare by asking what each one includes, leaves out, and emphasizes, not by which one is longer.

A text feature such as a heading, caption, bold word, diagram, or glossary entry tells the reader where to look and what the author thought was important.

A first-person narrator uses I or we and knows only his or her own thoughts; a third-person narrator uses he, she, or they and can report what several characters think.

A prefix goes before the base word and changes meaning (un- = not, re- = again, pre- = before, dis- = not); a suffix goes after and can change meaning or part of speech (-ful = full of, -less = without, -ly = in that way).

Common irregular plurals are not formed by adding -s: child/children, mouse/mice, foot/feet, tooth/teeth, man/men, woman/women, person/people.

A closed syllable ends in a consonant and has a short vowel (rab-bit); a vowel-consonant-e syllable has a long vowel and silent e (hope); an open syllable ends in a vowel with a long sound (ti-ger).

A simple sentence has one subject and one predicate; a compound sentence joins two complete sentences with a comma plus and, but, or or ("I ran, and she walked").

A complex sentence joins a dependent clause to an independent clause; when the dependent clause comes first, a comma follows it ("After we ate, we walked").

An adjective describes a noun, an adverb describes a verb or adjective and often ends in -ly, and a pronoun replaces a noun (I, he, they, them).

Regular past tense adds -ed (jump/jumped); irregular verbs change form instead (go/went, see/saw, run/ran, take/took, write/wrote).

A possessive noun shows ownership with an apostrophe: singular adds 's (the dog's bone) and a plural ending in -s adds only the apostrophe (the dogs' bones).

An opinion piece states a point of view and supports it with reasons, while an informational piece reports facts without judging them.