What strategy can a third-grade teacher use to help students identify unfamiliar words in reading selections?

Identifying unfamiliar words is an essential skill for third-grade students as they develop their reading proficiency. Understanding common roots and affixes is a highly effective strategy because it provides students with tools to break down and analyze unfamiliar words. When students learn the meanings of prefixes, suffixes, and root words, they can deduce the meanings of new words by recognizing familiar components. For example, knowing that "un-" means "not" can help them understand "unhappy" as "not happy."

This approach encourages students to become independent readers who can tackle unknown vocabulary on their own, enhancing their overall comprehension and allowing them to engage more fully with texts. Additionally, this strategy also helps in building a richer vocabulary over time, as students will recognize relationships between words and understand how they are formed.

Other strategies, such as using picture cues and context clues, are useful but may not provide the same level of systematic understanding as learning roots and affixes does. Reciting vocabulary words aloud primarily focuses on memorization, and conducting spelling drills does not directly aid in comprehension. Understanding roots and affixes combines vocabulary knowledge with reading skills effectively.