English in Third Grade: What Children Learn and How to Help at Home
In third grade children usually take their first steps in English: they learn the letters and the sounds they make, pick up first words, begin to read short words and understand simple sentences. The common difficulties are mixing up b and d, reading left to right, and short vowels. Ten minutes of practice a day at home makes a big difference.
By TutorNest · Updated 5 October 2026
What do children learn in English in third grade?
English is a required subject in Israel from fourth grade, but many schools begin in third grade or earlier. What is taught varies by school, so it is worth asking the teacher what is planned this year in your child's class.
The year is usually spent on foundations: a lot of listening and speaking, getting to know the letters and their sounds, basic vocabulary such as colors, numbers, animals and family, and a first start at reading short words.
What should a third grader know by the end of the year?
No single list fits every school. Typically, a child finishing a first year of English recognizes most letters, knows the sound each one makes, reads short three-letter words, and understands and says simple sentences such as I am Dana or I like pizza.
Skill
What it looks like
How to help at home
Letters and sounds
Sees a letter and says its sound, not only its name
Three or four letters a day on cards, a few seconds each
Reading short words
Blends sounds into a word: c-a-t becomes cat
A teacher every week, practice every day
TutorNest joins a weekly one-to-one English lesson to about ten minutes of practice at home each day.
Three-letter words, slowly, with a finger moving left to right
First words
Recognizes and says names of objects, colors and numbers
Ask in English about things at home: what color is it
Simple sentences
Understands and says a short sentence about themselves
One sentence a day: I am, I have, I like
Why does my child mix up b and d?
Mixing up b and d, and sometimes p and q, is very common in the first year. These letters are the same shape facing different ways, and the brain needs time to get used to direction mattering. For most children it passes with practice.
It helps to give each letter a fixed anchor. Take the word bed: the b comes first and the d last, and together they look like a bed. It also helps to write the letter in the air with a big arm movement while saying its sound.
What other difficulties are common in third grade?
Reading left to right. A child used to Hebrew sometimes starts a word from the right side and reads was for saw. Tracking with a finger from the first letter, on the left, usually fixes this within a short time.
Short vowels. In English the vowels are written as letters, and the short sounds of a, e, i, o and u are close to each other for an ear raised on Hebrew. Many children find it hard to tell pin from pen, or cat from cut. This takes a lot of listening, not explanation.
Letter names versus letter sounds. A child who learned only the ABC song knows that c is called see, but in cat it makes a k sound. Reading needs the sounds. Letter names can be strengthened later.
How can we help at home in ten minutes a day?
Ten minutes every day does more than an hour once a week. At the stage of learning letters and sounds, short and frequent review is what turns slow recognition into automatic recognition.
Two minutes: a quick run through letter cards. Your child says the sound of each letter.
Three minutes: read four or five short words, sound by sound and then the whole word.
Three minutes: spoken words. Point at an object or picture and ask what it is in English.
Two minutes: something fun to finish, a short song or a guessing game.
When your child gets stuck on a word, do not say it right away. Point to the first letter, ask for its sound, and go through the word together letter by letter. A word a child worked out alone stays longer than a word heard from a parent.
When is it worth asking for extra help?
Difficulty in the first months is normal. Pay attention if, after several months of lessons, your child still does not recognize most letters, cannot blend three sounds into a word, or avoids English altogether. In that case talk to the school teacher and consider one-to-one support.
A gap at this stage is relatively easy to close, because there is still little material. It is harder to close once the class is reading sentences and a child is still working to recognize letters.
How does TutorNest handle this?
TutorNest starts with a short starting-point check, so practice opens at the child's level and not by school grade. There is one weekly 45-minute one-to-one lesson with the same teacher, who also speaks Hebrew, and about ten minutes of daily practice in an app, built from what the teacher is working on. A wrong answer is explained and comes back later in another form.
Questions parents ask
My child does not know all the letters yet. Is that okay?+
At the start of third grade and during it, that is completely normal. Toward the end of the year most children recognize most letters. If not, a few minutes of cards every day usually helps quickly.
Should we teach capital or lowercase letters first?+
Start with lowercase, because most of the text your child will read is written in it. Add capitals gradually, beginning with those that look like their lowercase form.
How many new words should a child learn in a week?+
A few words repeated often beat a long list. Five to eight words a week, met every day in context, stay better than twenty words to memorize.
Will reading in English hurt reading in Hebrew?+
Usually not. By third grade most children read Hebrew securely. There may be brief confusion about reading direction, and it passes with practice.