Did you know that chocolate comes from the fruit of a tree? Have you heard of a moth that sucks blood? Or a plant that eats animals? Do you need a robot to play with your dog? Reading Skills 3A is a collection of nonfiction passages with interactive learning activities, written by children's author Marne Ventura, M.A. and developed by Fred Ventura, Ph.D. This app is the first in the Reading Skills Series published by Ventura Educational Systems.

Understanding informational text is essential to literacy. To help young readers develop this skill, twelve fun, high-interest passages about plants, animals, space and technology, written at the third grade reading level, are presented:

• Make Way for Elephants
• The Chocolate Tree
• The Tail Trick
• Plants Strike Back
• The Tiniest Vampire
• Eat Your Vegetables
• Poor Pluto
• Stars and Planets
• Float or Sink?
• Sticky Feet Space Robot
• A Robot for Your Dog
• Robot Friend

Each passage is followed by three engaging activities based on the following Common Core Standards for Grade 3 Language Arts:

• comprehension
• vocabulary
• main idea and supporting details
• drawing conclusions
• making inferences
• summarizing
• synonyms and antonyms
• multiple meanings words
• fact vs. opinion
• genre
• author's purpose
• compare and contrast
• text features

The Reading Skills 3A follow-up activities for each of the 12 passages are described below:

Word Fun - a clue is given along with the scrambled letters of a vocabulary word from the passage. The challenge is to unscramble the letters to spell the word.

Science Facts - helps improve recall and comprehension. Students read a statement and tap either True or False based on the contents of the passage.

Skills Practice - Students practice reading comprehension skills by answering multiple choice questions.

A record-keeping component keeps track of the student’s scores on all of the activities.