3 genders of nouns and how to detect them | 3 рода существительных и как их определить

So, back to gender aspect of Russian nouns. You can recognize gender in most of cases easily just looking at the end letter of the word (it's important to take nominative forms for that work). And keep in mind that _all_ Russian nouns have gender, animate and inanimate.

Feminine words often end with vowel -a: река, сестра, карта, комната, радуга, дорога. As well feminine nouns often end with vowel -я (let's name countries here): Россия, Корея, Грузия, Япония, Финляндия, Бразилия, Великобритания, Индия. Лекция, секция, конференция are also feminine as you could guess already.
Masculine nouns end with consonants: дом, университет, парк, сквер, магазин, лагерь, словарь, Китай, Гонконг.

Words of neuter gender more often are inanimate and end with vowels -о/-е: море, солнце, окно, фото.

Division of nouns according to their gender when we talk about people is a matter of convention. That's why the words representing people refer to biological gender: 

Папа, дедушка, дядя - мужской род (father, grandfather and uncle are men, so they are nouns of masculine gender). Memorise this, please. 

Мама, бабушка, тётя - женский род (mother, grandmother and aunt are women, this is all feminine nouns). 

If you doubt the gender of new word, search in the dictionary: nouns there are given in nominative, as well look at description. Usually in the description they indicate gender with abbreviations: м. р. / муж. (мужской род) for masculine gender; ж. р. / ж.  (женский род) for feminine gender; ср. р. | c. (средний род) for neuter gender. Let's see how it looks in the dictionary: 

Your task for today:

divide the following words into three groups: он, она, оно.

Волга, река, сок, молоко, собака, щенок, кошка, котёнок, сыр, мама, рассказ, папа, слово, банк, рыба, музыка, урок, погода, утро, город, группа, комната, дядя, минута, дедушка, Анна, Антон, парк, торт. 

Пример (example):

ОН: сок, ...

ОНА: река, ...

ОНО: утро, ...