Unit 1 Overview
Unit 1: Growing into Second-Grade Phonics
Second grade is a year of immense growth. Over the course of the year, second-graders start to run faster, write longer, and form more lasting friendships. In reading, they go from reading early chapter books like Fly Guy to longer, more complicated books like Magic Tree House. In writing, they start the year with four or five sentences per page and end the year with ten or twelve sentences filling up a multi-page booklet. Second-grade phonics is about closing the gap between what kids can read and what they can write conventionally.
Our goal with this unit is to grow their phonics knowledge so they know more options for how words could go. Alongside knowledge about words and spellings, you will teach the grit and intellectual curiosity they need to try to get closer to the right spelling. We’ve developed a tool for students designed to encourage them to take responsibility for their spelling called “My Word Book,” a place for students to record their own troublemaker words that they want to pay special attention to getting right. We walk a fine line in this unit. We want to help second-graders get closer to conventional writing, but at the same time we want to be careful to not emphasize spelling so much that they lose their creativity to perfectionism.
In Bend I the students review some of the key phonics principles students studied in kindergarten and first grade. It starts by reminding them of all they learned about phonics: short vowels, long vowels, silent E, vowel teams, R-controlled vowels, blends, digraphs and endings. You will introduce a new tool, “My Snap Words Book,” a printable resource that contains all 146 high-frequency words that were introduced in kindergarten and first grade.
In Bend II the students focus on rallying second-graders to grow beyond their first-grade work and do more second-grade work. This means asking students to work on “growing up” their writing, by working to spell some tricky snap words correctly, adding periods on the run (not just after they have finished a whole page or a whole piece), and putting in capital letters where appropriate. You will introduce the concept of “troublemaker words'', which are high-frequency words that were introduced in kindergarten and first grade. These are words that kids can read in a snap, but still have trouble spelling with automaticity. You will also introduce the particularly tricky concept of homophones.
In Bend III the students explore rhyme and rimes. They explore rhyming texts and identify the word parts or rimes that are particularly useful. Children will also write their own fun and sometimes silly rhyming books, working to use all of the rimes they have harvested across the bend.
The bend and the unit end with a celebration of rhyming and poetry. This is a celebration of all the growing up that your second-graders have done in this unit and it is also meant to celebrate all of the growth that is yet to come in this very exciting year.