Reading

Unit 1: Becoming a big kid reader 

(8/9-9/22) 

Bend I: Reading with Fluency

At the start of our unit, we will focus on reminding kids to draw on all that they learned in first grade. Before long, however, we will pack up their first-grade books and charts and shift toward teaching them the Big Kid work of being a second-grader. As our unit unfolds, our focus becomes teaching kids to read with Big Kid fluency. Reading researchers have said that during second grade, children’s fluency almost doubles. Tell your students about those reading scientists who study second-graders. 

Bend II: Reading Series Books

Second grade is not only the time for fluency, it’s also the time for reading series books. In this bend, we will convene a group of kids around each series, forming series clubs. As the bend progresses, they’ll go from reading one series to reading another series. Some examples of the series they will be reading are Camila the Star, Horrible Harry, King and Kayla, Desmond Cole Ghost Patrol, Mercy Watson, Sadiq, Emma Every Day, and Magic Treehouse.

Bend III: Flexible Word Solving

Vowel teams rank high as one of the trickiest parts of words, and we will tackle that at the start of the bend. The important thing for kids to know is that many vowel teams have a “way they usually go,” and ideally, when a reader first attempts to decode a word, she tries the usual sounds that the vowel team makes. When that doesn’t work, the reader tries reading the word in other ways, aware that vowel flexing is often necessary. Of course, as part of this, readers need to check that the word they produce makes sense. Later on, we will progress to a second source of trouble—R-controlled vowels. Again, our goal will be to teach kids to try the most common sounds that an R-controlled vowel is apt to make first, switching things around when needed.

Unit 2: Becoming Experts

(9/25- 11/3) 

Bend I: Learning from Nonfiction Books

In this unit, our students will dive into the fascinating world of nonfiction reading. We will teach students to read closely, with wide-awake attention to detail. On Day One, children will do this by reading texts such as maps, globes, charts, and illustrations. As the bend continues, they’ll learn to orient themselves to nonfiction texts, discovering that readers don’t only think, “What will this book probably teach me?” but they also think, “What do I already know about this.” Your children will learn to use graphics to connect information and they’ll ask questions to learn all they can from graphics. They’ll also learn to draw on their growing background knowledge as they read, remembering what they learned from one text as they read another. With help from the table of contents and subheadings within books, they’ll determine subtopics and collect information and key vocabulary connected to those subtopics.

Bend II: Learning from Nonfiction Text Sets

In Bend II, your children will read across nonfiction text sets. As they read a second book on a topic, they’ll “snowball” ideas using cross-text synthesis. They’ll take what they learned about a subtopic from one text and read a new book on that topic, picking more information and vocabulary around their initial learning. The students will learn to notice the types of text structures they encounter in nonfiction books, including cause and effect and sequence. As they become experts 

Bend III: Reading Nonfiction Texts of All Kinds

By Session 3, the emphasis switches to how-to texts. Students will use cookbooks, written instructions, and also video instructions to practice reading procedural texts. They’ll learn to skim the text asking, “What will I need?” and to shift between reading, pausing, and doing as they read along.

Unit 3: Tackling longer words and longer books 

(11/7-12/21) 

Unit 4: Stepping into the world of a story 

(1/9-2/25) 

Unit 5: Growing Knowledge Together 

(2/20-4/5) 

Unit 6: Drama Lessons 

(4/8-5/17)