Second Grade Reading Growth Spurt

Second Grade Readers grow like beanstalks!

Being a Second Grade reader is an exciting time! We are getting to the point in our reading where our stories are becoming more complex. We are about ready to choose books that have longer and more challenging words, longer sentences, and even our stories as a whole are becoming longer. And over the course of the year, this reading growth continues to sprout quickly, just like the beanstalk in Jack and the Beanstalk.

In order to get our Second Grade readers ready for this growth and big-kid reading, our first reading unit focuses on strategies to help us out. This unit is split into three bends, with each bend including a central theme. The first bend discusses ways that we as readers can challenge and improve our fiction reading. Students learn that they are in charge of the HOW to read a book, continue practicing a sneak peek to get themselves ready to read, challenge themselves to grow their reading stamina by reading more and more each time, try reading in bigger scoops to smooth out their reading voice, utilize stop, think, and retelling of a story, and lastly, learn and use stop and jots to engage with their books by writing what they notice, wonder, or predict. This bend is all about doing a little extra thinking when reading.

The second bend recognizes that since we may be choosing books that are longer and with chapters, we might come across some longer, tricky words. In this bend, a Second Grade reader learns to roll up their sleeves and try several strategies to attack these tricky words so they can read them correctly. Some strategies include:

• Checking the picture,

• Use what is happening in the story

• Look to break the word part-by-part

• Look for words inside the word

• Reread the sentence to see if it sounds correct

• Flip the vowel sound (short to long, etc.)

• Figure out the meaning of the word, too!

The last bend of Growth Spurt asks students to think about the author of their books. Every author has a purpose for their writing and is strategic in the punctuation, words, craft moves, dialogue, etc. that they include in their stories. We want our readers to begin to notice and think about an author's intentions. We practice asking questions like: what is powerful, why is it powerful, and how did the author do it? We also practice noticing how the story 'clicks' together and what the life lesson is in each of our stories.

I am excited to see your Second Grade Reader grow this year in school!

At home, you can help your reader grow by encouraging them to read and talk about their reading. See below for some questions and sentence starters to get these readers talking: