Published children’s books serve as mentor texts for students to emulate in their writing. By analyzing the structural elements of a published story or nonfiction text, or by doing a close reading of an author’s language, students learn moves that help them to craft clearly sequenced and engaging stories and detailed informational pieces in which they use facts and definitions to explain their points.
In addition to writing personal narratives based on their experience and informational text driven by their interests, expertise, and inquiry, students also continue to write opinion pieces this year. Just like narrative and informational writing, opinion writing is closely tied to reading in second grade. Students form opinions on the books they read, and they learn to defend them in writing.