Unit 2: Cultivating a Love of Community

Unit Overview: Each unit overview provides a description of the content knowledge students will gain through learning and applying literacy skills while engaging with texts. Additional information in the Resources section. 

                Unit 2 in grade 2 focuses on having students understand that community ties are strengthened when we learn from one another and work together.  Additionally, students work on describing the connection between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text.  In grade 1, students were asked to describe the connection between two individuals, events, ideas or pieces of information in a text in order to support comprehension. In grade 2, students will be able to expand this skill by finding the connections between a series of ideas in multiple types of texts. Students also develop their ability to write informative texts. In planning, teachers should select the most high leverage words for their students. All Foundational standards skills are prioritized as students participate in activities to support phonics and fluency development such as decoding words with common prefixes and suffixes and reading grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings.  Students will engage in phonics and fluency activities to know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words and to read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

In order to promote learning for all students practices have been incorporated into the day to day lesson design. For ELs, key sentence frames will support the use of academic language structures. This will create a framework for the language feature being addressed, as well as provide specific language needed to complete the task. For students with IEPs, an interactive read aloud, access to selected text in an audio book, and/or access to text to speech technology is necessary in order to provide students access to what the text says. Moreover, an explicit instructional routine to teach Tier II vocabulary ensures that students learn words at a deep enough level to use in their speech and writing. Structured dialogue/discussion is necessary to guide information processing and comprehension and to check for understanding of the language in selected text. When writing, students may need the use of sentence starters to generate ideas and to facilitate the writing process. To facilitate paragraph writing, students with IEPs need the organizational tool of outlining or graphic organizers. Teachers should prompt students to utilize phoneme-grapheme correspondence for spelling (i.e. tap out the sound and write the grapheme that spells the sound) in order to reinforce these skills to improve spelling.  As part of the district’s initiative to promote equity, we will cultivate students who think critically about the factors that influence their communities while cultivating a deeper love for the community in which they live.  The unit will conclude with students designing a community enrichment plan that highlights the strengths that already exist and addresses a need that they identified in their work throughout the unit.  Students will present their plan to their peers and community leaders. This unit may include texts from Wit and Wisdom and/or ReadyGen that are aligned with the content and priority standards.

As designed the unit is paced for 40-45 days. Teachers will use additional time in the quarter for reteaching, reviewing or enrichment activities aligned to the unit’s goals. Additional times may be used to develop the performance tasks and allow for district based assessments.

Big Idea: 

• Cultivating a love for community - Community ties are strengthened when we learn from one another and work together.

Essential Questions: 

• How can we learn about the people in our community? 

• How can a community of people work together to help make the community a better place for all members?