Christina Duvall, second grade teacher at Fairforest Elementary and their 2022-2023 Distinguished Literacy Teacher of the Year shares her top five literacy practices she uses in her classroom.  See them below.

There are so many benefits to curriculum integration. Integration allows students to be presented with curriculum content in an authentic way. It also allows students to gain a deeper understanding of the content, and their learning becomes more comprehensive. In the classroom, all of our ELA standards are integrated with the SC College-and Career-Ready Science and Social Studies standards.

For instance, when addressing the science standard, 2.ESS1.C, (Some events happen very quickly; others occur very slowly, over a time period much longer than one can observe), nonfiction texts such as Our Earth by Anne Rockwell and How Do Wind and Water Change Earth? By Natalie Hyde can both be utilized in whole group or guided group lessons to teach the ELA standards while also teaching the above mentioned science standards. Ming Lo Moves a Mountain by Arnold Lobel shows erosion taking place through an entertaining fictional story. Plenty of fictional texts that showcase science and social studies ideas can be used as well in an integrated curriculum.

Students who are pulled for resource or other interventions will typically not miss big Science and Social Studies concepts when they’re interwoven with reading and writing skills. And, integration is simply FUN–finding and creating a variety of texts through which to teach science and social studies content flexes the creative teacher muscle while providing students a chance for their “AHA!” moment, as integration yields that “big picture” understanding.

Mini lessons allow me to accomplish the following with my students:

• To explicitly teach standards based reading, writing and phonics content

• To maximize my time with students who may have shorter attention spans

• After, to allow students to practice and apply their skills independently

I teach standards-based phonics and reading skills during mini-lessons, lasting anywhere from 8-10 minutes, or shorter whole-group lessons, lasting anywhere from 10-15 minutes, during our ELA block. I am usually teaching 3 mini lessons per day.

Putting the work into students’ hands at these centers further promotes their literacy development. Students need to be able to practice what they have learned in these mini lessons. These centers are a modified version of the Daily 5 Model and these independent centers usually include:

• Read to Self- students get ample time to practice their reading in a cozy spot of choice, which provides reading exposure, builds fluency, and promotes a love for reading

• Spelling and Word Work- students have a variety of manipulatives for building words and practicing phonics, including magnetic letters, letter beads and letter stamps

• Listen to Reading-students listen to a variety of texts of interest across genres

• Work on Writing-students work independently on writing topics that have been previously taught and modeled during mini lessons or whole group lessons

• iReady-students work on their individual learning pathways in reading, as set by their diagnostic benchmark scores

Students have come to rely on this independent, active learning.

While one of our ELA standards in second grade involves author studies, this literacy practice happened organically at first. A few years ago I began searching for new (to me) books to use for class read-alouds. I discovered Elise Gravel’s Disgusting Critters series. Within the course of three or four weeks I had read all 9 of her hilarious yet informational books to the class. They became such a hit that I put the books in our classroom library and I couldn’t (and still can’t) keep them on the shelves, that’s how much students love them.

Doing an author study will build a classroom community of readers. It will also expose students to different writing styles, and students will form a more personal attachment to books. 

There are so many great authors out there. These studies are easily fit into any ELA curriculum, appropriately meeting a variety of the SCDE ELA standards. Author studies will build critical thinking skills and allow students to make deeper connections across texts. Do an author study–you won’t regret it!