Reading Workshop

In second grade, children move from a “little-kid” focus on print to a “big-kid” focus on meaning. The first unit, Second-Grade Reading Growth Spurt, teaches children to take charge of their reading, drawing on everything they know to figure out hard words, understand author’s craft, and build big ideas about the books they read. Children learn that books can be their teachers in the second unit, Becoming Experts: Reading Nonfiction, in which they learn more about familiar topics and grow understanding of new topics while working on word solving, vocabulary development, and comparing and contrasting information across texts. In the third unit, Bigger Books Mean Amping Up Reading Power, children learn strategies to build three foundational reading skills—fluency, understanding figurative language, and comprehension. In the final unit for second grade, Series Book Clubs, children work within book clubs to study author’s craft to understand ways authors use word choice, figurative language, punctuation, and even patterns to construct a series and evoke feelings in readers.