Reading
Language Arts
Journeys Book
Throughout the year, we will be using stories from our online Harcourt Journeys reading book to teach important second grade reading skills. We will supplement these skills in our guided reading groups as well. The stories from our Journeys book will be read whole-class, and we will engage in many learning opportunities to go with each passage. Open-book tests for these stories will be given via Google Classroom at the end of each week.
Week of May 17, 2021
Our class is currently reading:
Two of Everything
Guided Reading Groups & Leveled Readers
Parents/Guardians,
Students have been broken up into six different flexible reading groups--three in the AM class, and three in the PM class. Flexible reading groups means that students will be reassessed throughout the year, and groups will change based on fluency and comprehension growth.
Each reading group will meet with me for 15-20 minutes daily in Google Meet. During this time, we will work to build our fluency and reading comprehension skills using a variety of leveled readers that are on students' instructional reading levels. This means that students should be able to read the texts we use at about 94% accuracy without help.
Students will be expected to read and respond to their leveled readers through a variety of activities each week. This will include graded fluency checks in which students log in to their Kids A-Z accounts and record themselves reading their assigned books independently. These recordings will automatically get sent to me for review when students click DONE on the very last page of their book. Students may also be asked to complete short, open-book quizzes about their leveled readers.
When I am working with one reading group, there will be two groups that are not working with me. Those two groups will be working independently on different language arts-based activities. This could include anything from writing sentences based on our phonics work, to reading independently, to working on reading skills on eSpark. When it is a group's time to meet, I will send members of that group a notification on their Chromebooks so they know to join me back in our Google Meet session.
Nightly Reading
Parents/Guardians,
Students are to read nightly for at least 20 minutes as part of their homework. This is a school-wide expectation. The 20 minutes of nightly reading may include independent reading, taking turns reading with an adult, or listening to stories read aloud by experienced readers. Make this experience one that's enjoyable and fun for the family!
Students who read at home on a regular basis will have higher achievement, become more confident readers, and are more likely to develop a lifelong love of reading!
Thank you for helping your child at home to become a stronger reader!
Looking for ways to help your child build reading skills at home? The Reading is Fundamental website offers great tips and much more. This website also lists some key strategies, along with solid details about each, that are used in the classroom to help young children become better readers. Both of these websites can also be found in the parent resources section of our Online Classroom.
