Reading
Unit 1: Creating a Culture of Readers
During the Creating a Culture of Readers unit of study, the teacher establishes routines, rules, and expectations so that engaged, independent readers develop. In order for the teacher to meet with small groups or individual students, routines and procedures must be established during this first unit of study. While establishing routines and expectations, the teacher models and teaches comprehension strategies through a variety of structures, noting which strategies students have under control and those that need more explicit instruction in the future. Students retell fiction and nonfiction texts including key ideas and details in a logical sequence. Grade level texts are focused on a single idea/topic or a series of related ideas/topics. The texts often contain familiar content for early 2nd grade students; texts may also contain some content that is unfamiliar to students, but should be accessible through text and graphic/visual supports.
Unit 2: Unmasking Characters
Students will learn to ask questions to inquire about the characters of a story. They will use inferring to understand pronoun antecedents and how the characters respond to challenges, problems, or major events. Teachers may model how to infer using different instructional structures in the literacy block. Visualizing and questioning often lead to an inference. Modeling how readers interact with text and form inferences will be important.
Grade level texts at this time of the year may include more than one type of graphic on a page and illustrations grow in complexity. Texts now include multiple lines of dialogue, and often between more than two characters. Character attributes are usually stated explicitly in the text, and characters face simple, common childhood themes with which many second graders will connect and hopefully find engaging or amusing. Students will respond orally and in writing to a variety of high-interest fiction texts both independently and collaboratively.
Unit 3: Digging for Meaning
Second graders will continue to select and apply comprehension strategies to understand fiction and nonfiction texts. They will explore narrative text structure and describe how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action. This will support students to be able to retell texts. In nonfiction texts, students determine the main idea and the supporting details. Also, students will use the titles and table of contents to locate information. Students use text features to engage in conversations, determine what the author felt was important, and to answer questions. Students will be able to describe the overall story structure (beginning, middle, end). Knowing the structure of fictional stories assists in identifying the main idea. Grade level text may include a variety of text features (illustrations, captions, photos, titles, bolded words, and table of contents.
Unit 4: Building Comprehension Strategies
In the Building Comprehension with More Sophisticated Texts, students explore fiction and nonfiction texts. Students determine the most important information presented by the author using details and examples from the text, including text features to support their thinking. Using textual evidence to determine the author’s purpose, identify the main idea, and to compare and contrast two texts on the same topic, students develop skills that will continue throughout second grade.
Unit 5: Nonfiction Texts: Uncovering the Facts
During this unit of study, readers select different strategies to comprehend, based on the type of text and the purpose for reading. Students learn that readers often add to and even change their thinking as they think about what they are reading or have read. Students are metacognitive before, during, and after reading to support and improve comprehension.