Hi there! If you’ve been teaching my second grade reading workshop units (or are interested in them), I have a few updates for you.
First, I just posted my third unit, on nonfiction. Yay! Click {here} to check it out.
But as I was writing the nonfiction unit, I realized that it makes much more sense for it to be the second unit in the series. The lessons in the unit I just finished (now Unit 2), serve as an introduction to informational text – nonfiction reading strategies, vocabulary in context, text features, etc. In the classroom, I taught those lessons on nonfiction before I taught the lessons in my “All About Characters” Unit… even though I uploaded the characters unit first. Oops. I think I was just a little too excited to write the characters unit! Anyway, to make a long story short, I’ve switched Units 2 and 3.
So what’s coming next? Well, Unit 4 will be another informational text unit – but this time, students will explore biographies, plus texts on history and science, and dig a little deeper into nonfiction. After that comes Unit 5, which will be a unit on literature, including folk tales, traditional literature, and even some historical fiction. I’m hoping to get Units 4 and 5 posted in mid-February, so you can choose which unit you want to teach next.
I also wanted to let you know that, hopefully by the end of March, I will also have put up a shared reading guide that will go with the reading workshop curriculum. The skills the kiddos are learning in the reading workshop minilessons don’t really stick until they have lots of practice with them – including during shared reading lessons. That guide will also have writing lessons in it, to help your students learn to respond to text.
Last but not least: coming this summer…a complete 2nd grade writing workshop curriculum that’ll coordinate with the reading workshop units! I love teaching writing and am really looking forward to working on that curriculum.
Hopefully that’s helpful for you in planning on the rest of your year. If you’re teaching these lessons, I’d love to hear how it’s going!
