READING AND WRITING IN SECOND & THIRD GRADE
Calling all 2nd and 3rd grade teachers! Below is some helpful information when teaching the three writing genres: opinion, informative, and narrative. Providing helpful anchor charts, showing children meaningful mentor books, and supporting these writer's with appropriate paper choices can be key to successful young readers and writers. Let me help!
What Should Writing Look Like?
2nd Grade:
Reading Rocket's says this: "Second graders are polishing a wide range of basic writing skills, including writing legibly, using capitalization and punctuation correctly (most of the time!), and moving from invented spelling to more accurate spelling. For most, handwriting becomes automatic, so they can concentrate more on the content of their writing rather than on the mechanics. Second graders can organize their writing to include a beginning, middle, and end. They can write a simple essay with a title and introductory sentence, provide examples and details that support their main concept, and write a concluding sentence."
3rd Grade:
Reading Rockets says this: "During third grade, children are really flexing their “idea” muscles and learning to express those ideas in more sophisticated ways. Sentences are getting longer and more complex. Kids are learning to use a dictionary to correct their own spelling. Grammar improves; for example, you'll see appropriate punctuation, contractions, and correct subject-verb agreement. Third graders can write an essay with a simple thesis statement, examples and supporting details, and a thoughtful concluding sentence. They are building skills in the writing process — research, planning, organizing, revising, and editing (with help from teachers and peers)."
Writing Paper
Know your students. What works best for them... and YOU! Maybe you do best with journals, loose leaf paper, or maybe even typing!
Try using the following sites as some printable writing paper resources.
Anchor Charts
Mentor Texts
This mentor text link- Internet Gold! Find a variety of books to use in your classroom when teaching the variety of writing topics. This list was developed by Lucy Calkins. Here are some good ones that I recommend!
Diary of a Spider by Doreen Cronin - Teaching Text Bubbles
Bigmamas by Donald Crews - Teaching Memoirs
Infusing Technology
Begin by going here: http://www.iste.org/standards/standards. Here are the technology standards you will need to meet. They say something in their site that really sticks out at me... "It’s not about using digital tools to support outdated education strategies and models; it’s about tapping into technology’s potential to amplify human capacity for collaboration, creativity and communication. It’s about leveling the playing field and providing young people worldwide with equitable access to powerful learning opportunities." We have the potential to inspire so many young learners, and at this 2nd-3rd grade age range, it's a great place to get started!
Raz-Plus (now better than ever!) You can exposed children to leveled readers, print out assessment, project close reading passages and so much more! Here is the link.
This Education World link provides you with a handful of software options that students and teachers enjoy
