Second Grade Writing Units

How To Support Your Child At Home Throughout the Units

 Narrative Writing- Small Moments

Students write small moment personal narratives that are “focused” on one small but significant event, in one time and place.

Students study published texts to learn about writing (mentor texts), tell and retell stories in sequential order (across five fingers), take a story through the writing process (collect, story tell, draft, choose, revise, edit, publish, and share/celebrate), and edit for complete sentences with capital letters at the beginning of sentences, in names, in proper nouns.

 Non Fiction - Teaching Books

Students choose a topic of personal expertise that they could teach others and then become avid learners of that topic. Students plan chapters, write long on subtopics using elaboration strategies, experiment with writing paragraphs, edit and publish their writing making sure they teach their reader in the most exciting and clear way.

 Narrative Writing –Realistic Fiction

 Students write narrative stories about realistic characters (someone like themselves).  Students learn to story tell orally to plan (across five fingers or across a five to six page book), identify story structure (problem/solution/lesson), include a realistic problem and solution for each story, and craft leads and endings.

Additionally, students are expected to draw on the repertoire of strategies taught in the mini lessons, revise as they write, edit their work, and work with partners to give and receive feedback.

 Opinion Writing-Writing about Reading- Opinion letters about a book or character they love!

This unit helps to develop opinions about student’s reading. Students will learn to state opinions clearly, retell their stories so that their opinions make sense to readers, support their opinions with reasons and details from the text, and revise their letters before sending them out into the world.

 Narrative Writing-Fairy tales

Students use mentor texts to study the craft of fairy tales.  Students make sure to use fairy tale language and all the elements of fairy tales in their writing.  Students revise the most important part with elaboration and dialogue. As in all genres, students are expected to draw on the repertoire of strategies taught in the mini lesson, revise as they write, edit their work, and work with partners to give and receive feedback.

  How to Support Your Child at Home

 *You can model great story telling, talk about your day!  Story- tell an event from your day, make sure to include transition words like first, next, then, and finally. Have your child tell you something he or she has a strong feeling about that happened that day, encourage transition words. Support your child to zoom in on one part of the day, have them stretch out the story adding in sensory details.  This oral rehearsal will help your child become a stronger writer.

*Familiarize your child with the letter writing format, write letters to family members!

*Talk to your child about their books! Ask your child for their opinion of a book or character.  Have them name a character’s trait or feeling, ask them to find evidence from the text to support their opinions.  For example, Mercy Watson is a pig who is hilarious! I think she is hilarious because Mercy is a pig who sleeps in bed with its owners!  Another reason I think this  is…

*Spelling-Have you noticed the words your child comes home with each week are grouped into spelling patterns?  Hold your child accountable for spelling only words that contain the patterns your child has learned. Teachers are not expecting every word to be spelled correctly within your child’s writing.  It is important for your child to spell unknown words phonetically-stretching out the words, writing down the sound they hear at the beginning, middle and ending of each word.  If you overemphasis spelling at this level, your child might only choose to write words they can already spell and this would affect the content of their writing.

*As always- read! Be sure to expose your child to all genres of texts!