Lots of Reading

In second grade, we are doing lots of reading!

On Friday, we visited our school library for the first time. It's a beautiful space full of great books, cozy reading nooks, and comfy chairs. We'll be visiting every Friday from 10:10-11:00. Once a student's library contract is returned, they will be able to check out books on a weekly basis.

We also read a lot in our classroom. We have read many books together as well as read independently during the reading workshop every day for two weeks. Our classroom library is being used a lot as we fill our book-baggies with just-right books, read picture books during our daily quiet time, or share stories with our reading buddies on Mondays.

During our reading workshops, we've been learning how to respond to what we've read. In second grade we will be practicing eight reading responses. We've learned about the first three already, and next week Jessica will be teaching us about the other five. Each student has a Reading Notebook that lives in our classroom. The notebook is divided into three sections: Read Aloud, Guided Reading, and SSR (Silent Sustained Reading). After reading in our classroom, students will be able to choose a response type and write about their reading, be it after a text is read aloud to the class, after a small group reads a text together, or after they read independently. Frequently, after guided reading, students will also have specific prompts to write about as well.  Our eight reading response choices are:

After listening to a story, we wrote a response together to learn about the different ways to respond to a text. These examples will be posted in the room near our Reading Response choice chart (see above) so that students can refer back to them as reminders. The typed list above is also attached to their Reading Notebooks. This week, we wrote about our favorite part of a book, made character webs, and used time-order words when retelling the plot of a story. After making class-wide examples, students tried it out on their own in their Reading Notebooks. We had a lot to say!

Students respond in their own notebooks

Our class-made responses to two great read alouds.

- Liz