Reading Workshop

Teachers College Reading and Writing Workshop: I do, we do, you do 

 How to Support your Child at Home Throughout the Second Grade Reading Units

 Encourage your child to preview the book, read the cover, back blurb, table of contents. Make predictions what this book might be about, predict what problems might the character face? Second grade readers read with their brains on fire, preparing to think about the book even before reading the first page!

• Texts at these levels offer fewer pictures to support unfamiliar words. Have your child stop and use all the strategies they know to figure out meaning: read all around the word, substitute in another word that would make sense, reread for meaning. Once your child has worked hard to figure out the meaning of a new word, encourage them to use it in their vocabulary!
• Texts are getting longer, have your child stop and retell at the end of each chapter, making sure they are accumulating the text, as if they are putting the pieces of a puzzle together.
• Character work: Have your child infer feelings and traits about the character by noticing what the character does, thinks, and says. Have your child step into the character’s shoes and ask, “What would I do next?”
• Have your child notice the supporting characters, and ask, “How do the other characters feel about the main character?”
• Texts at these levels have more than one character. Often dialogue is “split.” Ask your child “Who is doing the talking?”
• Characters go on a journey to solve the problem, ask your child to retell all the steps the character took to solve the problem.
• Characters change as they go along their journey in a text, using evidence from the text, have your child retell how the character changed.
• Ask your child what lesson was learned by the character in the book? Is it a lesson they could apply to their own life?
• Ask your child, “What was the author’s purpose for writing this book?” “What do you think the author wanted you to learn?”