There were many exciting things happening in the 2nd grade classrooms last week for Read Across America. One of these was a special Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) time held after our morning meeting on Thursday. During this ten minutes, everybody across the whole school, students and teachers alike, were asked to stop what they were doing and pull out a book to read. The students were really excited at the idea that everyone would be reading at the same time, and were especially interested in seeing their teacher read their “Just Right” books as well, rather than books meant for 2nd graders.
One thing that may not be special to this week, but is very important for our students’ love of reading are the reading groups they participate in four times a week. During these reading groups, the students engage with texts that are at their reading level. After reading the book, the students then have the opportunity to discuss their reading with the group. These small groups allow us to focus on specific skills and learning targets while also getting a gauge of how students are progressing in their reading development.
A last fun reading activity we did was having a guest reader, Carola Lea, come and read to our students during our Friday morning meeting. She read the original story of Lassie. The students all loved having a person from their community come in to read to them, and they especially enjoyed having that book be about a subject they all are very passionate about, dogs.
The students also helped to decorate our classroom doors. These door decorations will hopefully be up for a few weeks, stop by to see what they wrote on their decorations!
