Balancing Heavy Lift and Joy with Into Reading Grade 2

 

My adventures with HMH Into Reading in second grade have taken many turns in the last few years.  At the beginning, I loved and hated how many resources there were and how to navigate it all.  At first I was doing what felt like the easy parts, 10 minutes of vocabulary and 30 minutes of structured literacy felt pretty straight forward.  I also was teaching shared reading, or was I?  To be honest I think in the beginning I was straight up reading the stories... maybe not digging in as much as I could have... or can now.  (I try to give us all some grace, could I have done more back then?  I'm not so sure.) I know, over the first two years, I progressively increased the way I helped the students build connections between the Essential Questions and the texts.  

On year three I am definitely upping the ante.  Student writing output has increased with my expectations, (and Support.)  We have been focusing on the written performance task at the end of the modules, and connecting conversations and skill building to answering those.   It is a lot, honestly!  None of this is bad, at all, but with our focus mainly on improving response to reading and increasing lift and output,  we haven't had time (or I haven't made time) to get to some of the other types of wrap up activities.  This is a big change for me, when I come from the mindset of offering options, I have felt a bit out of balance with the new curriculum and all the real or perceived pressures.  Sometimes I stop and say, "Whoa!  These kids are 7!  Where can I find places where we can still learn the skills but in different way, maybe a way that a 7 year old might like to try?"   

The photo above was an example of my quest for balancing high lift with a little joy along the way.  The project was introduced in the MyBook as a list of dos and don'ts for how to make friends with a giant.  I decided to shake it up and add the poster component, because be have also been noticing, learning, and talking about text features. This was a perfect project for the week before April break.  It allowed the kids to practice using text features, try creating a how to that included dos and don'ts in a fairly low key assignment that they found fun... better than worksheets for sure!  My intention is that at the end of the Module we can draw from that assignment when we come back from break and apply those skills to a module wrap up.  (slides and student tchart I used for support with How to Make Friends with a Giant)

My intention is also to move forward, teaching this curriculum thinking about all the opportunities for kids to write and otherwise show what they know, and make thoughtful balanced choices for the kiddos in front of me.  I am working on creating a summary sheet of the possible writing and project ideas for each Module.  Because I have found it challenging to teach kids to learn to write while also teaching them to write to learn, my goal is to find ways to balance both, bring joy and find ways to teach the writing skills without always embarking on a separate writing project.  If you are curious how this will all turn out feel free to follow my journey.