Students create a checklist outlining what effective writers do, revise his or her own writing, and engage in a written conversation to help peers with the revision process.

After exploring several question and answer books on a variety of topics, students research a topic and create their own class question and answer book.

In this lesson, athletics, aesthetics, and poetics intersect in new ways as developing literacy learners experiment together with the forms of language.

Week 30, Day 1---Day 2
Cinderella
Develop or Activate Background Knowledge:
Model a Comprehension Strategy and Ask Questions During Reading
Engage Students in Discussion
Update Text Structure Anchor Chart
Teach Meaning Vocabulary
Teach Sentence Composing
Assign or Model Written Response
Review and Share Written Responses
*Planning Notes
Marcia Brown’s Cinderella most resembles the Disney version of Cinderella that many students know.
This is a translation from the French version by Charles Perrault and some of the words don’t translate perfectly so quick scaffolds may be necessary. You want to have a map available to point out where France is located.
This book won the 1962 Caldecott Medal.

Week 17, Day 3
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs---fiction---Judi Barrett, illustrated by Ron Barrett
Develop or Activate Background Knowledge
Model a Comprehension Strategy and Ask Questions During Reading
Engage Students in Discussion
Update Text Structure Anchor Chart
Teach Meaning Vocabulary
Teach Sentence Composing
Assign or Model Written Response
Review and Share Written Responses
*Planning Notes
The fact that a movie was made of this book presents opportunities for examining YouTube clips after the book has been read aloud. The children can compare their own mental images of characters and actions with the way the director imagined them.

Week 22, Day 3---Day 4
This book is called Dad, Jackie, and Me. The author is Myron Uhlberg and the illustrator is Colin Bootman. It is about the first black man to play baseball in the major leagues. His name was Jackie Robinson.
Develop or Activate Background Knowledge:
Model a Comprehension Strategy and Ask Questions During Reading
Engage Students in Discussion
Update Text Structure Anchor Chart
Teach Meaning Vocabulary
Teach Sentence Composing
Assign or Model Written Response
Review and Share Written Responses
*Planning Notes
The author’s note at the end of the book is important. He describes the connection between Jackie Robinson and Uhlberg’s deaf father. Read it for background yourself, and consider reading portions aloud.

Week 29, Day 1---Day 5
D is for Dancing Dragon: A China Alphabet
"This book is called D is for Dancing Dragon: A China Alphabet. It was written by Carol Crane and illustrated by Zong-Zhou Wang.
You might think that an alphabet book is for kindergartners, but this is no ordinary alphabet book. That’s because it also teaches us about China. On the first page, you can see a map of China, which is a country on the other side of the world."
Introduce Book and Preview Technical Vocabulary
Teach Text Structure
Model a Comprehension Strategy and Ask Questions During Reading
Engage Students in Discussion
Update Text Structure Anchor Chart
Teach Sentence Composing
Assign or Model Written Response
visual: comparison chart
Review and Share Written Responses
*Planning Notes
This is an unconventional alphabet book because of the extensive background information about the word that is given for each letter. We have chosen to use the first 5 days for instruction. If you have extra time, you could read additional segments.

Week 25, Day 1---Day 5
Poppy--fiction
"Today we will start a chapter book called Poppy. It is written by a man named Avi. ...this author only uses one name. Avi’s twin sister gave him that name when he was just a year old, and he has used it ever since. The illustrations are by Brian Floca."
Develop or Activate Background Knowledge:
Model a Comprehension Strategy and Ask Questions During Reading
Engage Students in Discussion
Update Text Structure Anchor Chart
Teach Meaning Vocabulary
Teach Sentence Composing
Assign or Model Written Response
Review and Share Written Responses
Planning Notes
The chapters are nearly equal in length and about right for one per day. Note that an additional chapter, called Poppy and Ereth, appears at the end of the book. This is really a teaser for the sequel and it is not part of this set of plans.
Avi talks about the Poppy books in a YouTube video (3:07): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fufgUdq2xR0
The video provides excellent background for teachers, but it refers to some of the later books in the series and some parts may be over the heads of second graders.
However, if you plan on making other books in the series available to your proficient students to read on their own, you might want to play it. Hearing Avi’s voice and seeing that he’s a real person could be of interest to your students.

Week 23, Day 1---Day 2
The Story of Ruby Bridges--fiction--Robert Coles, illustrated by George Ford
"Ruby Bridges was an African American child who went to elementary school in the 1950s. One day she had to start going to a different school, a school for white children, where almost no one liked her."
Develop or Activate Background Knowledge:
Model a Comprehension Strategy and Ask Questions During Reading
Engage Students in Discussion
Update Text Structure Anchor Chart
Teach Meaning Vocabulary
Teach Sentence Composing
Assign or Model Written Response
Review and Share Written Responses
*Planning Notes
It is a good idea to have a U.S. map on display for quick reference to some of the places mentioned.

Week 33, Day 4---Day 5
The Wall
This book is called The Wall, and it was written by Eve Bunting. It was illustrated by Ronald Himler. The wall is in Washington, DC, and it has the names of all the people killed during the Viet Nam War. There are 58,000 names on the wall. That war ended long ago but people still think about those they knew who died.
Develop or Activate Background Knowledge:
Model a Comprehension Strategy and Ask Questions During Reading
Engage Students in Discussion
Update Text Structure Anchor Chart
Teach Meaning Vocabulary
Teach Sentence Composing
Assign or Model Written Response
Review and Share Written Responses
*Planning Notes
The text in this book is not very challenging but it is useful in evoking some higher-order thinking. Locating in advance a few photos through a google image search would complement the watercolors in the book.
You may wish to quickly indicate Vietnam on a wall map, but it is probably not in the spirit of the book to turn this read-aloud into a geography lesson. Bunting does not even mention which war it is, except in the endnote.

Week 16, Day 1
Tornado--fiction-- by Betsy Byars, illustrated by Doron Ben-Ami
In this book, the word tornado has two meanings. It is a powerful storm, of course, but it is also the name of a special dog.
Develop or Activate Background Knowledge:
Model a Comprehension Strategy and Ask Questions During Reading
Engage Students in Discussion
Update Text Structure Anchor Chart
Teach Meaning Vocabulary
Teach Sentence Composing
Assign or Model Written Response
Review and Share Written Responses
*Planning Notes
There are many opportunities in this book to make science tie-ins with weather and storms. Many activities are possible for your science time, such as making a tornado in a bottle.
Video clips of tornados are also helpful, through YouTube or educational sites, like www.noaa.gov.

The Story Map interactive is designed to assist students in prewriting and postreading activities by focusing on the key elements of character, setting, conflict, and resolution.

Useful for a wide variety of reading and writing activities, this outlining tool allows students to organize up to five levels of information.

The Webbing Tool provides a free-form graphic organizer for activities that ask students to pursue hypertextual thinking and writing.

Students will have a whale of a good time in this lesson in which they use fiction and nonfiction texts to write a letter to an online scientist.

After examining recipes written based on students' favorite fairy tales, students research a recipe related to their favorite story, book, or fairy tale and include it in a classroom recipe book.

High school students are taught how to use resumes and cover letters to highlight their skills and make them stand out, whether applying to college or for a job.

The Riddle Interactive outlines the characteristics of riddle poems and provides direct instruction on the prewriting and drafting process for writing original riddle poems.

This unit is focused on three classic fairy tales: The Three Little Pigs, The Three Bears, and Little Red Riding Hood. With each fairy tale, students are first exposed to the classic version, familiarizing themselves with the basic plot and lessons. Then students explore the ways authors change setting, characters, and plot while still maintaining the overall essence of the classic story. Some of the changes the authors make reflect the nuances of different cultures and environments, while others are made for entertainment and humor. Either way, students will explore the idea that different authors can use their own perspective and culture to shape the stories they write or retell. By reading multiple versions of the same classic fairy tale, students will also be able to grapple with the bigger lessons of each tale—the importance of not talking to strangers, how hard work and patience pay off, and the importance of respecting others’ property and privacy. Over the course of the unit, students will be challenged to think about how each of these unique themes is portrayed and how in each different version of the fairy tale the characters may learn the lesson in slightly different ways. It is our hope that this unit, in connection with others in the sequence, will help students see the power of storytelling and how simple stories can be changed and improved based on an author’s ideas and preferences.

In reading, this unit builds directly onto the reading strategies from unit 2. Students will continue to be pushed to be inquisitive consumers of text, asking and answering questions about characters, setting, and plot as they listen to and engage with a text. Students will also continue to work on retelling stories and including key details. Similar to units 1 and 2, students will continue to think deeply about characters and setting and how the details an author includes in the illustration and text help a reader better understand both. Because most of the focuses for this unit are a repeat of similar focuses from units 1 and 2, students should be pushed to a much higher level of rigor and understanding than in previous units. One new focus of this unit, however, is on comparing and contrasting the adventures and experiences of characters in stories. Students will be asked at multiple points to use information they have learned about key events, characters, and setting to compare and contrast different versions of the classic fairy tale. Students should be pushed beyond just superficial comparisons across the different stories. At the end of the unit, students will also have a chance to retell and act out the different fairy tales, putting their own “artistic” spin on the fairy tale.

In writing, students will continue to write daily in response to the text. In unit 2, students began to write answers that correctly answered the questions using facts. In this unit, students will be pushed to continue to focus on correct answers that may show some level of inferential or critical thinking. Students will also begin to learn how to include details from the text in their answers. At this point in the year, it is not important that students have the best evidence but rather that they are including some details that support the answer to the question in one way or another. Structure and grammar feedback during this unit should be based on assessment data from units 1 and 2.

In this lesson, students use a scaffold to help them compile information to write a solid research paper.