Second Grade, Reading, Set Four

This week we finish Story Train. We started the book, Animals do the Strangest Things. It is not stories, but it is interesting. We read the entire book during this set of weeks.

Comprehension Skills: Critical Reading, Reading Corner:

• I read K. a tall tale and an article from Nature Friend magazine. We talked about which was true and how she knew.
• We talked about two types of propaganda: bandwagon and appeal (someone famous). We looked for examples in commercials and billboards.
• We talked about the difference between fact and opinion. I had printed out a paper with sentences, some of which were fact and others were opinion. K. had to decided if each sentence was fact or opinion. Another day, I wrote down six topics (music, flowers, games, etc.). I let her pick three and I took the other three. We each said two sentences about our topics. One sentence to be fact and the other to be opinion.
• I Wanna Iguana by Karen Kaufman Orloff -- we read this book. It provides good discussion for what is fact and what is opinion.
• I taught K. that words have connotations as well as denotations. I had a print out with words on it and she was to draw a smiling face if she had good feelings toward the word, as frowning face if she had yuck feeling, and a straight face if she had no real feelings one way or the other. You can find some words used in I Wanna Iguana for their connotations.
• We looked at advertisements in magazines to find words that have good or bad connotations, and discussed why they used those words.
• We looked at advertisements in magazines to see if they used testimonials, slogans, bandwagon, or appeals to status.

From Games for Reading:

• Problems and Solutions page 167 -- you present a problem (such as being stranded on an island with no people and no food, but you know a ship will pass that way in the next few days) to your child and ask them what they would do. It is usually necessary to ask them more questions about their initial solution to get them to really think things through.
• Taking Turns page 148 -- One person gives the beginning of a sentence (The monkey climbed the tree) and the other person finishes it (because a snake was on the ground.) The sentence must make sense. As you get better, the first person can give the end of the sentence and the second person give the beginning of the sentence.
• Interview with an Alligator page 170 -- in this game one person decides to be an object or pretend character. The other person interviews them. Questions can be about where they live, what they like to do, etc. Then switch roles.