Reading Introduction

Second grade is a very important year where students learn to put together all of the letter sounds (phonics) skills they have been building over the past few years. As students add to their vocabulary throughout the year, they start to become more comfortable readers.

We use what are called Developmental Reading Assessments (or DRA) scores to help find where your student is currently reading. For more information on how these scores work, please Click Here.

Reading Tips 4 Families
Here are some great things that you can do at home to help your student become a rockin' reader!
    When reading out loud and with your student:
  • Prepare to read- preview and predict;
  • Make use of prior knowledge;
  • Track thinking when reading- code text or take notes;
  • Notice when meaning is lost and stop and go Back;
  • Name what is confusing; Re-read to clarify; Read-on to gather more information;
  • Re-read to enhance understanding;
  • Practice questioning before, during and after reading;
  • Visualize, verbalize and dramatize to help interpret, anchor, and support recall;
  • Summarize on the go;
  • Sort-out the details from the major events and ideas

RAZ Kids Website
RAZ-kids.com is a great resource for students to read books right on their instructional reading level from the comfort of their home computer. Your student can follow these three easy steps:
    1) Listen to the story
    2) Read the story by yourself
    3) Answer comprehension questions about the story
This works great because kids can choose the books they enjoy, they get good practice right on their level (highly effective for practice) and then we can check their understanding with the comprehension questions. Check it out! Please let me know if you have any questions about using this website.


iPod Reading Fluency
For the past few years at Buffalo Trail we have been using iPod's to help students become more fluent readers. The idea works like this - when students are exposed to challenging books and have the chance to hear someone read new vocabulary fluently to them, their reading knowledge and skills will improve. It works like anything else in life, if we constantly practice the same things, and never try anything different or push ourselves, we won't see real growth.

If you are interested in reading more about how the iPod's work, please click here.


Great book links: