Hello friends!  I am sharing today how I teach students to determine the meaning of unknown words and phrases in a nonfiction text relevant to a grade 2 topic or subject area.  Did you know that students need to be able to understand upwards of 95% of the meaning of words in a text to comprehend that text?  That's a lot!  We know that when our students are independently reading a nonfiction text, they are going to encounter unknown words.  They need the tools and strategies in their tool belts to be able to determine the meaning of those unknown words.  Today, I will share some strategies that I teach my students to tackle those unknown words in nonfiction text. (This post may contain affiliate links.) This standard is perfect for integrating your science or social studies standards.  In Tennessee, we have a second grade science standard in which students need to be able to classify animals based on their physical characteristics.  So I pulled these two books, Let's Classify A...

March 2nd is one of my favorite days in the classroom!  One of my main goals as a teacher is to instill a love of reading and a love of books in my students.  Read Across America Day is so important to us, because it's a day for us to celebrate that love of reading.  We use the day to do all things related to reading and just have fun with one another by reading together. My school lets us dress as our favorite book character, and we can have volunteer readers come in to read to our students.   I have been meaning for years to create one resource that contained all of the activities for a fun day of reading celebration, and I finally got around to it this year!  So, here are some ideas of activities that you can incorporate into your classroom, too! (This post may contain affiliate links.) Last year, I dressed up as Darla from What Should Darla Do ?   It was so fun being Darla, but I almost wasn't able to get the pink out of my hair!  (If you have blonde hair, beware of tempo...