April Read Alouds for Second Grade

 Happy spring!  April is almost here, which means we are in the final quarter of school.  It's time to get in all of those standards that we have not yet covered or review standards that we have already taught.  I use my interactive read aloud time to also integrate science and social studies standards, so this month is heavy in both of those.  We are covering economic standards and force and motion standards this month.  April is also the month that we celebrate Earth Day, so we are learning about that, too!  April is a busy one!  

Who's Buying? Who's Selling? Understanding Consumers and Producers

This book covers lots of vocabulary and important economics topics for second graders, such as producers, consumers, supply, demand, product, service, and budgets.  I used this text to teach RI 2.2, identifying the main topic of a multi-paragraph text as well as the focus of specific paragraphs within a text.

Print this anchor chart. as well as the one below, to use throughout the week for different parts of the text. I like to give students sticky notes to help me fill out the anchor chart. I also incorporated another text later in the week from Epic! Books.

We began the week discussing what we already knew about buying and selling.  This gave me the opportunity to remind them about key details in a text.  After reading the whole text, we made a list of key details from the text that was new information for us.

Students can make these wallets to hold their daily tasks for the week.  It's just a large 12X18 piece of construction paper folded in half and stapled on the sides.

We practice all throughout the week how to identify the main topic and its key supporting details using different parts of the text.  This also allowed them to dig in deeper learning about the different topics and vocabulary covered for social studies.

There is a lemonade stand in the book, so you know The Lemonade Stand Teacher had to create a lemonade stand craft!  These would make a super cute bulletin board for spring!

I used this as their culminating task and their comprehension assessment for their grades for the week.

My Rows and Piles of Coins

This is just the sweetest book that my students loved.  The author wrote this story about his experience growing up in a coffee farming village in Tanzania.  We learned so much about their culture, as well as spending, saving, needs, and wants.  I used this story to teach the different points of view of the characters in the story.

We also read this text, Do I Need It?  Or Do I Want It?  Making Budget Choices by Jennifer S. Larson.  This text is on Epic! Books, too.  We practiced identifying main topic and key details again with this book.  We also made a list of needs and wants.

Just a Dream

Chris Van Allsburg is my favorite author.  I love how his books really get the reader thinking and require lots of inferring and drawing conclusions.  In this book, he takes us into the future of what our planet might look like one day if we do not take care of it.  This is a perfect book for the week of Earth Day.

There is lots of information in the illustrations of this text, which makes it great for using information gained from the illustrations and words to demonstrate understanding of the characters, setting, or plot.

This is the anchor chart that you will want to print as a poster and laminate.  I give step by step instructions on how to do that with your own printer.

The daily tasks for the week include reading illustrations, comparing illustrations, identifying cause and effect relationships, and using the illustrations and words to describe the characters, setting, and major events.

They can describe the beginning, middle, and end using information from the illustrations and words to make this recycling craft at the end of the week.

Forces Make Things Move

My students always love the force and motion standards.  They can make real life connections and love conducting different experiments related to force and motion.

Science texts are great to use for teaching determining the meaning of unknown words and phrases.  These are a few of the strategies I teach my students to use when they come to an unknown word or phrase in the text.

I explain to them that it's also like a puzzle.  You have to have all the pieces of the puzzle to make it complete.  Just like understanding a new word, you have to have clues from the text to determine the meaning of the word to understand the word or phrase, which leads to comprehending the whole text.

We practiced the different strategies throughout the week on different content specific words.

I then pulled in another text on Thursday related to force and motion from Epic! Books.

You can also incorporate this experiment into one of your lessons.  Students will observe how different amounts of force affect the motion of an object, as well as how different surfaces affect how far the object will go.  You can use foil, cardboard, and a towel.  This is a great visual for them to fully understand how friction works, as well.

You can find these resources in my TPT shop.  I sell the PRINT (the print bundle includes the digital slides) and DIGITAL versions separately, as well as in bundles.  Even if you are no longer doing remote learning, you can use the DIGITAL slides to drive your instruction.  These are what I have used for years in the classroom.  They help me stay on track during my lessons.  Thank you for stopping by and reading!