2nd Grade - Gateway 2

The instructional materials reviewed for Center for Collaborative Classroom Grade 2 partially meet the criteria that texts are organized around a topic/topics to build students' knowledge and vocabulary which will over time support and help grow students’ ability to comprehend complex texts independently and proficiently.

Within the units of Making Meaning the instructional materials are organized around literary and informational texts and the teaching of reading comprehension strategies. Texts are not consistently organized by topic and students have limited opportunities to build knowledge and vocabulary about topics consistently. Examples include but are not limited to:

In Unit 2, the title of the unit is Using Making Connections: Fiction. Students listen to Jamaica Tag-Along by Juanita Havill, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst, The Three Little Pigs by James Marshall, and The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas. Students focus on the skills of making text-to-self connections, answer questions to understand key details and important ideas in the story, and discuss the story’s message. In this unit, Grade 2 students are not presented the opportunity to build knowledge on a topic of focus.

In Unit 3, the title of the unit is Visualizing: Expository Nonfiction, Poetry, and Fiction. Students listen to A Tree is Nice by Janice May Udry, “My Baby Brother” by Mary Ann Hoberman, “Bees, Bothered by Bold Bears, Behave Badly” by Walter R. Brooks, “Raccoon” by Mary Ann Hoberman, POP! A Book About Bubbles by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, and The Paperboy by Dav Pilkey. Students focus on the skills of visualizing to make sense of the text, informally use schema and inference as they visualize, and explore how alliteration and regular beats supply rhythm and meaning in poems. While the unit will present students an opportunity to practice these reading strategies, the unit does not provide support nor texts to grow students’ knowledge and academic vocabulary on a topic.

In Unit 4, the title of the unit is Making Inferences: Fiction. Students listen to Babu’s Song by Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen, Erandi’s Braids by Antonio Hernandez Madrigal, and Chester’s Way by Kevin Henkes. Students focus on the skills of making inferences to understand characters’ feelings, motivations and actions, answer questions to understand key details and important ideas in a story, explore a story’s structure, including character and plot, and discuss a story’s message.

In Unit 7, the title of the unit is Wondering: Expository Nonfiction. Students listen to Insect Detective by Steve Voake, Butterflies by Teresa Wimmer, and Spinning Spiders by Melvin Berger. Students focus on the skills of identifying what they learn from an expository nonfiction book, use wondering to help with understanding, explore text features of expository nonfiction, describe how reasons support specific points the author makes, and visualize to make sense of the book.

In Unit 9, the title of the unit is Determining Important Ideas: Expository Nonfiction and Fiction. Students listen to “THe Friendship-fostering Buddy Bench” by unknown, “Hey Joe, How’s It Going?” by Jennifer Marino Walters, “Giant Jellyfish Invasion” by Ruth Musgrave, “Zoos Are Good for Animals” by unknown, “Zoos are Not Good for Animals” by unknown, Me First by Helen Lester, Erandi’s Braids by Antonio Hernandez Madrigal (repeat from Unit 4, Week 2), and Big Al by Andrew Clements. Students focus on the skills of exploring important ideas in expository nonfiction and fiction, describe how reasons support specific points in text, describe the connections between a series of events in text, explore important ideas in opinion articles, make text-to-text connections, make inferences about what is important in the story, visualize to make sense of the story, make text-to-self connections, and informally explore text structure in narrative texts, including character and plot. Through these text engagements, students are not provided support to build knowledge and vocabulary around topics, as the texts are not coordinated to provide that.

In Being a Writer, the units are focused on the writing process and writing genres.In Genre Nonfiction, students learn about the polar areas of Earth. Students hear three texts about polar areas: Polar Lands, Polar Regions, and Polar Animals. Though these texts are somewhat connected, they do not work together to build knowledge of a topic.

The materials reviewed for Center for Collaborative Classroom Grade 2 partially meet the criteria that materials contain sets of coherently sequenced questions and tasks that require students to analyze the language (words/phrases), key ideas, details, craft, and structure of individual texts in order to make meaning and build understanding of texts and topics.

While there are many questions about key ideas and details of a story, most questions are recall questions. Students are not routinely given the opportunity to analyze the language of the author in order to make meaning and build understanding of the text. The majority of questions asked are ones that require the student to think critically about the text and how it applies to their life and/or surroundings. The questions do not become more complex as the year goes on. However, within a short unit (2-3 days worth of lessons) there was minimal evidence to show an expansion of knowledge. The concepts that are covered are big picture concepts such as inferencing/wondering, key ideas, but the curriculum lacks more detailed concepts such as looking at the craft, structure, or the why behind the text. There are few opportunities for students to answer questions about the author's craft and structure. By the end of the year, these components are not embedded in students’ work rather than taught directly, and teachers will not know from student work if they understand the definitions and concepts of the components identified in each unit, such as compare and contrast.

In Unit 2, Week 2, Making Meaning, During a read aloud of The Three Little Pigs the teacher prompts “What has happened so far?” After other comprehension questions, the teacher asks, “What important lessons about life can we learn from this story? Why do you think so?”

In Unit 6, Week 2, Day 2, Making Meaning, After a read aloud of The Art Lesson by Tomie dePaola the teacher asks “What are some things you wonder about Tomie?” After a turn and talk, the teacher then prompts, “What did you learn about Tomie as a child?” The teacher does have access to a bank of vocabulary words that are suggested to use/teach while the read aloud occurs. No other explicit instruction of vocabulary, craft, or text structure is present.

In Unit 9, Week 2, Day 1, Making Meaning, students are introduced to Zoos are Good for Animals while learning about opinions. The teacher is encouraged to stop and clarify vocabulary as he/she reads. During a re-read of the same article on the same day, afterwards, the teacher asks, “How does the author feel about zoos, or what is the author’s opinion about zoos?” “What in the article makes you think that?”

In all three components, answering questions about ideas and details are dominant. These questions are found after almost e text and vary in degrees of complexity. Examples include but are not limited to the following:

• In Making Meaning, Unit 2, Week 1, Day 2, students are asked why Jamaica wants to go along and play basketball with her brother Ossis after listening to Jamaica Tag-Along.
• In Unit 4, Week 2, Day 1, students are asked Brandi’s problem in the story Brandi’s Braids.
• In Unit 6, Week 1, Day 2 of Making Meaning, students are asked what they learned about Beatrix as a child after hearing Beatrix Potter.
• In Unit 7, Week 2, Day 2 of Making Meaning, students are asked what steps a caterpillar goes through to become a butterfly after listening to Butterflies.
• In Unit 9, Week 4, Day 2, students hear the story Big Al, and are asked what are the important lessons they can learn from Big Al and the small fish.

Questions in the materials about craft and structure are present, but rare. Examples from Making Meaning include, but are not limited to:

• In Unit 3 students hear the poem “Bees, Bothered by Bold Bears, Behave Badly”. Students are asked what they notice about the title and why the poet chose to begin each word with the same sound.
• In Unit 8, students are introduced to text structure as they listen to Snail. However, no questioning is used to help them understand the text features.
• Also in Unit 8, as students learn about non-fiction they are directed to look at the “Fun Facts” section and “To Learn More” section, both of which are in text boxes; they are asked what information they learned about bones in these two sections. However, there is not addtional information to reinforce for students that call-outs and sidebars are text structure used to provide additional information in a text.

Integration of knowledge and ideas is done through making text-to-text connections. Examples include but are not limited to the following:

• In Unit 2, Week 4 of Making Meaning, students are asked to describe what's similar and what’s different about The Three Little Pigs and Big Bad Pig.
• In Unit 8, Week 2, Day 2, using a diagram to build knowledge is used; however, no questioning is used. The teacher points out the diagram and reviews it with the students and then the students draw and label their own diagram, but no questioning is used to facilitate this learning.

When supporting students with word choice and phrases, a lot of work is done with visualizing, which is the focus in Unit 3 of Making Meaning. For example, in Unit 3, Week 4, Day 1, students listen to The Paperboy and are asked, "What are some of the imagines you had in your mind?" Similarly, in Unit 3, Week 3, Day 2, the students are asked, “How do you picture the bubble? How do the words, ‘the bubble shimmers in the sun,’ help you to imagine a bubble that someone is blowing with a bubble wand?”.

Vocabulary is taught but not through questioning of the text, nor do students have an opportunity to learn how to define unknown words in texts. For example, in Week 28 of Being a Reader students listen to Me First and learn about the word, shriek. Students share examples of when they might have shrieked, but no questions are used about the text to help students better understand this word or the text.

The materials reviewed for Center for Collaborative Classroom Grade 2 partially meet the criteria that materials contain a coherently sequenced set of text-dependent questions and tasks that require students to analyze the integration of knowledge and ideas across both individual and multiple texts.

The materials in Grade 2 contain some texts based questions and tasks that require students to integrate knowledge and ideas across individual and multiple texts. This is mostly found in Unit 7, where students build knowledge about animal habitats, specifically those in their own backyard. In other instances, a single text may introduce a topic to students; however, there is not an integration of knowledge and ideas across texts or across multiple days to support an understanding of the topic. There were few examples of where students were required to apply the knowledge across multiple texts, otherwise instruction occurred in silos on a weekly schedule that was very consistent and predictable throughout. Many of the weeks started with one text and as the teacher read aloud the first question frequently was “What has happened so far in the story?” which prompted recall of what was occurring, but didn’t require students to think critically about the text.

In Unit 1, Week 2, Day 1, Making Meaning, The teacher reads aloud Sheila Rae, the Brave. The teacher’s guide instructs the teacher to stop at certain points and ask, “What has happened so far in the story? Turn to your partner” or “What’s happening? What do you think will l happen next? Turn to your partner.” On day 2 during a re-reading of the story, the teacher asks questions to facilitate text to self connections, “How do you think Sheila Rae feels when she starts walking home? What in the story makes you think that?” The teacher also asks, “When have you felt brave like Sheila Rae?” and “When have you felt scared like Louise?” While the questions increase with complexity over the week and some require students to justify their answer with evidence from the text, Sheila Rae, the Brave is the only text that is utilized during this week to teach the skill.

In Unit 3, Week 3, Making Meaning, The teacher reads aloud Pop! A Book About Bubbles and models the visualization strategy and stopping periodically to ask, “What did you see in your mind?” The teacher facilitates a whole group discussing with basic questions, “What is something interesting you found out about bubbles?” and “What is something in this book that you would like to try?” On day 2, while re-reading parts of Pop! A Book About Bubbles, the teacher goes more in depth with questioning by asking, “How do you picture the bubble? How do the words ‘the bubble shimmers in the sun’ help you imagine a bubble that someone is blowing with a bubble wand?”

In Unit 3, Week 4, Making Meaning, The teacher reads aloud The Paperboy. While still working on the strategy of visualizing the teacher prompts a whole class discussion thru think, pair, share, “What are some of the things the paperboy does to get ready to deliver the newspapers? What are some of the images you had in your mind of the paperboy and his dog?”

In Unit 5, Week 2, Making Meaning, The teacher reads aloud Galimoto stopping periodically to ask “What has happened so far? What do you wonder about the story so far?” Students discuss character’s point of view with prompts from the teacher, “What do the people in the village think of Kondi’s idea to build a galimoto? What makes you think that?” “At the end of the story, Kondi wants to turn his galimoto into an ambulance, an airplane, or a helicopter. If you were to build a galimoto, what would you like to build?” At the end of day 2, students participate in a text to text writing connection between Galimoto and Babu’s Song (from Unit 4) by looking at what is similar and different between the two stories.

In Unit 7, students are learning about animal habitats. The questions presented with the read alouds help build knowledge about animal habitats in their backyards. In addition to sharing with partners and the class, students often record things they learned about animals and habits in their Student Response Book. This is the one unit across the entire curriculum that helps students integrate knowledge. Some specific examples include:

• Unit 7, Week 1, Making Meaning: Students listen to Insect Detective and questions are asked to help build knowledge throughout the read aloud such as “The author states that female earwigs are very good mothers. What reasons does he give to support that idea?”.
• Unit 7, Week 2, Making Meaning: Students listen to Butterflies and are asked questions such as “What did you learn about butterflies’ habitats?” and “What steps does a caterpillar go through to become a butterfly?”

In Unit 8, Week 1 of Making Meaning students continue their learning about animals in the text Snails and the article “Snail Food”. Through questioning, students discuss what they learned about snails, their habitat, and what they eat. Then in the Writing about Reading section, students compare the text and the article. In Unit 8, Week 2, students then begin to read about their own body in Learning about your Bones and Muscles and answer questions such as what did you learn about bones and muscles, but this does not require an integration of knowledge.

In other cases, there are stories and texts in Making Meaning that build knowledge; however, it is a single text and it does not build on previous texts to support students’ learning about a topic. Examples include but are not limited to the following:

• In Unit 1, Week 3, students listen to Girl Wonder: A Baseball Story in Nine Innings about Alta Weiss who played baseball on an all male semi - pro team.
• In Unit 3, Week 2, students listen to the poem “Bees, Bothered by Bold Bears, Behave Badly” and share their learnings about these animals.
• In Unit 4, Week 2, students listen to Erandi’s Braids which is a fictional story about a girl in Mexico who wants a new dress for her birthday. In this text, students explore a culture that may be different from theirs; however, there are no other texts like this so it does not fully support students’ understanding of this culture.

A few fictional stories also teach lessons, but students again are not required to integrate knowledge and ideas. For example, in Unit 1, Week 4 of Being a Writer, students listen to Miss Tizzy and on the first day, the students are asked what the author wants them to learn about friendship and on the second day students write an opinion piece about whether Miss Tizzy was a good friend, but no other integration about understanding friendship is addressed.

The materials reviewed for Center for Collaborative Classroom Grade 2 partially meet the criteria that the questions and tasks support students’ ability to complete culminating tasks in which they demonstrate their knowledge of a topic (or, for grades 6-8, a theme) through integrated skills (e.g. combination of reading, writing, speaking, listening).

The materials lack culminating tasks in which students show mastery of multiple standards. What is considered to be a culminating task, can also be perceived as a task to review learning, but doesn’t necessarily require students to demonstrate great knowledge of a topic, just understanding. However, there are some opportunities such as Writing about Reading activities, journal entries, and writing pieces for students to demonstrate knowledge of a topic or skill. The tasks give students the opportunity to demonstrate comprehension and knowledge of a topic or topics. In most of the lessons, earlier questions and tasks give the teacher usable information about students’ readiness to complete these tasks. According to the publisher, “In both Making Meaning and Being a Writer, Writing about Reading activities provide multiple opportunities to analyze a single text in response to a sequence of questions presented by the teacher, and then write a response to the literature using text evidence to support opinions or conclusions.”

In Unit 2, Week 1, Making Meaning, The teacher introduces the concept of Self-Monitoring (Thinking About Reading) utilizing an anchor chart. The teacher is expected to choose their own book and model this strategy. Students are then released to practice self-monitoring on their own during independent reading with their own text selection. No specific literature was introduced during this lesson, there were no opportunities for students to interact with each other.

In Unit 4, Week 1, Making Meaning, The teacher introduces the text Babu’s Song. The teacher stops periodically to ask, “What happens in this part of the story?” At the end the teacher facilitates a whole group discussion around the questions, “What do you think Bernardi will do? What in the story makes you think that?” The teacher very briefly reviews what a character is after the discussion. On day 3, students are introduced to Passages of Bernardi charts (pieces from the story). The teacher re-reads portions of the book and invites students to make inferences about the story.

In Unit 7, Week 2, Day 1, Making Meaning, The teacher reads aloud the first part of Butterflies and leads students through visualizing. After the teacher leads the class in a whole group discussion asking, “What did this book say about butterflies that you already knew?” Students were encouraged to share with someone near them. On day 2, the teacher reads the rest of Butterflies and stops periodically to ask questions such as, “What steps does a caterpillar go through to become a butterfly?” Also in day 2, students turn in their response books and write about their wonders about butterflies on page 15 titled, “What I Learned and Wondered About Butterflies”. Students then shared their writing with a peer. On day 3, students engage in a writing task writing opinions about insects.

Students have some opportunities throughout the Modules to respond to literature and use skills that they have learned; however, these tasks are usually related to a single text or skill and not the culmination of learning involving multiple standards. Examples include but are not limited to the following:

• In Unit 1, Week 4, Day 1 of Being a Writer, students hear the story Miss Tizzy and then write an opinion of Miss Tizzy and include illustrations.
• In Unit 2, Week 2, Day 2 of Making Meaning, after listening to and discussing, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, students write a text to self connection and then draw a picture of a time they had a very bad day and write about it. This is an end of text activity that students could complete without having heard or understood the text or the lesson.
• Unit 2, Week 4, Day 1 of Being a Writer, during this week, students have the opportunity to write a new piece or take a previously written document through the writing process, though this is not necessarily tied to a topic or text.
• In Unit 4, Week 2, Day 2 of Making Meaning, students hear Erandi’s Braids and then use the illustrations to make inferences and then write about what they inferred from the illustrations.
• In Unit 4, Week 3, Day 4 of Being a Writer, after hearing Polar Lands, Polar Animals, and, Polar Regions, students write their own opinion about which polar animal they find interesting and why.