One year, as our school met for summer Professional Development Activities, I chose to attend a session on reading for 2nd grade. It was enlightening, actually! They talked about what students should get from the readings, beyond just recall of what happened. They talked about character, predictions, sequences, and other groovy reading topics.
Reading is one of the hardest skills in the target language. I’ve mentioned this struggle before in my post about input and output.
After that second grade session, I went home and outlined the reading strategies that are key to comprehension, but including a target of key vocabulary. It starts with “Find interesting words from the story” – you can’t tell them to find words they don’t know or you’ll have responses like, “I don’t see any new words” or “I don’t know any of it.” I settled on “interesting words” instead. 🙂
Then it has them choose two of those words to focus in in vocab “blocks”. I also have them practice sequencing and character analysis. All in all, it is just a useful tool to use while reading to be sure they are getting the most they can from the literary work.
Adventurous Educators 