Are you wondering how to teach second grade writing? Or perhaps you’ve found yourself googling ‘how do you teach a 2nd grader to write?’ Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered with this 2nd grade writing curriculum!
This curriculum includes Unit 1 ‘Personal Narratives’, Unit 2 ’Opinion Writing’, Unit 3 ‘Informational Writing’, and Unit 4 ‘Fictional Narratives’ where your students will learn how to write engaging narratives, opinion writing pieces, and informative texts. This curriculum is standards based (to the common core) and genre based.
Let’s look at this second grade writing curriculum!
ARE YOU STRUGGLING TO TEACH WRITING? DO YOUR STUDENTS HATE WRITING LESSONS?
Teaching writing can be so tricky, I get it!
In this curriculum, your students will develop a love of writing. For example, the graphic organizers, interactive notebooks, and final crafts will engage students much more than a blank piece of paper. The final writing pieces are fun, interactive and engaging!
Writing doesn’t have to be dull and students definitely shouldn’t hate writing.
Maybe you’re not provided with any writing curriculum by your school, or if you are, it’s awfully dull. If that’s the case, Terrific Writing is for you!
You might be a new teacher, new to 2nd grade, or perhaps you’ve always just struggled with teaching writing. So, you find yourself googling, ‘how to teach writing skills?’ or ‘how to teach 2nd graders to write a story?’
Well no more googling is required if you grab this curriculum!
UNIT DOCUMENTS
Everything you need is included in this grade 2 writing curriculum. Each unit has –
- List of common core standards that align with the unit
- Suggestions for differentiation
- Suggested lesson times (no matter how long your writing block is)
- Unit scope and at-a-glance calendar
- Lesson materials list (so you know exactly what is needed for each lesson at a glance)
- Video overview to help organize and implement the unit
- Hyperlinked table of contents (so you can jump straight to the pages you need)!
This allows you to feel confident in the implementation of these units!
LESSON PLANS
This is NOT one of those big box curriculums where you have to sift through 10 pages of background teacher information for each lesson or read from the most BORING script. I hear so many teachers say that those curriculums are “Not teacher friendly, wordy and annoying to follow. SO many pages to read for just one lesson!“
There are 25 lesson plans in each of the writing units. The step-by-step one page lesson plans are scripted with a lesson focus, mini lesson, think and share component, and independent writing time. These 2nd grade writing mini lessons will help your students be confident writers!
That’s right, you can get your evenings and weekends back, my friend! You don’t need to write any more lesson plans!
What is the writing structure for a second grader? How do you teach writing in Grade 2? These units will break it down for you!
POSTERS /Anchor charts
Each writing unit comes with posters to help you teach the concepts. They are great for giving definitions, ideas, and showing examples for each lesson’s topic. They will really help if you’re wondering how to improve 2nd grade writing skills for your students.
For example, there’s posters for teaching things like paragraphs, linking words, as well as concepts like ‘show, don’t tell’ or stretching sentences. Then, there are genre specific topics too. Students learn about the strucure of a narrative, what an opinion and reason is, and what informational writing is.
MENTOR TEXTS
How do you help a struggling writer in second grade? You need to show them examples of the writing genres! You need to set 2nd grade writing expectations and 2nd grade writing samples are the way to do this.
This 2nd grade writing curriculum comes with original mentor texts! Yep, that’s right. You don’t need to hit up Amazon or your library and spend hours sourcing books. Need an example of a personal narrative or an opinion writing sample? You’ve got it!
With these mentor texts, you can show your students examples of the writing genres. But best of all, the mentor texts feature ALL of the lesson topics! Teaching about problems and solutions? The original mentor text will have those things! The mentor texts each feature all of the things that students are taught. This way, students are exposed to concepts before they even learn them AND see them again after as revision!
Above all, they’ve been written in a similar way to how your students might write AND they compliment the writing prompt/topic of the lesson. Students need to write about the rainforest? There’s an informational mentor text about rainforests! Students need to write a personal narrative about a bad day? There’s a personal narrative mentor text about a skateboard accident!
2nd grade writing WORKBOOK / binder COVERS
Need a way to organize your students’ worksheets and writing pieces? You can print binder covers! Each unit’s workbook cover offers a word choice between folder, journal, or notebook.
Ready to grab this curriculum? Save 10% by using the website you’re on right now. Click here. Use the code TERRIFIC10 at checkout.
Or purchase from TPT here.
GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS, WRITING PROMPTS, AND WRITING WORKSHEETS
How do you engage students in a writing lesson? These writing units are jam-packed full of ENGAGING activities! If you’re looking for fun writing activities for 2nd grade, look no further!
Most of the activities are graphic organizers. This means that your students can fit their handwriting in and write as little or as much as they are capable of (or even just draw if they are struggling writers).
Cute clip art is featured on these 2nd grade writing worksheets, which is so much more fun than a lined piece of paper!
I hear many teachers complain that the curriculum they’re given is “too open ended and vague” and “too difficult for the kids”
Or worse, that “it never covered the basics, not enough solid instruction. It expects students to just sit and write for long stretches”
In this unit, students are NOT told to just ‘go off and write’ as if that will magically make them good writers! In this unit, each concept is explicitly taught and students learn all about the structure and features of the genre. They use the printables to work on what they have learned.
HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES
Worksheets and writing prompts are great, but what’s really engaging about this second grade writing curriculum is that hands-on activities are always included!
Each writing unit has a few interactive notebooks. Some units even have cut and paste sorting activities. This helps your students share their learning in a FUN way!
EDITING CHECKLISTS
It’s so important for students to edit and revise their work. In each unit, there are two editing checklists provided. Students proof their work and the checklists help them to look for spelling errors and ensure their writing has components of the genre, like a problem and solution!
WRITING CRAFTS
I think that writing crafts are awesome! They make a writing piece so much more enjoyable for students to work on. A craft gives them something to be creative on and proudly display or take home to show others.
Each writing unit features a writing craft as the final writing piece. All of them are flipbook/booklet style, so that students can write as much as they like.
Publishing party
Each unit ends with a publishing party where students can receive a certificate and show off their craft. There are even some compliment notes so that students can praise each other’s work.
Publishing parties are a great opportunity for students to share their hard work!
TASK CARDS
There’s nothing worse than students wailing ‘I’m done, now what?’
It’s totally normal to have high flyers and fast finishers but it’s important to keep them engaged.
In this curriculum, each writing unit features a set of early finisher task cards. Students can respond to the writing prompt with a quick writing piece each lesson or they can work on a large writing piece over many lessons.
ASSESSMENT RUBRIC
Assessment is important when teaching writing and so a rubric is included for each unit. But rubrics can be confusing, right?! Therefore, I knew that these units also needed –
- Teacher directions, examples, and elaborations for the rubrics
- Videos with tips for using the rubrics
So, you’ll feel confident when it comes to grading the pre and post-assessment pieces.
All the options!
This curriculum will make your life easier. The units are designed to suit your needs, whether you’re time poor, have limited printing, or just looking for options.
- Everything that comes in color (such as posters, task cards, certificates, and mentor texts), also comes in black and white.
- The workbook covers and certificates come in boy and girl versions.
- There are a variety of options. For example, the mentor texts come in PDF and PowerPoint versions. The lined worksheets come in dotted and plain line versions.
- You can save on printing and go digital. The PDFs can be shown on a smart board, so you don’t have to print things if you don’t want to. You can just show the posters, task cards, and mentor texts etc.
- The lengthier PDFs all have tables of contents that have hyperlinks so that you can jump straight to the pages you need.
- There’s simplicity AND extra detail. You can keep things simple by just printing a one page lesson plan or the rubric and just teach! OR you can watch videos and read detailed instructions and examples to learn how to use the unit components. The choice is yours.
ARE YOU SHORT ON TIME?
These 5 week units have EVERYTHING you need, because let’s be honest, teachers are time poor.
Let’s get your evenings and weekends back, my friend! Take a break from lesson planning and searching for engaging materials. It’s all right here.
Check out this curriculum on TPT here!
SAVE 10%
If you’d like to grab it from this website you’re on, you can use the coupon code TERRIFIC10 at checkout to save 10%! Click here.
P.S. – Interested in free crafts and worksheets? Access my free resource library here!
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