Second Grade Writers: Units of Study to Help Children Focus on Audience and Purpose

Children enter second grade with strategies for turning their ideas into a plan for writing. Now it's time to show them how to think more deeply about who will read their writing and what it will accomplish. Second Grade Writers gives you proven, effective ways to help young children take steps toward intermediate writing by teaching them about the important roles of audience and purpose.   In Second Grade Writers Stephanie Parsons (author of First Grade Writers and a coauthor of Lucy Calkins' Units of Study for Primary Writing) offers five specific units of study that help children develop a keener sense of what they can and want to accomplish in their writing. Beginning with a September unit designed to build a classroom community that supports risk taking and encourages students to immerse themselves in writing, each successive unit engages children in a different genre and fosters increasing independence. Each type of writing has a very different purpose and audience and opens up new possibilities as students experiment with:

• making change
• reviewing a book
• exploring humor
• sharing their own research.

  Parsons' units of study are laid out logically with a thorough description of the unit, teaching points for the minilessons - including examples of classroom language - assessment diagnostics, elaborations and variations, troubleshooting tips, and month-by-month planning ideas.   Whether you areaugmenting your existing workshop or establishing a new one, help your students move toward independence by considering their audience and writing with clarity and purpose. Read Second Grade Writers, implement its units of study, and help children become more engaged, more independent writers today.