the Second Year

Later in the book it talks about the second year of school and what most children should know and understand about reading and comprehension.  It suggests to assess your students as soon as possible to make sure that they are in a good reading group suitable for their reading level.  The book suggests to assess the students four to five weeks into school.  Then it lists a set of components that should be taught in the second year of teaching.

• Morphological awareness
• Complex sound symbol correspondences: consonant clusters, digraphs
• Word building to promote full alphabetic decoding
• Spelling homework
• Fluency practice in connected text
• Self teaching mechanism

Although not all students will be ready for these components the book suggests to accommodate the first year of school components to fit the children's needs.   The book also has suggestions for assessing the students and ideas for helping to teach the components in the second year of teaching.  These can all be used as a great resource when stepping into a second grade classroom for the first time.  In the chapters following it breaks down each one of the components to further understanding when teaching.  I also like that the book knows that the classroom will not be filled with children that are all at the same level, that some will be above and others will be below but the book helps address children in all levels.  It is easier to help accommodate the different reading levels when the children are placed in a reading group with other students on the same level.  This is a small stress reliever for me because one of my fears in teaching is how I will accommodate to all the students in my classroom.