nonfiction writing rubric grade 2

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iRubric: 2nd Grade Nonfiction Writing Rubric

English Language Arts and Reading.2.12.B

compose informational texts , including procedural texts and reports; and

A student expectation is directly related to the knowledge and skills statement, is more specific about how students demonstrate their learning, and always begins with a verb. Student expectations are further broken down into their component parts, often referred to as “breakouts.”

Knowledge and Skills Statement

A knowledge and skills statement is a broad statement of what students must know and be able to do. It generally begins with a learning strand and ends with the phrase “The student is expected to:” Knowledge and skills statements always include related student expectations.

Use the following rubric to monitor students’ progress towards mastering this SE. This SE should be assessed both while students are developing drafts and after students have completed their drafts.

Sample rubric:

• The student is unable to dictate or compose informational texts, including procedural texts and reports. The student may not be able to stay on topic.
• The student is able to dictate or compose informational texts, including procedural texts and reports, with extensive assistance and prompting by the teacher.
• The student is able to dictate or compose informational texts, including procedural texts and reports, with some assistance and prompting by the teacher.
• The student is able to dictate or compose informational texts, including procedural texts and reports, independently.

Glossary Support for ELA.2.12.B

Donovan, C. A & Smolkin, L. A. (2011). Supporting informational writing in the elementary grades. The Reading Teacher , 64(6), 406–416. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/41203424

Summary:  As students progress from kindergarten to fifth grade, their writing of informational reports will grow in competence and sophistication if teachers adopt a varied, purposeful instructional framework. This article provides a continuum of development of students' informational writing. 

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Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing with Trade Pack(2016), Grade 2

With trade pack.

By Lucy Calkins , Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, Columbia University

Second-grade writers feel like big kids and want work that feels big and important. That’s just what they’ll get in these units. First, children learn to craft powerful true stories based on their own small moments. In the second unit, students study nonfiction texts and learn to write about science. In the next unit, kids craft persuasive arguments based on text evidence. Finally, students explore language by writing poetry in Unit 4.

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Web/School Price: $356.00

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About the Grade 2 Units

The second-grade units are written with seven-year-olds in mind. These youngsters are chomping at the bit for something new. They feel very big now and want work that feels big and important. That’s what they’ll get—this series invites second-graders into author studies that help them craft powerful true stories, science investigations and lab reports, and finally, into some very grown-up writing about reading. Across the writing genres, children learn to understand—and apply to their own writing—techniques they discover in the work of published authors. In Lessons from the Masters: Improving Narrative Writing students learn how to create engaging narratives by stretching out small moments and writing in detail. Unit 2, Lab Reports and Science Books , uses inspirational nonfiction texts to help students design and write about experiments and other scientific information. Unit 3, Writing About Reading , has students read closely and gather evidence from texts to craft persuasive arguments. The final unit, Poetry: Big Thoughts in Small Packages helps children explore and savor language. Students learn to use line breaks to express the meaning and rhythm they intend and use visualization and figures of speech to make their writing more clear and powerful.

About the Series

Lucy Calkins and her colleagues have drawn on their work from more than three decades to develop a state-of-the-art curriculum in writing to:

• help you teach opinion, information, and narrative writing with increasing complexity
• foster high-level thinking, including regular chances to synthesize, analyze, and critique
• develop and refine strategies for content-area writing
• support greater independence and fluency
• conduct strategic performance assessments to help monitor students’ progress and differentiate instruction
• provide a ladder of exemplar texts that model writing progressions across grades.

(click any section below to continue reading)

Purchase Recommendations and Options

Purchase Recommendation:  Choose the  Grade 2 Units of Study   with the Trade Book Pack  (as shown in this product bundle) if your library does not already include the 4 mentor texts referenced in the Unit. If you do not need the trade book pack, purchase the  Grade 2 Units of Study without the Trade Book Pack .

Save  when you purchase related cost-saving bundles, with or without trade book packs:

• Elementary Series Bundle (K-5)  (with trade book packs)
• Elementary Series Bundle (K-5)  (without trade book packs)
• Middle School Series Bundle (6-8)

Select the  Grade-Level Units  you need most, available both with and without the trade book packs:

With trade book packs:   Kindergarten  /  Grade 1  /  Grade 2  /  Grade 3  /  Grade 4  /  Grade 5

Without trade book packs:   Kindergarten  /  Grade 1  /  Grade 2  /  Grade 3  /  Grade 4  /  Grade 5  /  Grade 6  /  Grade 7  /  Grade 8

To learn more about the  Units of Study in Opinion/Argument, Information, and Narrative Writing  series, visit  UnitsofStudy.com

Four Units of Study

• organized around the three types of writing mandated by the Common Core: opinion, information, and narrative writing
• lay out 4-5 weeks of instruction (16-18 sessions) in each unit
• include all of the teaching points, minilessons, conferences, and small-group work needed to teach a comprehensive workshop curriculum
• model Lucy and her colleagues’ carefully crafted teaching moves and language

A Guide to the Writing Workshop, Primary Grades

• crystallizes the essential principles, methods, and structures of effective writing workshop instruction (The  Guide ,  now available for separate purchase, can be an essential manual for principals, curriculum coordinators, coaches, and others who are supporting implementation of  Units of Study —or for anyone wanting to learn more about writing workshop).

If… Then… Curriculum

• offers additional units of study
• presents if/then conferring scenarios that support targeted instruction and differentiation

Writing Pathways: Performance Assessments and Learning Progressions

• organized around a grades K-5 learning progression across opinion/argument, information, and narrative writing
• includes performance assessments, student checklists, rubrics, and leveled writing exemplar
• also available in a K–8 edition for  separate purchase : ideal for principals, curriculum coordinators, coaches, and other who are supporting teachers as they implement Units of Study

Large-Format Anchor Chart Sticky Notes

• Large-format preprinted Anchor-Chart Sticky Notes with illustrated teaching points help teachers create and evolve anchor charts across each unit

Online Resources

• Video Orientations
• Spanish translations of important student and teacher resources—includes Spanish translations of writing samples to use with Writing Pathways, student checklists, Anchor Chart Sticky Notes, and numerous other classroom materials such as daily charts and folders. Also available are lists of Spanish-language mentor texts
• Downloadable and printable files for the anchor charts, figures, student exemplars, homework assignments, and checklists in every session
• Digital files for resources provided in Writing Pathways, including Writing Progressions, On-Demand Writing Prompts, Rubrics, and Student Writing Samples 

Mentor Texts 

The  Grade 2 Trade Pack  includes three age-appropriate trade books that are used in the units to model effective writing techniques, encourage students to read as writers, and provide background knowledge.

• Owl Moon  by Jane Yolen
• The Leaving Morning  by Angela Johnson
• Forces and Motion  by John Graham
• Old Elm Speaks: Tree Poems  by Kristine O’Connell George and Kate Kiesler
• Download a Grade-level Sampler
• Download a Series Overview

Companion Resources

Writing Pathways Writing Pathways: Performance Assessments and Learning Progressions  (included with each grade-level bundle) is also available in a K–8 edition for separate purchase: ideal for principals, curriculum coordinators, coaches, and other who are supporting teachers as they implement Units of Study

• View Now! Units of Study for Teaching Writing  Video Orientations , Grades K-8
• Download a  Study Guide

Also in this series

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Units of Study in Writing, K–2

The new primary Units of Study in Writing are designed to support students' abilities to be strategic, metacognitive writers. Within and across grades, units fit tongue-and-groove alongside each other. Together, they help students consolidate and use what they have learned to meet and exceed world-class standards for each grade.

Series Components

Each of the four Units of Study in Writing for each grade level offers a sequenced set of daily sessions that invite students along a path of writing development in one of three genres: narrative, information or explanatory, and opinion or argument writing.

Supporting All Writers: High-Leverage Small Groups and Conferences, K–2 provides easy access to ready-to-teach small groups and conferences around major writing goals.

A Guide to the Writing Workshop, K–2 provides an overview of the essentials of a writing workshop, helps teachers with all-important methods, introduces practical management tips, and guides teachers to lead powerful writing workshops.

Writing Pathways: Performance Assessments and Learning Progressions, K–2 contains the assessment system for the K–2 writing units. Teachers will find a chapter overviewing writing development, plus assessments, checklists, exemplar texts, and annotated benchmark pieces of writing, at each level for all three genres.

Units of Study Trade Book Packs include grade-level appropriate books that teachers use as demonstration texts to model the skills and strategies they want students to try.

Anchor Chart Sticky Notes feature each day's teaching point to help teachers create and evolve anchor charts across the units.

COMING SOON!

• The Out of the Box Units will offer teachers the opportunity to customize their yearlong sequence by adding a fifth unit to their core units sets.
• Spanish-language Trade Book Packs

New Units of Study Digital Content Overview

Online Resources (included with the core units sets) offer digital access to anchor charts, assessment toos, demonstration texts, small groups and conferring tools, instructional videos, Spanish-language video introductions for every session across all units, and Spanish translations of teaching points, anchor charts, and video introduction scripts.

Both the Online Resources included with every core set of units and the Premium Digital Subscriptions (available by yearly subscription to users of the core units sets) are hosted on Heinemann Flight, a new platform that organizes digital content, book by book and session by session, all in one convenient place and allows administrators to manage teachers' access.

About the Units of Study in Writing, K-2

Units of study in writing, grade k.

The Units of Study in Writing for Kindergarten are designed to help you introduce your students to the writing workshop, and to welcome them into the world of school. With these units, you will teach the routines of a writing workshop while helping your students embrace their identities as writers. Unit 1, Launching the Writing Workshop , introduces students to their new identities as writers and invites them into the structure of a writing workshop. In Unit 2, Show and Tell Writing , children will learn to make texts that are a written version of show-and-tell time, harnessing the natural power of show and tell to write words that come closer to conventional spelling, and to use high-frequency words to write longer labels and sentences. Unit 3, Writing for Readers: Writing Readable True Stories , introduces students to narrative writing, highlighting the importance of telling and writing true stories that honor their families and cultures and value ordinary everyday life. Unit 4, Persuasive Writing of All Kinds: Using Words to Make a Change , is a persuasive writing unit that teaches students not just how to write, but also why writers write, immersing them in real-world purposes for writing.

Units of Study in Writing, Grade 1

In The Units of Study in Writing, Grade 1 , students learn how to make their opinion writing even more convincing by using a variety of reasons to support their opinions. They’ll practice noticing tiny details to come up with a list of reasons to support their opinions. In Unit 1,  Small Moments , children learn to write stories, and to write bit by bit, including details. But the unit also teaches youngsters to participate in a first-grade writing workshop as they learn the habits, conventions, and mindsets of a workshop classroom. Unit 2, Topic Books , gets students writing informational or “topic” books, laying the foundation for all of the information writing that students will do in the future. First-graders will learn to appreciate the power and purposes of opinion writing in Unit 3, Writing Reviews , as they explore how people sort, rank, categorize, explain, convince, persuade, argue, give in, change, and ultimately are changed. The focus of Unit 4, From Scenes to Series: Writing Fiction , is realistic fiction. This unit has been carefully designed to make sure students draw on everything they have learned about narrative writing while simultaneously learning essentials about writing fictional narratives.

Units of Study in Writing, Grade 2

The Units of Study in Writing for Grade 2 is designed to help your second graders take all of the writing skills in their possession to the next level, and to prepare them with the skills they’ll need to be successful in third grade and beyond. In Unit 1,  Making Small Moments Big , you’ll draw on the first-grade notion that stories can be about small, every day, beautifully mundane moments—but now, you’ll offer a new angle. You’ll nudge students to consider not only times in their lives, but also the feelings they felt, to find moments that matter. Unit 2,  Chapter Books: Writing Nonfiction from the Heart , emphasizes writing nonfiction from the heart on topics that matter deeply to your students while reminding students that nonfiction can be more than just listing facts. In Unit 3,  Finding Awesome Everywhere: Celebrating through Opinion Writing , you’ll teach writers to become the kinds of people who pay particular attention to the awesome parts of life, encouraging students to write more thoughtfully about their lives, the things they love, and the books they read. The second-grade writing workshop concludes with Unit 4,  Writing Research-Based Nonfiction , in which you’ll invite your kids to become researchers, learning through study and note-taking, through gathering facts and growing ideas about a topic.

Ordering Information

The online ordering links below list all the purchasing options for the new K–2 Writing Units of Study. Be sure to reach out to your local Heinemann sales rep for guidance with purchasing.

New K-2 Writing Units

Units of Study in Writing, 2024, Grade K Bundle with Trade Pack Lucy Calkins

Units of Study in Writing, 2024, Grade 1 Bundle with Trade Pack Lucy Calkins

Units of Study in Writing, 2024, Grade 2 Bundle with Trade Pack Lucy Calkins

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