A Quick Guide to Teaching Informational Writing, Grade 2

""Informational writing is the perfect genre for second graders because nobody is more curious about the workings of the world and is more eager to tell you a zillion facts about the topic at hand." "--Marika Paez Wiesen""

Informational writing taps into second graders natural inclination to explore and excitedly share the new and strange discoveries that fill their worlds on a daily basis. Marika Paez Wiesen offers a framework that will help you harness this energy and implement an informational writing unit of study that thoughtfully addresses the wide range of learners typically found in a second grade classroom.

Addressing the heightened emphasis on reading and writing informational texts in the Common Core State Standards and on state tests, this unit of study guides you through the entire writing process. After considering how to plan and prepare an informational writing unit that builds on young writers? passions, interests, and abilities, Marika describes how to get started choosing topics, planning a draft, and beginning to write chapters. Ensuing chapters explore ways to elaborate on and revise these chapters with an eye towards addressing conventions and using features common to nonfiction texts. The final chapter offers ideas on how best to celebrate this writing and extend this learning across the curriculum.

"A Quick Guide to Teaching Informational Writing, Grade 2" is part of the "Workshop Help Desk" series.

About the "Workshop Help Desk" series The "Workshop Help Desk "series is designed for teachers who believe in workshop teaching and who have already rolled up their sleeves enough to have encountered the predictable challenges. If you've struggled to get around quickly enough to help all your students, if you've wondered how to tweak your teaching to make it more effective and lasting, if you've needed to adapt your teaching for English learners, if you've struggled to teach grammar or nonfiction writing or test prep...if you've faced these and other specific, pressing challenges, then this series is for you. Provided in a compact 5" x 7" format, the "Workshop Help Desk" series offers pocket-sized professional development.

For a comprehensive overview of the Units of Study for Teaching Writing series, including sample minilessons, sample videos, overview presentations, frequently asked questions, and information on the companion principal's guide and the Workshop Help Desk series visit unitsofstudy.com.

Marika Paez Wiesen is the author of the Heinemann/FirstHand title A Quick Guide to Teaching Informational Writing, Grade 2. A National Board Certified teacher and literacy specialist at Bronx Community Charter School, she began her teaching career with Teach for America and went on to teach kindergarten, first, and second grades before becoming a Staff Developer at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. She's led numerous teacher leadership groups and institutes across New York City and the country on a wide variety of topics, such as: supporting English language learners in reading and writing instruction; using reading partnerships to improve reading; and writing fairytales. Her favorite part of teaching writing is witnessing the joy and pride students feel as they share their feelings and passions. She holds a B.M. in Music Education from Willamette University, and a M.S. in Teaching from Bankstreet College of Education.Lucy Calkins is the author of the best-selling grade-by-grade Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Grades K-8 and Units of Study in Opinion/Argument, Information, and Narrative Writing, Grades K-8 series, which have quickly become an indispensable part of classroom life in tens of thousands of schools around the world, the new Up the Ladder: Accessing Grades 3-6 Units in Narrative, Information, and Opinion Writing series, and classroom essentials such as the groundbreaking TCRWP Classroom Libraries and the Workshop Help Desk series. Lucy is also the author or coauthor of numerous foundational professional texts with Heinemann, including The Art of Teaching Writing, Writing Pathways: Performance Assessments and Learning Progressions, Grades K-8 , Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement, and One to One: The Art of Conferring with Young Writers. She is also the author of The Art of Teaching Reading. In her role as the Founding Director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, a New York City - based organization that has influenced literacy instruction around the globe for more than thirty years, Lucy has developed a learning community of brilliant and dedicated teacher educators who have supported hundreds of thousands of teachers, principals, superintendents, and policy-makers in schools that bear their distinctive mark: a combination of joy and rigor in the classrooms, and entire school communities - teachers, principals, parents, kids - who wear a love of reading and writing on their sleeves. Lucy is the Robinson Professor of Children's Literature at Teachers College, Columbia University where she co-directs the Literacy Specialist Program - a masters and doctoral program that brings brilliant teachers and coaches to TCRWP schools everywhere and to the Project itself. She and her husband John are the parents of two sons, Miles and Evan.