Learning From Mistakes: Keena Ford
In this unit students explore the concepts of honesty, forgiveness, and friendship by reading Freckle Juice and Keena Ford and the Second-Grade Mix-Up.
Unit Summary
As part of the upgrade to Fishtank Plus, this unit was revised in February 2021. See which texts and materials have changed as part of the revision in this guide to our 2nd Grade text adjustments.
In this unit, students learn about making mistakes, honesty, and the power of forgiveness by reading the core texts Freckle Juice and Keena Ford and the Second-Grade Mix-Up. In Freckle Juice, students explore what peer pressure is and the ways in which people can influence the decisions that we make. In Keena Ford and the Second-Grade Mix-Up, students explore what it means to be honest, especially when it may seem difficult to tell the truth. Students will also explore the value of friendship and how jealousy can sometimes come between friends. Andrew in Freckle Juice and Keena Ford are both highly relatable characters who are struggling with issues that are common in second grade. Therefore, these books will give students a chance to grapple with and explore the nuances of peer pressure, honesty, friendship, and jealousy in a non-threatening way.
For readers, this unit begins the transition from early chapter books that have an equal balance of words and pictures into chapter books where the picture support is removed. Over the course of the unit, students will work on using the strategies they have learned to help build stamina in order to read longer texts. Besides building stamina, there are a few main focuses of the unit. One is on deeply understanding characters, including character motivations, perspectives, and relationships. Keena Ford shares lots of insight into how and why she does the things that she does, which will make it easier for students to internalize what it means to notice and track characters over the course of a longer text. Another focus is on holding onto the plot across multiple chapters. This is the third chapter book that students will be reading, but the plot of this text is slightly more nuanced. Finally, students should continue to work on using context to figure out the meaning of unknown words and using the illustrations to deepen their understanding of the text.
Texts and Materials
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Core Materials
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Book: Freckle Juice by Judy Blume (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014) — 570L
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Book: Keena Ford and the Second-Grade Mix-Up by Melissa Thomson (Puffin Books, 2009) — 620L
Supporting Materials
Assessment
This assessment accompanies this unit and should be given on the suggested assessment day or after completing the unit.
Unit Prep
Essential Questions
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- How do other people influence the decisions you make in your life?
People can be a positive influence or negative influence on your life. People with a positive influence help you make good decisions and be a better version of yourself. Keena’s dad is a positive influence in her life. People with a negative influence encourage you to make bad choices and do not help you be better. Sharon was a bad influence on Andrew because she tried to trick him into believing in freckle juice. We should only let people who want to help us be our best selves have an influence on our lives.
- What does it mean to forgive someone?
Forgiving someone means to accept their apology and not stay mad about it. It is hard to forgive someone, but important. Keena and Eric forgave each other, even after they made mistakes in their friendship. Because they forgave each other, their friendship stayed strong. Linny Berry and Keena forgave each other for their mistakes and started a new friendship.
- How can we learn from our mistakes?
We can learn how to be better versions of ourselves after we make mistakes. Mistakes are an important part of life. Andrew made the mistake of believing Sharon, but the bigger mistake was not loving himself for who he was. Miss Kelly helped him to see that he was beautiful without freckles. Keena made many mistakes, but each time she learned from them. She is now a better friend to both Linny and Eric. She saw how her mistakes hurt their feelings, and she will try not to do it again because she cares about them.
- What does it mean to be honest? Why is it important to show honesty in our everyday lives?
Being honest means telling the truth. It can be hard to tell the truth sometimes, but it is still important. It is important because when we are honest with others, they learn to trust us. When other people trust us, our relationships with them get better. Keena was not honest with the people in her life. She made a mistake and lied about her birthday. When she told the truth, though, everyone forgave her and they had a strong relationship afterward. Even if you are not honest the first time, you can still tell the truth.
Foundational Skills
Fluency Focus Areas
- Use proper intonation to show interpretation of the text.
- Read with expression and volume to match interpretation of the passage.
As in the previous unit, the main focus of this unit is on reading with expression, particularly character dialogue, in order to show understanding of the text. In both core texts, the character dialogue reveals a lot about a character’s motivation, feelings, and perspective; therefore, a large focus of this unit should be on including opportunities for students to practice rereading dialogue with intonation, expression, and volume to match interpretation of the passage.
Writing Focus Areas
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Sentence-Level Focus Areas
- Combine simple sentences to make longer, more interesting sentences.
At this point in the year, students have mastered writing complete sentences and have also learned how to use the conjunctions "because," "but," and "so" to make their sentences more interesting. In this unit, they will learn how to combine, or put together, two or more sentences so that their writing is clear and interesting for their readers.
Opinion Writing Focus Areas
- State an opinion and supply reasons that support that opinion.
This is the second opinion-writing unit in 2nd grade Literature. Students will start by brainstorming their opinions and developing strong details that support those opinions. They will then decide which of their details best support their opinion, ordering them from most important to least important. As students learn to evaluate evidence, they will be better able to connect their opinion and reasons.
Vocabulary
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Text-based
"clean slate" actually admit allowance apologize conflicting complain conflict desparate disappointed forgive freckles grateful instead jealousy mess mysterious permanent peer pressure recipe startled sternly wacky
Root/Affix
-ful dis-
To see all the vocabulary for this course, view our 2nd Grade Vocabulary Glossary.
Fishtank ELA Connections
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Future Fishtank ELA Connections
Lesson Map
Common Core Standards
Core Standards
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