We are in the midst of our very long famous people unit in Social Studies. In Virginia, second graders have to know George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington Carver, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, Helen Keller, and Christopher Columbus. So that I don't overwhelm them, I taught Columbus around Columbus Day in October and MLK last week and this week around Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. We will save Washington and Lincoln for Presidents Day in February.
The first person we covered this month was Benjamin Franklin. Since he was part of the Social Studies curriculum for first graders and I taught first grade for 8 years, I just grabbed my notebook off the first grade shelf! (I taught a combination of first and second for 2 years and now, thankfully, this year I have just second grade.)
Some of the books that I used are:
And here's the unit I created, which includes a reader, word search, vocabulary words with picture cards, and comprehension questions.
This year I made a pocket in our Social Studies notebook to keep our reader safe. {See the picture above.}