Michael Sauers

May 22, 2026

Second graders have beautiful minds. I know because I taught 7, 8, and 9 year olds for 15 years. Many things come together at this time and it is a marvelous evolution to nurture and observe. Much can be said about child development at this time of life but I’m going to concentrate on how I met the needs of my students. It’s all about basic literacy and basic math skills.

My goal was to provide a variety of experiences that allowed students to master decoding skills, move into comprehension adeptness, explore writing opportunities, gain confidence in verbalization and understand addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, fractions, time, geometry and word problems. Yikes! That is a healthy menu for most second graders but very doable.

I’m out of the classroom for 12 years. Technology was beginning to creep into classrooms with computerization, laptops, whiteboards, power point presentations and oppressive attempts to remove teacher creativity. I felt that the aforementioned had limited merit and applicability in a setting that should be nurturing a safe and comfortable learning environment. My goals were always to eliminate student anxiety, create a very safe place and meet individual needs. I wanted my students to open up like a day lily and absorb like a sponge.

Literacy and math skills are all about using the brain as the number one tool. All of the technology intrusions had to be minimalized and used only as necessary. I felt and continue to feel that technology is a mind numbing exercise that negates the human experience. The current rage revolves around AI, data centers, robots and micro-chips. If humans are to survive and prosper all of that should be heavily regulated and kept at arms length, especially in schools.

So, this is how I designed the experience. All students, approximately 24, had classroom jobs. Some of these jobs involved using words and numbers. The day began with saying/reading the Pledge of Allegiance. This was followed by singing/reading/kazooing a song, reading the lunch menu and tabulating the order, reading/following a school news and weather report, following the reading of a poem, filling in the days calendar entries and, finally, reading/following the days sequence of experiences. This literary/numbers journey took about 15-20 minutes and was totally approved by the District’s Literacy Supervisor. We were on a roll!

At that time, I and most of my colleagues had multiple masters’ degrees which helped enable us to be knowledgeable and discerning teachers. We knew there were at least six recognized approaches to literacy instruction and we knew how to use them independently and in concert.

My school district was using a literacy approach developed by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell that included explicit/systematic phonics along with an emphasis on comprehension, vocabulary, language skills, and fluency. I added a creative and daily writing component. It was marvelous. We met in small groups, no larger than 6, on a daily basis. The students read a different, appropriately leveled book every day and kept a journal. I heard every one of my students read every day and via their journal I and their parents were able to monitor comprehension, punctuation, spelling, and grammar skills. I threw in sight words and sight word sentences, modeling of appropriate reading and read alouds. It worked like a charm.

By the way, while I was meeting with four to six small groups for approximately 20 minutes each, the other students were engaged in literacy building learning centers that included art, listening, library, map skills, computer, and word games. Wow!

This took the entire morning. It worked.

Stay tuned for Part 2.