We began our studies of the fiction genre during reading this week. We started the week exploring all the books from our unit and categorizing them into different sub-genres, traditional tales, realistic fiction or fantasy fiction. The kids explored different features of these different types of fiction texts. Each child chose their favorite fiction book and drew a picture of it in their reader's notebook. They then had to determine if their favorite book was a traditional tale, realistic fiction or fantasy fiction. We found out that a majority of our friends like to read fantasy fiction! Later in the week we read the story, Little Red Riding Hood A Newfangled Tale, a new take on the old tale of Little Red Riding Hood. We talked about the story structure in fiction stories. Every fiction story has a beginning, middle and end. In the beginning we meet the characters, learn where the story takes place (setting) and get a glimpse of what the problem will be. The second graders collaborated with a partner to complete a beginning, middle, end chart for the story.