Second Grade

• District Curriculum
• Reading Improvement
• Project Arrow

Curriculum

At the second grade level, we cover the following topics in each of the curricular areas:

Language Arts

Language Arts instruction will integrate all the language processes of speaking, writing, listening, and reading. Language Arts objectives will be taught and re-taught throughout the school year in a variety of ways.

During the year your child will be involved in reading stories from our reading series Window to the Sky, novel studies, literature circles and various read-alouds.

Second grade writing experiences help your child become comfortable with the writing process, and help them explore their own style of writing. Children will do informal journal writing daily, as well as more formal writing in writer’s workshop that takes place a few times a week. During the second grade year, students are introduced to narrative, expository, and persuasive pieces. Throughout the year the students are using pre-writing, rough drafts, revisions, and final drafts.

The Second grade spelling is a district-designed program based on MacCracken Spelling. Children are introduced to a specific phonics pattern each week, and then use this knowledge for their spelling tests. The focus is not on specific words, but on the patterns. This method of teaching spelling should help the child be better able to transfer this knowledge into daily reading and writing.

Math:

The second grade math program starts out as a very much hands on program, and then progresses into more independent, fact and problem solving. During the year the students study:

• Patterns and functions, and graphs
• The basic adding and subtracting strategies and facts
• Measurement, customary and metric
• Time and money
• Trading with addition and subtraction up to three digits
• Geometry, fractions, and introduction to multiplication.

In order for second graders to progress in math, we encourage weekly practice at home with the basic addition and subtraction facts.

Science and Health:

Science topics for second grade are:

• The Water Cycle
• Health and Nutrition
• Sink and Float
• Life Cycles

During these units, the children will do a variety of activities and experiments. We try to incorporate all of these units into our reading and writing.