Second Grade Curriculum
*Language Arts includes:
1) Reading: Our six main topics this year are Pet Show Today, Be A Nature Detective, Good Friends, Family Photos, That's Incredible, and Tell Me A Tale.
2) Writing
3) Spelling
4) Handwriting
5) Listening and Speaking
*Writing Workshop
An important component of your child’s literacy instruction is the writing workshop. During this time students learn and practice the skills of the writing process including planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. A new resource that all of the second grade teachers are using this year is Units of Study forPrimary Writing: A Yearlong Curriculum written by Lucy Calkins.
The writing workshop portion of our day usually begins with a mini lesson focusing on a particular aspect of the writing process such as choosing a topic to write about or how to revise while writing. Students then have the opportunity to incorporate the information from the mini lesson into their writing.
While students are writing, the teacher confers with individuals about their work. These conferences allow the teacher to best meet the instructional needs of each child and help them become a more proficient writer.
The writing workshop concludes with a reflective sharing session. During this time children talk about what they have learned and written.
*Math:
Topics include numbers and numeration, fractions, addition subtraction of two and three digit numbers, multiplication, division, calculators, time and money, length, weight, capacity, area and volume, geometry, probability, statistics and graphs.
Math Ideas:
*Health:
Promotes responsible decision making
*Social Studies:
Topics (Grade 2)
What is a Community?
Students learn that a community is a place where people live, work, play, and solve problems together.
Students design a community that includes places to live, work, and play.
How Are Communities Different?
Students learn about three types of communities.
Students learn about the features, advantages, and disadvantages of urban, suburban, and rural communities.
What Does a Map Show?
Students discover what a map is and learn to use its basic features.
Students discover the purpose of maps as they read and answer questions about them.
What is Geography?
Students learn that communities have different geographic features and that physical maps show these features.
Singing and reading reinforce their understanding of eight geographic features.
Students practice identifying geographic features and locating them on a physical map.
How Do people Use the Environment?
Students explore how people use (and misuse) the environment.
Students explore how people use natural resources in various environments, and discover the effects of pollution caused by misuse of the environment.
How Are Goods Made and Brought to Us?
Students learn how goods are produced and distributed.
Students make a simple toy using assembly-line techniques.
Students participate in a relay race to learn more about the ways goods are transported to stores.
Who Provides Services in a Community?
Students learn about service occupations in the community.
Students read descriptions of different occupations and perform pantomimes.
How Can I Be a Good Shopper?
Students learn what it means to be a good consumer.
Students make choices about what to buy, and learn to distinguish between economic needs and wants.
How Do Communities Change?
Students learn how communities change.
They will create a plan to make a neighborhood better.
How Did One Community Change?
Students learn how San Francisco changed form a small seaport into a large urban area.
How Can One Person Make a Difference in a Community?
Students learn how four people from the past made a difference in their communities.
Students will speculate about possible solutions to given community problems and compare their solutions with how people actually solved these problems.
How Do Leaders Help Their Communities?
Students learn about community leaders.
They elect imaginary people to act as class leaders and learn that a similar procedure is used to elect community leaders.
Students participate in a mock demonstration urging community leaders to take certain actions to fix a playground.
What Does a Good Citizen Do?
Students learn what they can do to be good citizens in their community.
What Do Communities Share?
Students learn about some of the things shared by communities in the United States.
They discover the economic interdependence of communities by exchanging product cards.
Students will complete a map illustrating social connections among U.S. communities.
*Science:
Three main topics
1) Balance and Motion
2) Pebbles, Sand and Silt
3) Insects
Homework
In second grade we start the students on some life-long learning habits. One of these habits happens to be study skills. In the Friday Folders you will find homework that has already been introduced and practiced at school. This homework will come home on Fridays and should be returned by the following Thursday. This will provide additional practice for the students to help with retention of the material.
In nearly every Friday Folder you will find:
*Spelling Lists
*Math worksheets
*W.O.W. words (Word of the Week)
From time to time you will also find
*Math Fact Sheets
