Our second grade language arts program teaches and reinforces reading, writing, vocabulary, speaking and listening skills. Grammar skills include past tense verbs, adjectives, nouns, pronouns, and the use of apostrophes and commas are emphasized. Work continues with sentence structure, parts of speech, capitalization, and punctuation. Students use Step Up to Writing. A big area of focus is how to structure a proper paragraph. Students complete various informational, opinion and narrative writing assignments.

In Phonics, students work on building a foundation to which reading and writing is key! The program Fundations builds upon prior student knowledge; past concepts are reviewed and integrated within the learning activities. Fundations lessons provide students with multiple opportunities to practice concepts, skills and strategies. There is continued focus on phonetic patterns and their relationship to spelling.Teachers provide both guidance and immediate feedback during practice so that the students' correct responses are reinforced. The purpose of instruction is learning both reading and writing for meaning, understanding and joy. Fundations provide a truly strong and secure foundation for reading and spelling success.

Students in second grade expand their knowledge of reading. Students read literature and informational text to find key ideas and details, look at craft and structure, and integrate their knowledge and ideas. The students are taught additional strategies for reading comprehension through the Lucy Calkins reading program. Students use Scholastic Leveled Reading to identify their reading levels, help master their reading comprehension and fluency.

There is a weekly, formal review of the manuscript alphabet in handwriting, using Zaner-Blosser.

Students in second grade learn the difference between life today and long ago. They study family history, traditions and put events in the order in which they occurred. They learn to identify landforms, oceans, and to navigate with a map or globe. The concept of community is expanded. Students are taught that communities throughout the world have similarities and differences and change over time. Students study the basic form of our government, the process a bill follows to become a law, and basic economic concepts. Students discover how people use resources, and interact as producers and consumers. They also study people in our distant and recent history, who are heroes and have made a positive difference in the world.

Students use the engaging and interactive Go Math series, which incorporates online videos and a variety of student workbooks. Students are expected to fluently add and subtract within 100 using various strategies. Word problems and estimation become very important skills. Students continue to work on understanding geometry, fractions, measurement, money and time. Students use charts and graphs for data analysis and practice of mathematical reasoning in problem solving.

For science, second grade students further their understanding of the scientific process by asking meaningful questions and conducting investigations. They focus on structure and properties of matter. Students discover relationships in plant and animal ecosystems. They understand how Earth’s events occur and how land and bodies of water change. They engineer designs through sketches, drawings and physical models.

The major area of focus for the second grade religion program is the preparation for the Sacraments of Reconciliation and First Communion. Included in this preparation is the celebration of belonging to the Christian community. Students also learn about forgiveness and begin to understand the meaning of sin, sorrow and reconciliation. Students celebrate the life of Jesus and develop a relationship with Him through His presence in the Eucharist. They also study all the parts of a Mass and the correct Mass responses.

Coming soon!