Second grade is an exciting year filled with reading, writing, problem-solving and investigating!

Students enter second grade with a range of skills, abilities, and experiences in reading. With a combination of whole class and small group instruction, our goal is to help children read independently by the end of the school year. Among the reading skills that second graders develop are understanding key details in a text, identifying story structure, and analyzing a character’s point of view. Students also begin to use text features for comprehension purposes. 

Second graders expand their writing repertoires through writing workshop. They have repeated opportunities to write original narratives, informational books, opinion pieces, and poems. Word study is an integral part of our literacy instruction, as students continue to learn and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis to decode and spell new words. In second grade, students will also learn to read and spell irregular words, which we call “Red Words”. 
 

In math, second graders engage in three rigorous and engaging components: Problem & Investigations, Work Places, and Number Corner. Through distributed practice, students build math proficiency, deepen their understanding and retain skills by practicing them in different contexts throughout the school year. Mathematicians talk about math by sharing observations, explaining their thinking, and asking questions. They use hands-on activities and a variety of math tools and visual models to understand how mathematical concepts work.

In addition to daily math, reading, and language arts activities, second graders enjoy three extensive, hands-on science units throughout the year: Waves: Light and Sound, Earth’s Features: Investigating Landforms and Bodies of Water (includes Project Lead the Way: Changing Earth), and Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems: Plants and Insects. Our three social students units include: Rules and Values, Communities, and Biographies.

We spend ample time focusing on classroom community by doing a daily class morning meeting, closing circle, weekly SEL lessons and utilizing RULER, an evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning. A highlight of the year is getting to know our classroom “pet”, Humphrey (a character from the Humphrey series by Betty Birney). Students will get to take Humphrey home for the weekend and share his adventures in a class journal. It’s a fabulous year in second grade!