Reading
Reading in second grade focuses on building vocabulary and gaining fluency and confidence for independent reading. Students explore a variety of comprehension strategies which will help them relate the stories they read to other literature and their own person experience. We use phonics to reinforce decoding skills and help students build tools that enable them to sound out more difficult words. Spelling words are selected from the reading story. Five bonus words are offered that are more challenging. The Accelerated Reader program is an important part of our reading curriculum.
Grammar and Writing
Students learn more about proper sentence construction. We explore capitalization, punctuation, and parts of speech. We will integrate those skills as we express ourselves in various types of writing such as narrative, story, writing instructions, writing descriptions, and letter writing. We use the 6+1 Traits Writing Model to define quality writing with ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation. The traits help students understand what is working well and what needs to be improved in their writing. This gives teacher a focus for their writing instruction. The traits give us all a common language for talking about and celebrating writing.
Mathematics
Second graders continue to work on memorizing addition and subtraction facts to 18. Students will learn and practice place value, add and subtract two and three digit numbers with regrouping, recognize parts of a whole as fractions, count money and make change, and tell time. Students will also explore geometry concepts, measurement, and different types of graphs and patterns. A major focus is on a variety of problem solving strategies.
Science
Our science curriculum allows for hands-on experiments and demonstrations as we explore units in life, earth, and physical science. Our science curriculum is presented through a Christian world view.
Religion/Memory
This is a time when we learn about God’s Word and how we can apply it to our daily lives. Students will learn Bible truths from both the Old and New Testaments. The children will also be assigned units of memory verses to support the truths taught in our lessons.
Social Studies
Social Studies allows students to explore the world around them. We will study about communities, landforms, the earth’s resources, our country’s early history, jobs and economics, how our government works, and how we can be good citizens. We will learn more about map reading. Major holidays are recognized.
Music and Art
Creative expression through music and art is taught throughout classroom time. Our music director teaches the music curriculum through biweekly classes. The children have the opportunity to share their talents through our church, chapel and spring musical presentations. Children experience a variety of art mediums through class projects and Artist of the Month.