SECOND GRADE CURRICULUM
BIBLICAL CONNECTION & BIBLE
Our students study the Bible each day in their classrooms and in Chapel. More than just simply learning to recall Bible stories, students are called to think deeper about the stories they learn by making connections to real-world examples, evaluating ways they can add to their character, and putting into practice a service-minded attitude. Students are also taught a love for scripture by learning weekly memory verses that are recited orally or written each week. Students are taught to be spiritual leaders by leading songs and prayers in the classroom and in chapel. Prayer requests are a wonderful way that students are able to build a sense of family in the classroom while developing communication skills.
Teachers diligently work each day to be a Biblical role model inside and outside the classroom. Biblical connections are encouraged throughout the day whether planned or spontaneous.
This year we are covering a Survey of the Old Testament.
SPELLING and PHONICS
Orton-Gillingham Method
Orton-Gillingham was the first teaching approach designed to help struggling readers by explicitly teaching the connections between letters and sounds. In the 1930’s neurologist Dr. Samuel T. Orton and educator, psychologist Anna Gillingham developed the Orton-Gillingham approach to reading instruction for students with "word-blindness," which would later become known as dyslexia. Their approach combined multi-sensory teaching strategies paired with systematic, sequential lessons focused on phonics. Today, Orton-Gillingham is used in many reading programs as an effective way to teach literacy. Orton-Gillingham is a highly structured approach that breaks reading and spelling down into smaller skills involving letters and sounds, and then building on these skills over time. It also was the first approach to use multi-sensory teaching strategies to teach reading, which is considered extremely effective for teaching students with dyslexia. This means that educators use sight, hearing, touch, and movement to help students connect and learn the concepts being taught. For over 20 years, IMSE has been bringing Orton-Gillingham to the modern classroom. We believe that Orton-Gillingham helps all children learn to read; not just those who are struggling. We aim to provide teachers with the knowledge and skills to make all children effective readers, writers, and spellers.
Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum by Michael Heggerty, Ed.D.: Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Primary Lessons are taught daily in the 2nd grade classrooms as a supplement to the existing literacy curriculum. Lessons may also be used for intervention support for students in 2nd grade who struggle to decode. It can also be used with individual students or small groups for remedial work on specific skills.
READING
Learning A-Z
The Learning A-Z family of websites began in Tucson, AZ, in 2002 at the hands of two entrepreneurs with years of experience in the education industry, Bob Holl and Francis Morgan. Holl and Morgan believed every child should have developmentally appropriate books and activities - at school and at home.
Today, Learning A-Z, which is now part of Cambium Learning Technologies, provides a number of dynamic curriculum delivery websites with hundreds of thousands of teaching and learning resources for Pre K-6 educators and students. Learning A-Z is now used in more than half of the districts in the US and Canada and 155+ countries worldwide.
RAZ-KIDS / Reading A-Z
RAZ-KIDS lets you access eBooks and eQuizzes for the 300+ titles on Raz-Kids, all on a tablet. Raz-Kids.com gives you hundreds of interactive, leveled books spanning 27 levels of difficulty, covering a wide range of subjects. In addition to engaging kids at their reading level and in their area of interest, this award-winning website gives kids 24/7 Web access to the practice they need to become better, more confident readers. At the same time, teachers can customize assignments, view reports, and track student progress every step of the way. All Student activity in the app is captured and reported to teachers at Raz-Kids.com, thus helping teachers monitor student progress and determine the instruction needed for each student.
Each student is assessed five times during the year to obtain his/her reading comprehension level. Each student will read books on his/her reading level based on the assessment. Second Grade students will learn valuable reading skills throughout the year, which will boost their comprehension levels.
Sight Words: Students will study Fry Words beginning with #301.
READING CURRICULUM MAPS
Curriculum Maps were written by teachers for teachers. The maps will continue to evolve and improve as they are used. The Unit’s Overview will explain the theme and provide a summary of what students will learn. It explains the structure and progression, and various components of the unit. The “essential questions” highlights the usefulness, the relevance, and the greater benefit of a unit. It should prompt intellectual exploration. The FOCUS standards are directly from the TN State Standards. Teachers will pull from a range of options to meet these standards. Interdisciplinary connections will be made throughout the units. Concepts of print, phonological awareness, phonics, and text reading fluency are all addressed and woven into a developmental progression that leads to word recognition and text reading.
SECOND GRADE
In second grade, students become independent readers and writers, able to conduct research, write reports, and compare and contrast characters from stories. The variety of topics exposes students to rich literature while building their background knowledge of a range of subjects and topics. Their writing includes reports, literary responses, opinion pieces, stories, letters, and explanations. Throughout the year, students build grammatical knowledge and practice reading and speaking with fluency and expression. By the end of second grade, students should be able to read simple story books fluently and write in print. They should be familiar with a repertoire of myths, stories, poems, and nonfiction narratives. Students will also become familiar with these parts of speech. (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions)
Unit 1 - A Season for Chapters
Focusing on the beauty of language in poetry and fiction, students learn poetry terms and the beginnings and endings of stories. In preparation for writing informational text, students complete a research project on a seasonal activity from a region of the United States unlike their own. Students review the roles of authors and illustrators, and read about specific authors and poets. This unit could become a weather unit or a solar system unit by adding topic-specific titles to the informational texts. Essential Question: When is language beautiful?
Terminology:
Alliteration / Ending Repetition / Author
Illustrator / Research / Beginning / Introduction
Rhyme / Chapter / Main Idea / Rhythm
Conclusion / Paragraph / Shared Writing / Digital graphic organizer
Poet / Spelling Patterns / Digital Sources / Poetry
Unit 2 - The Wild West
Building on the shared research in the first unit, students research an interesting person from the 1800s in the American Wild West and write an informative/ explanatory essay. Students read tall tales/folk tales and then discuss where the fiction is stretched beyond belief, and why the tale has been told through the years. Students also read their choice of fantasy and chapter books set in different time periods of life in the West. Finally, students will study the art of George Catlin to understand his role in creating historic images of Native Americans.
Terminology:
Biography / Compare / Fantasy / Real
Characters / Contrast / Fluency / Tall tale
Collective nouns / Expression / Point of view / Venn Diagram
Unit 3 - Building Bridges with Unlikely Friends
Students read informational (how-to) texts on building bridges and view these amazing structures on the Internet. Through realistic fiction, they examine the possibility of friendship in conflict-filled settings. Reading fantasy texts that depict animals’ experiences with “bridge-building” completes their exploration. Building on the writing of previous units, they write a letter to a character in Charlotte’s Web. Students also gather words from poetry and explore the meanings of idioms and words with common roots. Essential Question: Why do authors use figurative languages?
Terminology:
Body / Editing / How-to-books
Capitalization / Informative/explanatory writing / Idiom
Closing / Figurative / Literal
Compare / Friendly Letter / Metaphor
Compound word / Greeting / Revision
Contrast / Haiku
Unit 4 - A Long Journey to Freedom
Building on Unit Three’s building bridges focus, students recognize the long and multifaceted effort to break down barriers to racial equality in the United States. By reading the true stories of Henry “Box” Brown, Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges, the Greensboro Four, and others, students see the links between historical events. Each student writes a narrative “from a box,” (i.e., in the style of Henry’s Freedom Box). They also write an opinion piece that is published digitally in a class presentation and possibly online. Essential Question: What is challenging about writing a narrative?
Terminology:
Action / Conclusion / Opinion piece / Time order words
Autobiography / Linking words / Record / Biography
Narrative
Unit 5 - Hand-Me-Down Tales from Around the World
Building on previous units, students write opinions and narratives related to the world theme of this unit. Students discuss text features as a part of reading informational text. Students develop independent reading skills as they read texts on grade level (and beyond) throughout this unit. Essential Question: How are stories and poems alike? How are they different?
Terminology:
Character / Index / Noun / Setting
Conclusion / Plot
Narrative poem / Plural
Unit 6 - Taking Care of Ourselves
Examining still life paintings of food for detail, students describe what they see, and arrange and paint a still life of healthy snacks. Building on the painting experience in this unit and the bridge writing in Unit Three, students write informative/explanatory pieces. They read informational texts on body systems in the grade 2 to grade 3 reading range with fluency. As they discover a range of food-related titles, students independently read fiction and poetry, looking for an underlying message. Essential Question: Why should we support our opinions with reasons?
Terminology:
Adjectives / Explanatory writing / Opinion writing
Dictionary / Fantasy / Reflexive Pronouns
CAFE / DAILY FIVE
The CAFE Menu helps students understand and master different strategies used by successful readers. CAFE is an acronym for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding Vocabulary, and the system includes goal-setting with students in individual conferences, posting of goals on a whole-class board, developing small group instruction based on clusters of students with similar goals, and targeting whole-class instruction based on emerging student needs and fine tuning one on one conferring.
Daily Five is more than a management system or a curriculum framework - it
is a structure that helps students develop the daily habits of reading, writing,
and working independently that will lead to a lifetime of literacy independence.
Classrooms will be filled with many new experiences for Jackson Christian children using the CAFE and Daily Five. Each day children will be actively engaged in learning. This is the reading and writing program implemented in classrooms.
Daily 5 is the structure Jackson Christian will use to plan the morning for first - third. Fourth and Fifth grade will use it in blocks. Children will be busy completing meaningful literacy tasks. The choices will be:
Read to self
Work on writing
Word Work
Listen to reading
Read to Someone
Classes are focusing on increasing stamina to work independently during Read to Self. Within the next few months, the other choices will be introduced. While the students are completing their literacy tasks, the teacher will be meeting with small groups and conferencing with individual students.
Daily 5 is how we schedule our language block. CAFÉ is what we study during this time. CAFÉ is an acronym for the four major components of reading. They are:
C for Comprehension
A for Accuracy
F for Fluency
E for Expanding Vocabulary
The children will learn reading strategies within each category. These strategies will become tools for the children to use to help themselves become better readers and writers. New strategies are introduced throughout the quarter. When you read with your child at home, you will be able to reinforce these concepts.
MATH
EnVision 2.0
enVisionmath2.0 is a comprehensive mathematics curriculum for Grades K-5. It offers the flexibility of print, digital, or blended instruction. enVisionmath2.0 provides the focus, coherence, and rigor of the Tennessee State Standards. Project-based learning, visual learning strategies, and extensive customization options empower every teacher and student.
Dreambox Math: DreamBox is a K-8 digital math program designed to complement your math curriculum this back-to-school season. Our rigorous and interactive lessons adapt to each student, providing the ultimate personalized learning experience.
In Second Grade, we emphasize learning basic addition and subtraction facts throughout the year. We cover money, time and data, geometry and patterns, measurement and fractions, and reading problems. We also introduce multiplication and division. Higher order thinking is a part of the everyday curriculum.
IXL Learning provides students with personalized support in math and language arts. IXL Learning is an online program where students can gain fluency and confidence with essential math and language arts skills through fun and interactive questions and built-in support. IXL Learning engages students in an authentic way, encouraging them to own their learning, embrace new challenges, and build skills and confidence that last.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Second Grade students will learn about government and civics, economics, geography, and history by studying more about who they are as Americans. The chief purpose of this course is to help students understand their identity as American citizens and how our nation operates. They will learn about the United States, its national symbols and landmarks. Students will examine the geography of the U.S. in relation to the world, continue to learn that maps communicate useful information, and explore how the availability of resources affects the way people live. Students will explore the structure and purpose of government at the local, state, and national levels, and the responsibilities, rights, and privileges of the citizens of the United States. Second grade students will acquire a common understanding of American history, its political principles, and its system of government in order to prepare them for responsible participation in our schools and civic life.
Second grade will incorporate Social Studies into the Reading Curriculum.
SCIENCE
By the end of second grade, students discover forces and interactions by experimenting with different strengths and directions of pushing and pulling and designing experiments to discover the relationship between speed and direction of an object using force. Students discover waves and the transfer of information by experimenting with light and sound energy. Second grade students learn life cycles and classifications of animals and adaptations for survival. Students use textual evidence to cite ways that the earth is changing and understand the changing surface of the Earth.
Second grade will study these units: Weather, Earth’s Surface, Solar System, Energy and Light, Minerals and Rocks, Animal Life Cycles and Habitats, Plant Life, Magnets, Simple and Complex Machines, Solids, Liquids, and Gases, Sounds, Human Body, Senses, Food Chain. TN State Standards will be the focus for our learning.
WRITING
Second grade students will learn to write Opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic, state an opinion, supply reasons that support the opinion, and provide a concluding statement. The students will write Informative/Explanatory texts in which they introduce a topic, use facts, and provide a concluding statement. The students will write Narratives in which they recount an event and include details, thoughts, actions, and feelings to signal event order and provide a sense of closure. Second grade students will learn to revise and edit their writing, with the guidance from an adult. They will also use digital tools to produce and publish writing. They will participate in shared research and writing projects by gathering information from experiences and sources to answer a question.
STREAM
Science, Technology, Religion, Engineering, Arts, and Math
Second Grade Incorporates the reading curriculum with TN science and social studies curriculums. STREAM Projects are sometimes chosen based on the connection between them. Ex. Seasons/Weather events, Animal Habitats~Shelter, Wild West: Simple Machines~Ramps, Hand-Me-Down-Tales from Around the World: continents, countries, oceans~ structures from around the world
STREAM is also incorporated into all Holidays. Ex. Pumpkin Drop, Designing a Turkey Run, Christmas Chains, Grinch’s Heart, Hour of Code, etc.