Grade 2

Religion

Students in Second Grade learn that God teaches us how to love Him and others through the Ten Commandments. Students also learn that God loves us and gave us gifts and the responsibility to care for them. In Second Grade students prepare for the sacraments of First Reconciliation and First Communion.

Language Arts

Second Grade students use the CAFÉ Daily 5 foundation, which allows the student to work towards his or her personal reading and writing goal. Students learn to develop stamina and a self-extending system of independent strategies to help them develop fluency and comprehension, while keeping them engaged. Daily 5 consists of: read to self, work on writing, read to someone, listen to reading, and word work. Students finish up the SuperKids Reading program to continue to build on what they have learned about phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling patterns, grammar, and writing strategies. They continue to hone their fluency and comprehension skills by reading daily short stories.

In Second Grade, students read chapter books ranging from Frog and Toad to the American Girl series. They read informational magazines from the SuperKids Reading series and Time Magazine for students. Students use Step Up to Writing to develop their narrative and informational writing skills in a Writer’s Workshop format.

Building on the foundation of the D’Nealian handwriting program, students are introduced to cursive handwriting the latter half of the school year.

Mathematics

Second Grade students use the Go Math program. They work independently and collaboratively in the program to study in-depth grade-level concepts. Students focus on understanding place value to help them add and subtract two and three digit numbers. They learn how to develop their number sense and how to work with equal groups to help them set the foundation for multiplication. They also learn how to represent and interpret data and work with time and money.

Social Studies

In Second Grade, students focus on family histories and celebrating traditions and diversity. They focus on their local community, as well as, early American history, California pioneer life, and immigration. They develop their research skills to help them conduct reports.

Science

Students in Second Grade continue to learn about the Scientific Method and, as a class, they take part in the school-wide Science Fair. Their focus in Second Grade is on how living things grow and change; exploring Earth’s surface matter and motion; and our environment.

Physical Education

In Second Grade, student instruction is focused on cooperative learning, enhanced movement, and the development of stability, locomotor and manipulative skills. Students work on cooperation activities, movement concepts, running for fitness and health, balance, rhythm and dance, jump rope, sidearm, underhand and overhand movement patterns, striking, kicking, trapping and dribbling skills. Students participate in P.E. three times a week for 30 minutes.

Spanish

Students in Second Grade participate in Spanish class twice a week. They learn expressions, alphabet and numbers, and basic vocabulary to describe terms: body, clothing, days of the week and months, seasons, etc.

Music

Second Grade students master reading and application of Kodaly symbols and advance to reading standard music notation. They use rhythm instruments to interpret patterns containing whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes and rests. Knowledge of note and rest values is used for sight-reading of music in our singing classes.

Technology

Our technology is integrated at the classroom level and part of the curriculum. Second Grade students use iPads in the classroom, which they share with 1st grade.