Our Reading curriculum is aligned with the Pennsylvania State Standards and tailored to be integrated with other 2nd grade subject areas. Therefore, while learning and practicing reading skills and strategies, they will be reading about concepts such as math, science, and social studies. 2nd grade is unique because it is the time when many readers are transitioning from learning to read to reading to learn. Therefore, we use various instructional techniques to help students continue on their reading journey. One method is the "close reading" approach, where students revisit a text for different purposes to think critically and gain a deeper understanding each time. Students will learn and practice various decoding, fluency, and comprehension skills as they are immersed in a balance of both fiction and nonfiction texts.
This is our Guided Reading program. Students will be grouped according to level and receive reading instruction at their appropriate level. We regroup the entire grade for this one-hour block of time, so your child may see a different teacher for his/her reading instruction. During this time, students will be actively engaged in reading activities and centers designed to expand and deepen their reading abilities.
Since we follow an integrated curriculum, our writing program is a combination of three different systems: Being a Writer, Ready Common Core Writing, and Lucy Calkins Units of Study. Each program blends nicely into our other areas of study helping us to create more powerful and meaningful writing opportunities. Writing is integrated throughout each subject area, and students will learn how to craft personal narratives, informational writing, how-to writing, persuasive and opinion writing, and written responses to text.
This is our spelling program that teaches spelling (encoding), reading (decoding), and fluency skills. Students learn about common spelling patterns and rules in our English language and apply them during writing and reading times. In each unit, students will focus on a particular spelling pattern or rule by practicing words that follow that rule. We also will focus on "Words of the Day" which help us expand our vocabularies. Students also learn "Trick Words," which are words that are tricky to spell because they may not follow the patterns or rules.
We will work through four units in writing this year:
Unit 1: Narrative Writing, Fiction, Story Elements, & Social Studies (Colonial Times & Being a Community Member)
Unit 2: Fables and Fairy Tales, Letter Writing, Opinion Letter Writing, & Social Studies (Heroes in History)
Unit 3: Nonfiction with Biographies, Informational Writing, Opinion Paragraphs, & Balancing and Weighing (Science Unit)
Unit 4: Life Cycles and Changes (Science Units), Persuasive Writing, How to Stories, Compare and Contrast Stories, Narrative Diaries, Poetry, & Cursive (lower case letters only).