Second Grade Curriculum

Religion

Second grade religion prepares the children for the reception of Reconciliation and Eucharist. The leaner will review their Baptism and the fact that they are members of God’s family, the Church. The students explore God’s commandments. The children discover the power of God’s love through His forgiveness. The children also study the mass so that they have a better understanding of the greatest prayer of our church. The children grow in an appreciation of the gift of Jesus of himself in the Eucharist.

Text: Loyola Press, Christ Our Life, 2002

Social Studies

In second grade the focus is on community. The children  understand the importance of family life. They also develop as good citizens in the classroom, school, community, and world. Second graders will understand the importance of government in providing services to the community. They also become aware that things change over time and that all people are important to a community. The students appreciate that geography has an important role in people’s lives. They finally discover the importance of environment and their role in maintaining it.

Text: Macmillan McGraw Hill, We Live Together,  2005

Language Arts

In second grade the children learn to recognize complete sentences. The children also learn to identify the types of sentences and what punctuation is needed. The children also learn to identify nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs and how they are used in a sentence. The emphasis is using these skills to write paragraphs, letters, and reports.

Text: Houghton-Mifflin Company, Write Away, 2002

Reading

Second graders grow in their new ability to read. They develop their ability to comprehend and to make predictions in their reading. The learners work on their ability to decode unknown words and develop their reading vocabulary. The children will be able to find the main idea in a selection and summarize what they have read. The children are also introduced to examples of children’s literature.

Text: Harcourt Trophies, Just for You and Trophies, Banner Day, 2007

Phonics

The children will review the sounds of consonants and short and long vowel sounds. The children will use suffixes, prefixes, and hard and soft “c” and “g”. They will discover the sounds of blends, digraphs and “r “controlled vowels. They will also use contractions, synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. These skills will be integrated into their reading.

Text: Harcourt, Phonics Practice, 2007

Spelling

The children are introduced to a new word list each week. These words follow a rule of phonics, for example short vowel sounds or  "r“ controlled vowels. The spelling is checked in a weekly test, but these words are also used to improve the child’s reading and writing skills. There is emphasis placed on proofreading their writing. The children are encouraged to use dictionaries and the thesaurus.

Text: Harcourt, Spelling Practice, 2007

Handwriting

The children review the correct method of writing manuscript letters and numbers. The students are introduced to cursive writing. Emphasis is placed on legibility and self-evaluation.

Text: Zaner-Bloser, Handwriting, 1999

Science

The children will discover how living things grow and change. They will learn about the habitat of various living things. They will discover how weather affects the environment.

The students explore rocks and soil and show how fossils teach us of our past. They learn about our solar system and how seasons change. The children learn about the three forms of matter. They discover about magnets and motion. These facts will also be studied as gifts of our creator.

Text: Harcourt School Publishers, Harcourt Science, 2002

Math

 

Second graders will review addition and subtraction facts. They will work on understanding place value to 1000. They will learn to show information with graphs. The students will learn two and three digit addition and subtraction. The children will learn various themes in Geometry and measurement. The students will have practice with money and time. The children will be introduced to the use of fractions, multiplication and division.

Text: Sadlier-Oxford, Progress in Mathematics, 2006