Curriculum Guide
Second Grade

RELIGION

Sadlier.&
  The second grade religion curriculum is focused on preparing the students for the sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion.  Religion class stresses the importance of God’s personal love for each person.  The students learn about the church, church calendar, Bible, Commandments, understanding the meaning of sin and sacraments.  The students study mass preparations, Liturgy of the Word and Liturgy of the Eucharist.  The students experience preparing and serving a school Mass.  The students also learn a variety of prayers.

MATHEMATICS

Silver, Burdett, Ginn.
  Fast math is emphasized weekly with a drill consisting of 30 problems in one minute.  Students move on to different levels starting with addition, subtraction and finally, multiplication.  Students are challenged daily with a “Problem of the Day” to enhance problem solving skills.  Students compare and order numbers, identify place value and ordinal positions to twentieth, identify and complete patterns, use addition and subtraction strategies, measure, tell time, determine elapsed time, count money, make change from a dollar, graph order pairs, tally, create and read observations from graphs, subtract and add 3 digit numbers.

SCIENCE

Silver, Burdett, Ginn.
  The Science Horizon program is divided into four main units; Life Science, Physical Science, Earth Science and Human Body.  Students use a variety of hands-on activities, experiments and projects are assigned.

LANGUAGE
ARTS

Vol. 1  New Beginnings, My Time to Shine, Scott Foresman.
  Scott Foresman Reading program prepares students for state and national tests and for reading encountered in the everyday world.  The program is based on Instructional Routines. 

Phonics – routines provide sequence to teach children how to decode.  It focuses on letter sound shape, letter sound relationship and word identification strategies.  Children learn long and short vowels, vowel pairs, diphthongs, diagraphs, compound words, prefixes and suffixes.  Phonics take home book and Family Times Newsletter help provide parent involvement. 

Vocabulary Workshop – Sadlier.
  This program is designed to focus on 100 core words, their meanings and relationship to other words. 

Spelling – Words are based on phonic rules and sounds and also high-frequency words from reading stories.  Students write spelling words in sentences, practice writing words and are challenged with 20 words and a bonus word.  A practice test is given on Thursday, and a final test on Friday.

English – Students learn target skills, sentences and sentence parts, nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, grammar and mechanics.  Students are involved in creative writing skills.  The end-of-the-year project includes the student writing and illustrating their own book.

Handwriting – Open the Doors to Communication, Zaner, Bloser.
  This program focuses on four keys to legibility, shape, size, spacing and slant, are presented with an easy step-by-step process for teaching and learning good handwriting.  It develops manuscript writing skills of the alphabet letters as well as cursive writing.

SOCIAL STUDIES

Scott Foresman – All Together.
  Students study six units, Where We live, Our Earth, Working Together, Our Country Today, Our Country Long Ago, and People and Places in History.  Students learn how to use maps, make maps, find land and water on a map, use globes, read tables and learn about states and capitals.

HEALTH