Second Grade

Larger View

Second Grade Curriculum Overview

At Monticello Academy, we believe in academic excellence as well as the emotional and social development of a student.  The academic curriculum that we implement in our program is based on the California State Standards.  Being a developmental based program, our curriculum is gauged in accordance to the educational level of each individual class every year as they progress from one grade level to the next.  Our curriculum will vary year to year depending on the developmental ability and level of the upcoming grade.  This overview will allow you to have a general understanding of what your child will learn throughout the school year.

Language Arts

Reading

In second grade, students develop the knowledge and usage of complex word families when reading to decode unfamiliar words.  They will be able to decode regular multiple syllable words, read aloud fluently and accurately with appropriate pacing, intonation, and expression. 

Vocabulary Development

At this level, students will be more advanced in using antonyms, synonyms, homophones, and homographs to determine word meanings.  Furthermore, they will start using sentence and word context to find the meaning of unknown words or use the dictionary to learn about the meaning and features of the unknown words.  Students are also more advance in their usage of the prefixes and suffixes to determine the meaning of a certain word.

Reading Comprehension

Second grade students’ skill in using the titles, tables of contents, chapter headings, glossaries, and indexes to locate information in a given text have improved through practice.  They ask questions and support answers by connecting prior information, identify answers in text, and recall major points to make and modify predictions.  They are learning to distinguish main idea and supporting details in expository text.  Along with this, they extract significant information from text and are able to follow multiple –step written instructions. 

 
Literary Response and Analysis

In the second grade, students will be able to distinguish between common forms of literature.   They begin to learn about basic plots of classic fairytales, myths, folktales, legends, and fables around the world.  They learn about the characters and how the author or illustrator portrays them.  Students start to grasp the underlying theme or message of the author and recognize similarities of sounds in words and rhythmic patterns.

Writing

As students progress through the stages of writing, they learn how to create a single paragraph with a topic sentence and simple supporting facts and details. Hence, they acquire the skill of revising drafts by using a rubric.  Students will also start writing narratives, descriptive, letters, notes, or invitations.  While at the same time, they are continually working on their sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling.  They are starting to practice and write cursive legibly with correct spacing and margins.  Building on the previous year, they are starting to understand the structure and organization of various reference materials. 

Listening and Speaking

Speaking and learning are continuous processes that they will learn throughout the different grade level.  To show their comprehension, students display their abilities by retelling, paraphrasing, or explaining what has been said by another person.  They will be able to connect and relate to their own experiences by responding to questions with relevance. Students continue to learn how to use clear and specific vocabulary to communicate and recite or read aloud.

 Mathematics

After reviewing materials learned in the first grade math program, our second grade students will advance to the next level of math.  The main focus of the second grade program emphasizes strengthening the students’ understanding about place value and skills with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers.  Students will develop a deepening grasp on estimation, measurement, and describing objects in space.  In relation to this, students use patterns to help solve problems, represent number relationships, and conduct simple probability experiments.

Science

In second grade physical science, students will learn about forces (pushes and pulls) and some common phenomena such as gravity, magnetism, and sound.  In life science, they will be studying about life cycles of plants and animals and the basics of inheritance.  In the earth sciences, students will learn about rocks and soils.  They learn that rocks are composed of different combinations of minerals and soils containing organic materials.  They are introduced to fossils and the evidence they provide about the Earth’s history.  In learning about the science, students will be involved in writing, measuring, simple graphing, and making drawings to record, organize, interpret, and display data.  They will practice how to measure length, weight, temperature, and liquid volume, expressing those measurements in the standard metric system units.  Second grade students will also learn how to organize their observations in a chronological sequence and be able to follow oral instructions for an investigation.

 History-Social Science

The main focus is about people who make a difference in our lives.  Students in the second grade program will be able to explore the lives of actual people who make a difference in their lives and learn about the stories of extraordinary people from history whose achievements have touched or impacted them directly or indirectly.  Students will study about contemporary people who supply goods and services that aid in understanding the complex interdependence that exists in our free-market system.  They will also develop a comprehension about the importance of individual action and character, and be able to explain how these heroes from the past and present have affected our lives. 

Go to Monticello Academy Teacher Pages

SchoolWorld
© 2010 - Privacy Statement
School Websites