What is a Second Grader?

Second-grade students are on the cusp of independence, both socially and academically. Over the course of the year they move from being self-contained and individualistic to energetic and gregarious. As this shift takes place, they often go from having a single “best” friend to trying out multiple friendships, often with varied success. Second grade is a time for boundary testing. In the fall, as a group of predominantly seven-year olds, most second-grade students want to please the adults in their lives and receive recognition for their actions. As the year progresses, their emphasis moves more toward peer recognition where the group’s opinion counts for more than the teacher’s opinion.

Routine is very important for children as they enter second grade. Predictable structure in the classroom, in the schedule, and in their interactions can be critical to their success. Through-out the year they become increasingly flexible and more willing to take risks that are both physical and intellectual.

Second grade at Milton Academy supports our students in the following ways:

• The year begins with two distinct classrooms and moves to more flexibility around where children spend their time and how they spend it.
• Short-term projects are offered at the year’s outset while longer, open-ended projects are engaged in later in the spring.
• Cooperative learning with a partner will happen throughout the year, with larger cooperative group work added as the year progresses.
• Self-management and responsibility increase during the year.
• Daily class meetings, consistent structures, and a posted schedule all help to guide second-grade students toward increased autonomy, while maintaining their connections to the group.

Language Arts

Promoting a love of and skill in reading are guiding principles in the second grade reading program, and to accomplish these objectives we employ a multi-faceted approach. Children’s reading abilities are assessed in the fall and guided reading groups are formed to meet the wide range of skill levels that manifest themselves at this age. Decoding skills, including phonics and word analysis, are introduced and worked on in the context of appropriately leveled texts. Children begin to discover the structure of a story and the decisions that authors make in developing a plot. Using literature text sets, which are often thematic and include works by Robert McClosky, Alice Dalgleish, William Steig, and Clyde Robert Bulla, new vocabulary is studied and aspects of setting, character, and plot are explored. Non-fiction texts are also used to teach information gathering skills. Membership in guided reading groups is flexible throughout the year. Nancy Stawarky, the Lower School Reading Specialist, and Dottie Pitt, Acting Principal and former second grade teacher, are of great assistance in this aspect of our reading program.

Read-aloud selections, often related to a central theme or a season, are shared daily. The quality of the writing and of the illustrations is appreciated. The children are asked to make comparisons to other books or to experiences in their own lives. In a similar vein, the summer reading book is read by all students and their families. This year’s selection is The Trouble with Henry: A Tale of Walden Pond, by Deborah O’Neal and Angela Westengard. Based on the life of Henry David Thoreau, this piece of historical fiction is set in the nineteenth century Industrial Era of Concord, Massachusetts. Henry, as a young man, rejected the growing materialism of the times and retreated to the nearby Walden Pond to build a cabin and live simply for two years. The second graders will spend time out of doors in the fall making first hand observations of nature in sketchbooks and journals just as Henry did. They will engage in a pond study on campus and journey to Walden Pond. A goal for this unit will be to foster in the children an understanding of what it means to be true to oneself and the importance of stewardship of the natural environment. In addition, time is provided during the week for personal choice of reading material during quiet, independent, silent reading.

Because literature is so highly valued and because a love of reading is nurtured in a relaxed and collaborative setting, we expect families of second grade students to engage nightly in the Home Reading Program. Each school day, the children choose a book from a special collection to record and take home to share with an adult in the evening. We hope that rich literary dialogue will occur in these nightly sharing sessions. At this age, some second grade students may also have chapter books they are reading on their own.

Throughout the day in reading, the children are made aware of many literary genres: poetry, memoir, personal narrative, and myth, to name a few. The reading-writing connection is highlighted daily for the students, i.e. that writers write from their own experience with an audience in mind. Second grade students become authors and, in a Writing Workshop, they may create poetry in response to an ocean visit, a creation myth as an outgrowth of reading Chinese myths, a family story, a biography as a result of an interview, or a retelling of a personal experience. As the young writers craft a piece of writing, mini-lessons and individual conferences draw their attention to story structure, writing in whole thoughts, adding detail and description, and the use of sentence mechanics.

Teachers act as editors, use standard editing marks, and expect the children to make corrections in spelling and mechanics, as they are able, over time. Occasionally, a second draft of a writing project is required. The main goal for second grade students is to become fluent and coherent in written expression. Handwriting and spelling are taught to facilitate this process. Lower and upper case letters are reviewed, proper pencil grip is encouraged, and adequate spacing of words is emphasized to make a student’s writing more accessible to a reader. While phonetic and invented spelling continue to be used during the fall semester, second graders are becoming more aware of, and interested in, accurate spelling throughout the first term. In the second term, they seem to be optimally ready for a formal spelling program, which encompasses activities with phonic spelling patterns, introduction to spelling rules, home practice, and weekly quizzes. In their daily lives at school, second grade students are asked to write sentence responses to questions across the curriculum and to record facts about animals in beginning research projects. They often use a journal to pose questions, to express their feelings, or to respond to teacher prompts in all subject areas. We encourage our students through many opportunities over the course of the school year to use written communication to express their thinking.

Mathematics

The second grade math curriculum taps into all of the areas second grade students find appealing: patterns, geometry, time, money, place value, and problem solving. Much of the student’s mathematical exploration is done through open-ended problem solving and work with a partner. The students work with many concrete materials such as Pattern Blocks, Cuisenaire Rods, Dienes Blocks, money, and clocks. Work with these materials leads them to an increased comfort level as they begin to master abstract concepts. Specific topics covered during the second-grade year include:

Geometry
The children learn the names of plane and solid shapes. They create and complete patterns, and solve problems that involve spatial concepts. Large pattern block designs with a “do not touch” sign are a common sight in the fall of second grade.

Time
Time telling is taught formally to support the second-grade student’s desire to understand the schedule and to be more independent. As the year comes to a close, one can often hear conversations about whether it’s 12:03 or 12:04 and how late we are in getting to lunch!

Money
Second grade is the time when children begin to develop an understanding that things have different values. This is complex, as children have to consider two variables, how many coins there are and what the value of each of those coins is. Seven- and eight-year olds are also very interested in having their own small stash of money and being able to spend it independently. The second-grade trip to Chinatown allows the students a real opportunity to make decisions about how to spend $5.00.

Place Value
A beginning understanding of place value is taught through a variety of games and activities. Second grade students learn the value relationships between “ones,” “tens,” and “hundreds,” and how to apply their knowledge to solve problems, consider the relationship between numbers, and play games and solve puzzles. This understanding of our number system is crucial for all later work in mathematics.

Computation
Mastery of basic addition and subtraction facts is stressed throughout the year as both a school and a home activity. It is gratifying to hear a child exclaim, “In November I only did 10 problems in a minute, now I can do 20!” Rapid recall of basic facts facilitates the understanding and execution of adding and subtracting with larger numbers. At every juncture during the year second grade students are pushed for conceptual understanding behind the computation. They are encouraged to solve problems in multiple ways and learn the algorithm as one possible strategy that they may use.
Beginning lessons in multiplication are presented late in the spring. The students experience multiplication as repeated addition and are asked to begin mastering basic facts through 5x5.

Problem solving
An integral part of all mathematics in second grade, problem solving activities encourage the children to work collaboratively as well as independently to find answers to a variety of problems. The steps of analyzing the problem, collecting the tools needed, and then finding the problem’s solution are modeled and carried out on a daily basis. The questions: “How do you know that?” “How did you get your answer?” “Does your answer make sense?” are commonly heard during math time in second grade. The most popular problem solving activity in Grade 2 is “Math Lunch,” based on a weekly math challenge. Any student who wants to may complete it and discuss it during Math Lunch one day a week. This activity is purely optional.

Social Studies and Science

As seven and eight-year olds, second grade students are active, concrete learners. Their inquisitiveness and enthusiasm for learning can best be captured through activity centers in the classroom and first-hand experiences beyond the Junior Building. In the second grade, these eager learners study two interdisciplinary, semester-long themes: the ocean, which is close at hand, and China, distant but exposure to which is so important for students of the 21st century. Capitalizing on their growing skills in literacy, numeracy, and collaboration, second grade students go to Brant Rock Beach as scientists, the New England Aquarium as researchers, the Robert Bennett Forbes House as historians, and to Boston’s Chinatown as cultural observers.

China is the central theme during the fall term. Comparisons are made between the lives of children in China and the United States. The children examine China’s geography and compare its size and shape to that of the United States, and they learn about its principal features and cities. They explore the relationship between climate and crops and other ways in which geography affects the way people live.

Throughout the semester they examine Chinese literature through folktales, myths, shadow plays, and riddles. They practice Chinese calligraphy and other arts, and learn several words and numbers. When the children have learned enough about China to become tourists, they depart on an “imaginary trip” to explore the Great Wall, Forbidden City, and other historic sites. The experience becomes quite real when they acquire Chinese pen pals and exchange letters and visits with a Chinese bilingual class in Boston. The culmination of the unit is the celebration of the Lunar New Year with the pen pals.

During the spring term, the focus shifts to an experiential study of the ocean. As a segue into this unit, two endangered animals, the Giant Panda and the Humpback Whale, are studied. By comparing and contrasting the lifestyles of these two mam-mals, the children gain a basic understanding of the requirements for life needed by all animals as well as the fragile balance that exists between humans and the environment. This guided animal study prepares the students for an independent ocean animal research project in the spring.

The overall goal of the ocean study is to develop in each child the process skills of scientific investigation. Direct observation of plant and animal life helps the children discover unique characteristics of ocean organisms, as well as describe, classify, and compare. Through study of a small, saltwater tidal pool in the classroom, the children attend to marine life characteristics such as feeding habits, locomotion, body structure, protective mechanisms, and behavior. With simple research and hands-on activities, the environment of the ocean, particularly the seashore, is explored, and the children are encouraged to search for evidence, recognize and interpret variables, as well as interpret data and develop hypotheses. Labs, games, and discussions engage the children in intellectual inquiry about the ocean.

Work with maps and mapping accompanies both thematic units. Beginning with a bird’s eye view map of their own rooms, the children learn to orient themselves in the world. Their exposure to maps grows as they become able to locate themselves on maps of larger areas, ending with a map of the world. They learn to locate directions on a map as well as outdoors, to create map symbols and a key, and to use many different kinds of maps.

Art

The Grade 2 art curriculum allows children to continue to investigate the world around them as well as the world within. Students explore a variety of new mediums while building upon skills and concepts previously learned. By tapping into their vivid imaginations, carefully observing nature and discussing the works of other artists, second-grade students expand their visual awareness and aesthetic sensibilities. Many art projects connect with classroom curriculum particularly during the China and ocean units, and while projects are structured, they remain flexible enough to accommodate each child’s different skill level and special interests. Along with strengthening creativity and artistic skills, students are expected to take responsibility for themselves, the art materials and the community created in the art room. In sharing pieces of themselves through their artwork, children make connections with each other and learn to respect differences. The art program provides opportunities for self-expression and exploration while also developing necessary creative thinking skills that are useful throughout life in solving problems, communicating, observing, and interpreting information.

Technology

As part of the research that Second Graders do on their ocean animals, children use computers as a research tool to gather information. They are introduced to turtle geometry through LOGO, where they learn about the properties of geometric figures and angles through trial and error experimentation. Some other software programs are used to extend curriculum.

Library

Library skills learned in Kindergarten and First Grade are reinforced in Second Grade. Fostering the excitement of selecting books, an independence in using the library collection, and the responsibility of caring for and returning books continues. New skills are introduced, such as understanding the alphabetical order of picture and chapter books, the differences between fiction and non-fiction, and the use of the table of contents, index, and glossary in non-fiction and reference books. These new skills are then practiced as students complete a small library research project and, later, their Central Theme research. The students are introduced to literature from countries around the world through picture books, folk tales, country books, cook-books, and other non-fiction books. The love of literature is nurtured as students are encouraged to expand their reading interests and to discover books appropriate to their personal reading levels. The Loizeaux Reading Room is always an integral part of second grade, as the children choose books for DEAR, pull up a pillow, and read.

Music

Singing, pitch, rhythm, note reading, and ear training are at the heart of the second grade music curriculum. Second grade students will enjoy playing various pitched and non-pitched percussion instruments as they explore more complicated rhythmic patterns and syncopation. Note reading activities will prepare the second grade for recorder playing. Singing rounds will train the ear to hear harmony and begin to develop the ability to sing in two parts. In collaboration with the Social Studies and Science curricula students will compose music using the pentatonic scale and explore the musical traditions of China and dive into ocean songs and sounds.

Physical Education

Second-grade students build on the skills learned in Kindergarten and first grade. They continue to explore space and use their bodies in a variety of ways. The locomotor skills of running, hopping, skipping, galloping, and sliding are used to explore space and are practiced with a goal toward more refinement. These skills are used in games of fleeing, chasing, and dodging, as well as dance and track activities.

The second-grade student practices manipulative skills using balls and other objects to throw, catch, kick, dribble, strike, and volley. Age appropriate games using these skills are introduced. Non-manipulative skills such as turning, twisting, rolling, balancing, transferring weight, jumping, and landing are used in movement exploration and educational gymnastics.

Second-grade students continue to build on their knowledge of fitness concepts and work to improve their personal fitness. Learning to share space and equipment and to work cooperatively are an important part of second grade.

Woodworking

Students use pinewood and hand tools to execute individual projects designed in consultation with the teacher. Emphasis is on craftsmanship, sharing, risk taking, skill development, and self-direction.