Grade 2

Second Grade ELA:  

The Wit & Wisdom curriculum for Grade 2 is a knowledge-building English Language Arts (ELA) program designed to integrate reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Developed by Great Minds, it emphasizes rich content and meaningful texts to build knowledge, vocabulary, and critical thinking.

Key Features of the Grade 2 Curriculum:

1. Knowledge-Rich Texts:

   • Students engage with complex, high-quality texts across various genres, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art. These texts are chosen to spark curiosity and build background knowledge.
      

2. Integrated Reading and Writing:

   • Students analyze texts deeply, exploring themes, vocabulary, and structure. They practice writing in various forms, including narrative, opinion, and informational pieces, based on their reading.
      

3. Thematic Modules:

   • The curriculum is organized into modules, each focusing on a central topic or theme. In Grade 2, modules often explore ideas such as:

     • Community and connections.

     • The importance of nature.

     • Famous historical figures or moments.

   • These themes build on students’ understanding of the world and connect to other subjects.
      

4. Module Themes for Grade 2: A World of Books: Exploring different types of stories and the knowledge they bring.

   • A Season of Change: Explores the concept of change through literature and poetry, focusing on its transient and impactful nature.

   • The American West: Examines the challenges and resilience of early settlers and Indigenous peoples during the westward expansion.

   • Civil Rights Heroes: Highlights the stories of figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Ruby Bridges, and Sylvia Mendez, showing how they responded to injustice and fought for equality.

   • Good Eating: Investigates the cultural and personal significance of food, emphasizing its role in building community and teaching life lessons
      

5. Vocabulary Development:

   • Students learn and use academic and domain-specific vocabulary in context, ensuring retention and understanding.
      

6. Focus on Knowledge-Building:

   • The curriculum prioritizes building students' knowledge about the world through content-rich lessons. This helps students develop a stronger foundation for comprehension and learning.
      

7. Art and Writing Integration:

   • Artwork is included as a text type, allowing students to make connections between visual art and literature. Writing tasks are tied to these texts, encouraging critical thinking and creativity.
      

8. Diverse Assessments:

   • Students demonstrate their understanding through discussions, written responses, and projects that reflect their comprehension and analytical skills.

The curriculum aligns with New York State standards and is designed to be rigorous yet accessible for all learners. Teachers are encouraged to use questioning techniques and scaffolding strategies to support student growth.It is designed to build both knowledge and literacy skills by exposing students to complex texts and promoting deeper analysis and understanding

The Fundations phonics program is a comprehensive, research-based program designed to teach foundational reading skills, especially in the areas of phonemic awareness, phonics, and word study. For Grade 2, Fundations focuses on refining and deepening students' understanding of phonics and spelling patterns, as well as promoting reading fluency and comprehension. The program is structured to be systematic, sequential, and explicit, providing a strong foundation for reading success.

Key Components of Fundations for Grade 2:

1. Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Instruction:

   • Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondence: Students learn the relationship between sounds (phonemes) and letters (graphemes). This includes teaching consonant blends, digraphs, diphthongs, and vowel teams. For example, in Grade 2, students focus on advanced phonics patterns like ai, ee, oa, ew, and multisyllabic words.

   • Spelling Patterns and Rules: Emphasis on spelling patterns, such as silent e, consonant doubling, and vowel teams. This component helps students decode and encode words by understanding the rules that govern word structure.

   • Word Study: Students work with multisyllabic words, r-controlled vowels, prefixes, and suffixes. This instruction builds fluency with more complex word structures and promotes decoding strategies for unfamiliar words.
      

2. Fluency:

   • Fluency Practice: Students engage in fluency drills and activities that encourage automaticity with decoding words, aiding in smooth reading. The focus is on developing both word-level fluency (decoding) and reading comprehension (understanding).

   • Reading and Spelling Dictation: Through dictation exercises, students practice writing words they have learned, reinforcing the connection between phonics and spelling.
      

3. Vocabulary Development:

   • Contextual Vocabulary: By encountering new words in texts, students apply phonics knowledge to develop vocabulary. Vocabulary instruction includes definitions, synonyms, and antonyms as part of word study.

   • Word Parts (Prefixes, Suffixes, Roots): In Grade 2, students start identifying prefixes and suffixes and how they alter the meaning of base words. This aspect supports decoding and word recognition.
      

4. Comprehension and Application:

   • Reading Comprehension: Through direct application of phonics skills, students read short passages and stories to practice comprehension. Teachers guide students in identifying phonics patterns and using context to aid comprehension.

   • Sentence and Paragraph Structure: As students progress in their ability to read and decode, they also learn to comprehend and analyze more complex sentence structures.

Alignment to NYS ELA Standards:

Fundations is closely aligned with the New York State (NYS) English Language Arts (ELA) standards for Grade 2, which focus on foundational reading skills, reading fluency, vocabulary acquisition, and comprehension. Here’s how Fundations aligns with the specific components of the NYS ELA standards:

1. Standard 1: Reading Standards for Foundational Skills:

   • Phonological Awareness (RF.2.2): Fundations supports this standard by providing a rigorous focus on phonemic awareness and phonics skills. Students are taught to decode words by recognizing syllables and phonics patterns, which are key aspects of this standard.

   • Fluency (RF.2.4): The fluency component of Fundations addresses this by guiding students to read grade-level texts with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression. Fluency practice in Fundations builds the skills needed for comprehension, in line with NYS expectations.
      

2. Standard 2: Writing Standards:

   • Spelling and Word Formation (W.2.2, W.2.6): The program’s focus on spelling patterns, word study, and writing dictation directly supports this writing standard. As students write words they have learned and apply phonics rules, they develop their spelling and writing skills, contributing to their overall writing proficiency.
      

3. Standard 3: Language Standards:

   • Vocabulary Acquisition and Use (L.2.4, L.2.5): Fundations promotes vocabulary development through direct instruction of word parts, as well as through the exploration of synonyms, antonyms, and context clues. This aligns with the NYS standards for vocabulary acquisition and use, helping students build their language skills.
      

4. Standard 4: Comprehension and Collaboration:

   • Reading Comprehension (RI.2.10, RF.2.3): The program helps students practice and apply their decoding and phonics knowledge to read and understand texts. Fundations promotes the skills necessary to understand the meaning of words in context, as required by the NYS ELA standards.

The Fundations program for Grade 2 provides systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, word study, fluency, and vocabulary, all of which are foundational to reading and writing success. These components are tightly aligned with the NYS ELA standards, supporting students in developing critical reading and writing skills as they progress through second grade. The integration of phonics instruction with fluency practice, spelling, and vocabulary ensures that students are well-prepared to meet and exceed state expectations for literacy.

Mathematics

Pequenakonck Elementary School has adopted the hands-on and minds-on K-5 Math Curriculum, enVisionmath2.0, as the instructional resource to use within our math workshop model. Students explore grade level concepts with engaging materials, manipulatives, videos, online access and interdisciplinary activities that support student learning. The program is organized to promote focus and coherence each day. Assessments provide meaningful feedback to support student learning. The comprehensive program focuses on Common Core Clusters, develops understanding, and most importantly, connects mathematical content and processes. Learning is also supported through small group and collaborative activities. 

We use enVisionmath2.0 as the instructional resource to use within our math workshop model. The program focuses on developing understanding, and connects mathematical content and process. Students learn through investigation, small group instruction and class discourse around problem solving and mathematical concepts. The four major domains include: Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Numbers and Operations in Base Ten, Measurement and Data, and Geometry.

Guiding Principles:

• Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them 
• Reason abstractly and quantitatively
• Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
• Model with mathematics
• Use appropriate tools strategically
• Attend to precision
• Look for and make use of structure
• Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

Some of what your second grader will be learning include:

• To fluently add and subtract within 20
• How to use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract
• To represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction
• To measure, compare and estimate lengths in standard units
• To represent and interpret data
• To reason about shapes and their attributes
• To tell time to the five minutes and to identify and count coins

Social Studies

Second graders study these for major units: Active Citizenship; Rural, Urban, and Suburban Communities; Geography of Communities, and Changes and Interdependence.

• Develop questions about the community.
• Recognize different forms of evidence used to make meaning in social studies (including sources such as art and photographs, artifacts, oral histories, maps, and graphs).
• Identify and explain creation and/or authorship, purpose, and format for evidence.
• Identify the arguments of others.
• Recognize arguments and identify evidence.
• Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 2 topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
• Build on others’ talk in conversations by linking their comments to the remarks of others.
• Ask for clarification and further explanation as needed about the topics and texts under discussion.
• Seek to understand and communicate with individuals from different cultural backgrounds.
• Recount or describe key ideas or details from a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media.
• Ask and answer questions about what a speaker says in order to clarify comprehension, gather additional information, or deepen understanding of a topic or issue.

Science

We use Science 21 as our instructional resource for teaching science. The science program is an inquiry based program. Second graders use critical and creative thinking skills as well as problem solving skills to learn about the following topics of study: Structure and Properties of Matter; Earth’s Systems: Processes that Shape the Earth; and Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems.

The Framework in which your second grader learns about science concepts is by:

• Asking Questions and Defining Problems
• Developing and Using Models
• Planning and Carrying Out Investigations
• Analyzing and Interpreting Data
•  Using Math, Computer Tech, and Computation
•  Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions
•  Engaging in Argument Using Evidence 
• Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information

Health

The health program, The Great Body Shop, is designed to promote decision-making and behaviors that foster better health. Though students study similar topics at each grade, the depth of content and complexity of ideas builds from grade to grade. All students study growth and development, nutrition, safety, illness prevention, substance abuse prevention, personal safety, family life, and community health.

 Second Grade Topics include:

•  Let’s Stay Safe
•  How You Think 
• The Wide World of Food
• Your Heart, Small But Strong 
• When I Feel Afraid 
• Babies … and How You Grew
• Drugs Are Dangerous
• Germs! They Make You Sick 
• Me and My Skin
• Muscles in Motion