Grade 2 Curriculum

In second grade, children move from a “little-kid” focus on print to a “big-kid” focus on meaning. Second-Grade Reading Growth Spurt, teaches children to take charge of their reading, drawing on everything they know to figure out hard words, understand author’s craft, and build big ideas about the books they read. Children learn that books can be their teachers in Becoming Experts: Reading Nonfiction, in which they learn more about familiar topics and grow understanding of new topics while working on word solving, vocabulary development, and comparing and contrasting information across texts. In Bigger Books Mean Amping Up Reading Power, children learn strategies to build three foundational reading skills—fluency, understanding figurative language, and comprehension. In Series Book Clubs, children work within book clubs to study author’s craft to understand ways authors use word choice, figurative language, punctuation, and even patterns to construct a series and evoke feelings in readers.

(Excerpt from Heinemann.com)

2nd Grade Reading Units:

• Second Grade Reading Growth Spurts 
• Becoming Experts: Reading Nonfiction 
• Growing Word Solving Muscles 
• Bigger Books Mean Amping Up Reading Power 
• Series Book Clubs 

The Second-Grade units invite second-graders into author studies that help them craft powerful true stories, non-fiction, and finally, into some very grown-up writing about reading. Across the writing genres, children learn to understand—and apply to their own writing—techniques they discover in the work of published authors. In Lessons from the Masters: Improving Narrative Writing students learn how to create engaging narratives by stretching out small moments and writing in detail. How-To Guide for Nonfiction Writing has students write about areas of expertise, read mentor texts to study nonfiction writers craft, elaborate, write for readers, anticipate their questions and hooking their interest, and experiment with different kinds of nonfiction writing. Writing About Reading has students read closely and gather evidence from texts to craft persuasive arguments. Poetry: Big Thoughts in Small Packages helps children explore and savor language. Students learn to use line breaks to express the meaning and rhythm they intend and use visualization and figures of speech to make their writing more clear and powerful.

(Excerpt from Heinemann.com)

2nd Grade Writing Units:

• Lessons From the Masters: Improving Narrative Writing 
• How to Guide to Nonfiction Writing 
• Poetry: Big Thoughts in Small Packages 
• From Scenes to Series 
• Writing About Reading

The Second-Grade units provide an instructional pathway in phonics, introduces high-leverage phonics concepts and strategies in a way that keeps pace with students’ reading and writing and helps them understand when, how, and why they can use phonics to read and write. Growing into Second-Grade Phonics focuses on knowledge about words and spelling, revisits the long list of phonics principles that students learned in kindergarten and first grade, and then gives particular attention to silent E, long vowels, vowel teams, and R-controlled vowels. The unit also introduce the tricky concept of homophones and shows students that reading and writing part by part is more efficient than reading and writing letter by letter. Big Words Take Big Resolve: Tackling Multisyllabic Words focuses on longer, more complex words teaching several strategies for decoding multisyllabic words—working methodically from left to right, breaking words into syllables, breaking off inflected endings. Word Builders: Construction, Demolition, and Vowel Power helps all children develop a repertoire of skills for tackling complex, multisyllabic words with confidence. In Word Collectors focuses on listening to, talking with, reading and writing of language in playful and constructive ways.

(Excerpt from Heinemann.com)

2nd Grade Phonics Units:

• Growing into 2^nd Grade Phonics 
• Big Words Take Big Resolve: Tackling Multisyllabic Words 
• Word Builders: Construction, Demolition, and Vowel Power 
• Word Collectors 

The Michigan Math Standards call for a balance between procedural knowledge and conceptual understanding. The K-12 Standards for Mathematical Practice, shown below, are types of student expertise developed progressively in each grade-level course.

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

• Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.

• Add and subtract within 20.

• Work with equal groups of objects to gain foundations for multiplication. Understand place value.

• Use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract.

• Measure and estimate lengths in standard units. Relate addition and subtraction to length.

• Work with time and money.

• Represent and interpret data.

• Reason with shapes and their attributes.

Unit 1: Civics

• Purposes of Government
• Democratic Values and Constitutional Principles of American Government
• Individual Rights & The Common Good
• Structure & Function of Local Government
• Local Government & Community Impact
• Responsibilities of Citizenship
• Community Decision Making

Unit 2: History & Geography

• History of Troy Community
• Chronological Thinking
• Different Perspectives in History
• Troy Community Change Over Time
• Troy Community Maps Through Time
• Spatial Organization of Troy
• Physical & Human Characteristics of Troy
• Community Land Use
• City of Troy Culture & Diversity
• Interacting and Preserving Troy’s Environment

Unit 3:  Economics

• Economic Activity in Market Economies
• Opportunity Costs / Consumer Decisions
• Needs and Wants of Consumers in Troy
• Natural, Human, Capital Resources for Community Goods & Services
• Specialization & Interdependence
• Personal Decision Cost / Benefit Analysis