Religion
God’s Word reminds us that our faith unites us with Christ, just as it unites us with other Christians. Our faith in Jesus makes our Second Grade Classroom a unique and wonderful place, different from other classrooms. The Second Grade materials help students learn God’s Word, but they also provide practical, engaging ideas and suggestions for rooting and connecting all that takes place in and extends from the classroom, reaching into other areas of the curriculum as well as onto the playground, into the home and neighborhood, and ultimately around the world. Second Graders commit God’s Word, hymns and prayers to memory for use in their daily lives.
Mathematics
Saxon Math is taught in Second Grade. Saxon Math is a program that using the hands-on and repetition approach. The students use many different math manipulatives to learn math more concretely. They review the addition and subtraction facts that they learned in previous years with timed tests. Then toward the end of the year they start learning the multiplication facts also with timed tests. There is much excitement in second grade as we approach the multiplying! The concept of division is taught but facts are not emphasized. The day starts with “Math Meeting.” This is a time when the students practice patterns, temperature, time, money, counting by various numbers, word problems, and calendar. The fun part is that each student gets a turn (or many during the year) to be “Student of the Day.”
Reading
We read in every subject but the reading course itself is built around a story a week. The stories are engaging for the children as they are realistic fiction, fantasy and informational. We use those stories to help the children learn the skills they need to know in second grade and for later. We also do two plays a year. The children each have a part, do the sets, and perform them to someone at school, parents or a church group. They enjoy those!
Phonics
In Second Grade Phonics is taught in the reading area but also separately. The phonics in the reading area flows from the story of the week and also generates the spelling words for the week. The separate Phonics program has the natural progression of our language. The vowels and consonants are reviewed along with consonant blends and digraphs. Then it moves to possessives, contractions, prefixes and suffixes.
Spelling
The children have 15 words a week that come from their reading stories. Ten of the words have a common pattern and then there are five other words added. The students take a pretest on the first day of the school week and a final test on the last day of the school week. They enjoy trying harder words so sometimes they are given words from other subjects for extra credit!
Handwriting
The Second Grade uses the D’Nealian Handwriting approach. The years starts with the review of manuscript capital and lower case letters of the alphabet. About the middle of the year, cursive is introduced. The excitement builds as we get close to cursive too! Both capital and lower case letters are learned and by the end of the year all students are writing all subjects in cursive.
English
Shurley English is taught in Second Grade. This program has the students doing classifying of sentences, noting subject noun, verb (regular and helping), adverb, adjective, article adjective, pronoun (possessive, object and subject), preposition, object of the preposition, and possessive noun. Cute jingles go with each one that help the children learn those parts of speech. They love them and can sing them very quickly! There is also a comprehensive writing program that is taught alternatively with the grammar.
Social Studies
People We Know In Second Grade our Social Studies deals with the government of the United States, geography of our world, cultures around the world, using our resources, history of our nation, and economics. Social Studies lends itself for the second graders to do several field trips.
Science
Second Grade Science includes Life Science (plants and animals), Earth Science (weather, Earth’s resources, fossils and dinosaurs), Physical Science (matter, energy, forces and sound) and Space and Technology (Earth and Space Science and Technology in our World). Each Unit includes hands-on activities that the children love to do!
Physical Education
At Martin Luther the exercise of the body is as important as the exercise of the mind. Second Graders get a morning and lunch recess and then P. E. each day. They have a total of 60 minutes in exercise and play. The games are geared to teach skills for games they will play when they are older and then fun games that teach sportsmanship, individually and in teams.