Second Grade

The fist grade phonics curriculum follows the From Sounds to Spelling program. This research-based, multisensory phonics instruction addresses phonics patterns, phonological awareness, spelling, and high frequency words. Through teacher-directed and independent practice activities, students are able to develop the strong foundation necessary to pave the way for future reading and writing success. Lessons include direct multisensory instruction, engaging activities, games, and decodable texts; so students practice concepts in a variety of ways. First grade units cover: • Review of Letter Sounds, Short Vowels, Digraphs • Blends and Glued Sounds with Short Vowels • Plurals, Contractions, Simple R-Controlled Vowels, Introduction to Long Vowels (CVCe), Open/Closed Syllables • Vowel Teams and More Long Vowel Patterns

SECOND GRADE

READING WORKSHOP

In addition to ensuring that students acquire the appropriate reading skills and strategies, the goals of reading instruction in the second grade classroom are to make reading an enjoyable part of students’ lives and encourage students to become lifelong readers. Reading instruction in second grade builds on skills and strategies taught in first grade to further develop reading comprehension, phonics mastery, and critical thinking skills through reading both fiction and nonfiction texts. During Reading Workshop, teachers focus mini-lessons to model effective, genre-specific reading strategies and to reinforce and extend more complex phonetic skills. (See the Reading Workshop description in the Language Arts section overview.) Reading aloud to second grade students is an integral part of the curriculum because it exposes them to beautiful language and writers’ craft at text levels beyond those they can read independently. This exposure is important to students as developing readers and as young writers who often seek to imitate and experiment with authors’ voices and styles. During the discussions of read-aloud books, students not only learn more about the author’s craft, but they also examine story structure and story elements and discuss helpful comprehension strategies. Read-aloud selections are often connected to themes the class is exploring. Teachers use the information that they gather about their students as readers during reading conferences and through more formal reading assessments to guide second grade students to self-select just-right books. Teachers are continually assessing not only students’ reading comprehension and fluency, but also their accuracy and strategies for solving words and monitoring meaning. Teachers continually monitor students’ progress and look to ensure that students are selecting the next level of appropriately challenging books to ensure growth into reading more complex and nuanced texts. Students are encouraged to share their interpretations of the books they are reading to motivate readers to deepen their comprehension through conversation. Anticipated units of study in the second grade reading curriculum include: • Second Grade Reading Growth Spurt • Becoming Experts: Reading Nonfiction • Accelerating Readers’ Growth in Longer Fiction Books • Bigger Books Mean Amping Up Reading Power • Series Book Clubs Independent reading is part of both Reading Workshop and nightly routines. During Reading Workshop, students build their stamina to read with engagement and comprehension for increasingly longer periods of time. Students read for a minimum of 15 minutes every night as part of their nightly routine. As the year progresses, students are asked to do some writing about their reading to convey their thinking and comprehension.