Welcome to Second Grade!  Our names are Kim Strothoff and Paula Asadoorian and we will be your child’s teacher this year.  This will be a very busy and exciting year for them.  This year there are two second grades and we are looking forward to working with each other.  Here are a few things we’ll be working on throughout the school year.

READING / WRITING

Reading Street has 6 themes for the school year. Students will read several genres and use comprehension skills and strategies taught. The program integrates the phonics patterns and spelling expectations simultaneously. Reading fluency and grammar are also a part of the Reading Street daily instruction.

READING

Unit 1 - Exploration

Unit 2- Working together

Unit 3- Creative Ideas

Unit 4- Our Changing World

Unit 5- Responsibility

Unit 6- Traditions 

In second grade the children write for many purposes.  Daily journals are used to reinforce writing skills taught within The Reading Street Series. Other forms of writing that the students will be doing this year are: literature response journals, poetry, expository writing as well as narratives. We will be using the “Six Traits” as the basis of our writing instruction this year.  The students will be using the writing process to create original pieces.  The rubric score they receive may only focus on the trait currently being taught.   

SCIENCE

We have science kits for each quarter of the school year.  The students are able to perform hands-on experiments.  While they do this they are making observations, asking questions, making a hypothesis, plan and do a test, recording what happens, and finally drawing conclusions.

Here are a few of the topics the students will learn in Science:

    Investigations of Living Things

    Changes over Time

    Energy & Motion

v      Solids, Liquids and Gases

SOCIAL STUDIES

Our social studies program will mainly be integrated within our reading series this year. In Social Studies the students will discuss and learn about:

    The Earth’s geography

    Families

    Our home

    The working world

    Discovering the past

    People, places and holidays

MATHEMATICS

Students will practice math computation and fact fluency on a daily basis. Eden Park has a new Math program that integrates technology with math. Fast Math is a computer program that allows the students to study their skills at their own pace.

We are also continuing to use the math series Investigations this year.  Investigations involves students with a developmental approach to learning math with the use of manipulatives and process-thinking to develop math skills.  This year’s math skills focus on the following topics:

The Number System

Sorting & Classifying

Collecting & Representing Data

Adding and Subtraction

Geometry & Fractions

Measurement