Students in 2nd grade review the sounds associated with the 71 phonograms. Teachers emphasize reading, writing, and manuscript and cursive letter formation. Grammar skills, including parts of speech, punctuation, capitalization, compound words, and contractions, are practiced. The students also study antonyms and synonyms, capital letters and their uses, common and proper nouns, plurals, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, synonyms and antonyms and present and past tense. The students work on writing different types of sentences (declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, and imperative) in daily writing assignments and journal entries. Students practice using the dictionary and thesaurus and write their first book reports. Comprehension and public speaking are addressed through the use of literature. The second grade literature is organized into unit themes that include Sharing Stories, Kindness, Look Again, Fossils, Courage, and Our Country and Its People. Stories in the units include The Library, Mushroom in the Rain, The Paper Crane, Butterfly House, The Story of Three Whales, Molly the Brave and Me, The Hole in the Dike, The Empty Pot, The Story of the Statue of Liberty and The First Americans. |