Our goal is to prepare our students for life's choices and challenges. We will maintain high expectations and challenge students to learn, grow, and achieve to each student's highest possible potential. We will enhance the learning process by fostering an atmosphere of respect, love and dignity. Second grade is a year of transition in which students will become more independent thinkers and learners.
In second grade, we extend their educational experience by focusing on increasing fluency and strengthening reading comprehension skills. Each day is filled with many opportunities to read through the Daily 5: Reading to Self, Working on Writing, Reading to a Partner, Word Work and Listening to Reading. Children are also engaged in focused writing lessons, poetry, shared reading and guided reading in a small group setting. GFAA Second graders will write, illustrate, and publish their own narratives and expository pieces in their classrooms. This is an exciting way for them to work together, build their confidence and take pride in their accomplishments.
Math continues to be very important to the expanding mind of a 2nd grader too! Our students are taught to think mathematically, to reason, and to implement strategies related to problem solving. This will enable them to have the skills needed to achieve success as they move through the upper grades. Students use a "hands on" approach with manipulatives and math journaling. They are taught to see relationships and patterns and to use numbers with confidence as they solve problems. We expand beyond basic arithmetic; they are delving deeper into measurement, geometry statistics and probability.
Science is always exciting, especially to our 2nd graders. We cover a wide range of science curriculum throughout the year, and develop deeper understandings of skills they have learned previously. It is always exciting for them when we encounter science in a lab atmosphere or take the classroom on the road to one of our two school gardens.
Science and social studies are also integrated into the reading program. The goal is to guide children to apply the skills they learn in reading to the acquisition of knowledge through reading informational books, magazines, and children's encyclopedias. This develops their associative skills, as well as the "basic skills". Interest is high because children are naturally curious about the world in which they live.