The second grade teachers at Swift Creek Elementary are geared up and ready for another superb year! Second grade is filled with learning through exploration, discovery, and fun activities.

Second graders continue to improve reading and writing skills through a variety of instructional techniques including The Daily Five, guided reading, and Six +1 Traits of Writing.

Reading

• Reading Fluency- reading at an appropriate speed with accuracy and expression
• Comprehension- main idea, details, inferencing, making predictions, fact/fiction, cause and effect, narrative elements (plot, setting, characters), author’s purpose, summarizing, resource texts (dictionary, thesaurus, glossary)
• Phonics – decoding unfamiliar words
• Vocabulary – new/unknown words, antonyms, synonyms, homonyms, and multiple meaning words

Writing

• Writing Process-prewriting, rough draft, revising, editing, publishing
• Writing Traits-Organization, Audience, Voice
• Writing Genres-narrative, informational, persuasive, response to literature
• Cursive-Forming letters,fluid writing

Grammar

• Capitalization – first word of a sentence, proper nouns, abbreviations
• Punctuation – ending punctuation (periods, question marks, exclamation points), commas (in a series, between a city and state, in a friendly letter, date), periods after abbreviations, quotation marks
• Parts of Speech – nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives
• Sentence Structure – forming complete sentences with appropriate subject/verb agreement

Spelling

• Second grade engages in Word Study.

• Number concepts
• Fact Fluency – instant recall of single digit addition/subtraction facts to 18
• Addition and subtraction – 2 and 3 digit numbers with and without regrouping
• Place value – to the hundreds place
• Graphing—bar, picture and pie graphs
• Money – counting coin and bill combinations to $2, comparing amounts of money
• Shapes – identifying two and three dimensional shapes by the number of sides, edges, faces, and vertices
• Problem Solving – including word problems and probability
• Patterns – repeating and growing patterns
• Comparing and Ordering Numbers – (>, <, =)
• Fractions – identify, label, and compare fractions (thirds, sixths, eighths, tenths)
• Measurement – identify standard units of measure (inch, foot, yard) and metric units of measure (centimeter, meter), measure to the nearest inch and the nearest centimeter, tell time to the nearest five minutes, read a thermometer

• Scientific method & inquiry
• Earth Science – changes in our surroundings over time and causes of those changes
• Physical Science – matter (solid, liquid, gas)
• Life Science – plant and life cycles

• Famous Americans
• Communities—Past & Present
• Geography – U.S. & World
• Map Skills – cardinal and intermediate directions, map scale, map key/legend
• Economics – scarcity, supply and demand, goods and services, opportunity cost
• First Americans
• Ancient Civilizations—Egypt & China