Second Grade

Students enter second grade as established, confident learners, eager to hone and build their skills from first grade.

They are familiar with the expectations and routine of school, and much of our second grade curriculum and routines builds on the students’ prior experience. True to a St. Michael’s education, our program is thoughtfully designed with the students’ developmental needs at the forefront of instructional planning. Following the tenets of Responsive Classroom, teachers focus on engaging academics, positive community, effective classroom management, and developmental awareness to strengthen student relationships.

Singapore Math Program

Our second graders continue their journey with Singapore Math.

St. Michael’s was the first school in Rhode Island to adopt the Singapore math program. The program is structured around the belief that every new math concept should be taught first in concrete terms, then pictorial, and lastly, abstract. Students begin exploring new concepts using hands-on manipulatives such as blocks or physical counters. From there, the topic is introduced through pictorial representations, such as illustrations of apples or cookies. Lastly, teachers transition the class into the abstract, using numbers and number sentences to represent a given set. Content covered builds each year and topics constantly spiral back, so students are exposed to concepts each year by revisiting their prior skills and building upon them. Major units covered include: addition and subtraction with regrouping; making change from one dollar; telling time to the minute; comparing fractions with common denominators; measuring to the nearest half inch and centimeter; and even multiplication and division concepts.

Reading

The “Daily 5” continues as a common practice of our second grader’s reading block. During this time, students engage in small group work with the teacher, whole group reading and lessons, word work activities, work on writing, independent and partner reading experiences, opportunities to listen to fluent readers, and writing activities that focus on comprehension. Using data to drive instructional decisions, students are grouped in a way that they may move fluidly between groups as they progress.

With a strong foundation in phonics, second graders are ready to move on to using Sitton Spelling. The program uses an everyday spelling approach that focuses on a study of rules and patterns, grammar, word roots and endings, and real application to writing. Sitton allows students to work toward mastery, strengthening their word knowledge to become better writers.

Writing

During writer’s workshop, teachers dive into proper sentence formation and structure, honing students’ skills to utilize parts of speech such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and more. Students begin the year engaging in the writing process to compose personal narratives, building on their “small moment stories” from first grade and working closely with their teacher to craft detailed pieces with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Second graders also examine various forms of poetry and compose a variety of poetic works such as diamante poems, haikus, and cinquain poems related to the seasons or their thematic studies units. Nonfiction writing is represented through “how-to” pieces, in which students choose a topic of interest to “teach” their reader about.

Thematic Studies

As St. Michael's is situated on beautiful and historic Aquidneck Island, “Island life” is a major focus of the second grade thematic studies curriculum. Students often study various lighthouses and explore the environment around them by visiting several notable landmarks right in their backyard, such as the Ida Lewis and Rose Island lighthouses. This study is incorporated into their science curriculum, where the focus is on geology and the study of various types of rock formations around Aquidneck island. Students expand their historical and cultural knowledge of the community they live in, engaging in a study of Native Americans and local tribes of Rhode Island. During this unit, students have the opportunity to hear from presenters from the Narragansett tribe who come to school to discuss their tribe’s history with the class. Students also study US Symbols such as the Liberty Bell, the Washington Monument, and the Statue of Liberty. While learning about these important symbols to our nation, students create “paper bag books” that they use to present their research.

Blending these topics and expanding the students’ global understanding, the second grade thematic unit moves into a study of Australia and its Indigenous peoples. Students examine the geography and culture of Australia, and they conduct independent research on animals of interest from the continent. This study culminates in a day of student led presentations on their animals and a drama production centered around the ocean.

In addition to their classroom academics, students are exposed to a variety of special area classes such as Fine Art, Spanish, Innovation Lab, Music, Science, PE, Mindfulness, and Drama.