Second Grade

Ms. Kimberly Fino
Years Teaching: 1 At SJB: 1
Education: B.A. in Elementary Ed. minor in History, Loyola Univ.
Favorite thing about teaching:
Seeing my students’ reactions after I have helped them understand a new subject.

 

 
Classroom Site

Program Description

Second Grade students experience two important sacraments during this special year, Reconciliation and First Communion. They continue to grow in independence as they accept more academic responsibility. They build upon their writing skills and addition and subtraction fact solving strategies.

Main Themes/Skills

Religion
In second grade, students focus on prayers, the 10 Commandments, Sacraments of Communion and Reconciliation, forgiveness, respect and kindness, and discover gifts from God.

Language Arts/English
During second grade, students are introduced to paragraph writing as well as cause and effect relationships. Each week students journal using creative writing. They identify nouns, verbs, adjectives, and punctuation, and long and short vowel sounds. The students will be able to recognize compound words, contractions, possessives, and identify between fact and opinion.

Language Arts/Reading
The reading series includes a variety of stories, which are read on a daily basis orally, silently, or in small groups. In addition, students begin to focus more on comprehension, predicting, sequence of events, compare & contrast, main idea, character, setting, plot, and drawing conclusions.

Math
The students review basic addition and subtraction facts, patterns, days of the week, and months of the year. Other concepts are counting, and writing money amounts, creating and reading a variety of graphs, reading a thermometer, measuring, reading and writing number sentences. Students will also be able to read, write, and show time on a clock, and be introduced to basic multiplication facts.

Social Studies
Students explore each of the seven continents, begin to recognize the 50 states of the U.S., interpret charts, maps, time lines, and graphs, and distinguish between towns, cities, suburbs, and farms. In addition, the students will identify the duties of the President and the symbolism of the U.S. flag. By reading a weekly supplemental magazine call Weekly Reader, students keep up to date on current events.

Science
Students participate in experiments, recognize the motion of objects, weather, storms, and investigating plants are a few of the topics taught in science. The students participate in the school Science Fair; topics change every year.

Art
Students have the opportunity to explore using many types of mediums. They are also exposed to different types of artists and genres of art. They enjoy a variety of projects such as still life painting, drawing and sculpting.

Instructional Methodologies
Students participate through lecture, small/large group work, journaling, cooperative learning groups,