Grade 2
In second grade, students are actively engaging with their teachers and peers in learning pursuits. They have developed the perspectives, skills, and knowledge to successfully navigate a school day and are able to apply them in new, exciting ways. There is focus on applying their personal preferences and ideas to a community. Students are given many opportunities to learn from each other and to share their knowledge in a variety of contexts.
Our Curriculum
Language
Reading
Students in Grade 2 are transitioning from the skills of learning to read to those of reading to learn. They are able to access information from both fiction and non-fiction texts with purpose and to deepen their own understanding. They also have well developed attitudes and habits of reading: maximizing reading time, building stamina, selecting books that are based on interest, strategies to decode unknown words, and the ability make meaning from what they have read.
Grade 2 students are developing the ability to use context to derive the meaning of new vocabulary, self-correcting when they make errors that detract from meaning, attending to punctuation cues, stopping and thinking about meaning, and reading dialogue with phrasing and expression. Students explore comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary building strategies to enrich their understanding and enjoyment of literature.
Writing
At HIS, our Language program has been tailor-made to give students a thorough grounding in the main fiction and non-fiction text types and purposes for writing. Language units are progressive and guide students through a scaffolded process of reading, analyzing, writing and editing of texts. Each unit is supported by grammar, vocabulary and spelling practice.
Literacy Units in Grade 2
Mathematics
Second grade mathematicians engage in productive activities and conversation about mathematical ideas, including articulating their solution strategies and understanding other’s ideas. Students solve mathematical problems that are based in real world contexts, working individually, in small groups, and with the entire class.
In Grade 2, teaching time focuses on four main areas:
- Extending understanding of base-ten notation
- Building fluency with addition and subtraction
- Using standard units of measure
- Describing and analyzing shapes.
Science
Overall Expectations
Students in Grade 2 will develop their observational skills by using their senses and selected observational tools. They will gather and record observed information in a number of ways, and they will reflect on these findings to identify patterns or connections, make predictions, and test and refine their ideas with increasing accuracy. Students will explore the way objects and phenomena function, identify parts of a system, and gain an understanding of increasingly complex cause and effect relationships. They will examine change over time, and will recognize that change may be affected by one or more variables. They will examine how products and tools have been developed through the application of science concepts. They will be aware of different perspectives and ways of organizing the world, and they will be able to consider how these views and customs may have been formulated. Grade 2 students will consider ethical issues in science-related contexts and use their learning in science to plan thoughtful and realistic action in order to improve their welfare and that of other living things and the environment. Students will communicate their ideas or provide explanations using their own scientific experience and that of others.
Source: PYP Science Scope and Sequence
Science Strands
Social Studies
Overall Expectations
Students in Grade 2 will extend their understanding of human society, focusing on themselves and others within their own community as well as other communities that are distant in time and place. They will investigate how and why groups are organized within communities, and the ways in which communities reflect the cultures and customs of their people. They will recognize the interdependency of systems and their function within local and national communities. They will increase their awareness of how people influence, and are influenced by, the places in their environment. Grade 2 students will explore the relationship between valuing the environment and protecting it. They will extend their understanding of time, recognizing important events in people’s lives, and how the past is recorded and remembered in different ways. They will broaden their understanding of the impact of advances in technology over time, on individuals, society and the environment.
Social Studies Skills
- Formulate and ask questions about the past, the future, places and society
- Use and analyse evidence from a variety of historical, geographical and societal sources
- Orientate in relation to place and time
- Identify roles, rights and responsibilities in society
- Assess the accuracy, validity and possible bias of sources
Social Studies Strands
Source: PYP Social Studies Scope and Sequence