Lower School - Second Grade Language Arts

The Second Grade Language Arts Program is comprised of these areas: Reading/Literature, Phonics, Writing/Creative Writing, and Handwriting/Spelling.

Reading/ Literature: The language arts program is an integrated approach to reading that is coordinated with goals for children’s language, literacy and leadership development. The program focuses on the development of a student’s reading, writing, and editing skills. Through reading the stories in the Houghton Mifflin Reading Series, the students are able to improve their fluency, enhance their comprehension skills, and refine their writing ability.

Phonics: Our study of phonics is incorporated throughout our daily lessons in order to reinforce the necessary decoding strategies and the application of these skills. This provides immediate reinforcement of concepts learned and also ensures that children experience continued success as they learn to read. Students plan and write structured paragraphs, letters, poems, and stories.

Writing/Creative Writing: They also build their comprehension strategies through re-stating questions after a read selection. Second Grade works on editing their writing pieces through individualized proof reading and peer editing in the attempt to encourage them to be more accountable for their writing. They are also encouraged to create, write, and illustrate their imaginative pieces as well as share them with their peers. Students are reminded to utilize their resources in the classroom in order to produce more descriptive and complex sentences. In addition to their reading and writing lessons, the group is actively involved in Reader’s Theater and Show and Tell. These activities serve to facilitate their development as proficient readers and writers and enhance their public presentation skills.

Handwriting/Spelling: Legible handwriting and accurate spelling allow the students to communicate effectively in writing. Second graders use the Zaner-Bloser text to reinforce manuscript and to transition into cursive. The program uses an easy step-by step approach to teach handwriting so that students develop a solid foundation and skills that encourage and support all of their writing, reading and assessment efforts. We use the Saxon Phonics Spelling lists for the spelling program. These word lists contain simple rules explaining the typical spelling patterns being taught. We use the Zaner-Bloser ”Spelling Connections” as a supportive text to practice weekly phonetic spelling patterns. The ultimate goal would be for the students to carry over the knowledge of each week’s word and integrate proper spelling into their everyday writing.

Leadership in Language Arts

Our Second Grade language arts program includes a literature-based curriculum that enriches a child’s positive values through stories in a caring environment where issues of character are explored. Classic stories are read aloud to introduce a language of ethics as well as to foster moral literacy and good judgment by exposing student to the universal core attributes of caring, citizenship, responsibility, fairness, honesty, respect, courage, and gratitude illuminated in Gerstell Academy’s Leadership Principles, Attributes and Motto.

In developing leadership curriculum based on quality literature, several criteria are utilized in book selection:

Ethical Content: The story must model one of the Leadership Principles or Attributes.

Concept: the concept must be clear and positive.

Role models: the story’s characters must be “real” to the listener/reader.

Student Understanding: The story shall engage the children to help them gain understanding of how the principle or attributes relate to their own lives.

Illustrations: The illustrations shall visit visual learning through strong visual impact.

Multicultural in Setting: the stories as a set must represent a variety of cultures; the attributes represented must be universal.