Second Grade: EARTH Class
Reading
The EARTH class reading curriculum focuses on building fluency and stamina as well as identifying and applying a variety of word decoding strategies. In differentiated reading groups, students work on sight word recognition, phonics and phonemic awareness, vowel teams, and reading multisyllabic words. Students then dig deeper into their texts and practice their comprehension skills with text-to-self connections, sequential re-telling of story, character and setting analysis, and identifying the main idea or theme of the story.
Writing
The EARTHlings increase their fluency and deepen their understanding of the writing process, taking their audience into consideration. Revision and editing are consistent parts of the process as they prepare personal narratives, poetry, opinion and informational pieces for publication. Students write as scientists, thinking about teaching others as they write up lab reports and craft information books, and learn to look at the world through a poet’s lens.
Mathematics
The second grade math curriculum supports students in developing a deep understanding of number relationships. Students use increasingly efficient and flexible strategies for moving forward and backward along the number line and strengthen their understanding of place value through one thousand and the properties of addition and subtraction. They learn to estimate and measure length in inches, feet, and yards and explore proportional reasoning. EARTHlings also dive into a unit on early algebra, exploring big ideas including balance, equivalence and exchange, and variables. Students explore a variety of growing and repeating patterns, learn to read analog and digital clocks and understand the concept of elapsed time, categorize two and three-dimensional shapes, and identify fractions as part of a whole and part of a group.
Social Studies
The social studies curriculum centers on the theme of Change: recognizing changes in ourselves, our families, our school, and our local communities over time. Students explore how things have changed over generations by conducting interviews with family members one and two generations back and creating Venn diagrams to demonstrate contrasts and similarities. The EARTHlings learn about historical changemakers and choose a project that will make a positive change in our school community. Students study how land use in California has changed over time and the impact human development has had on the land, plants, and animals that call it home.
Science
The theme of Change also drives the science and engineering curriculum in the EARTH class. Second graders learn to record observations, ask questions, make sense of systems, isolate a variable in experiments and iterate designs. In their Lunar Growth project, they engage in an interdisciplinary study of the moon, observing and understanding its phases, tidal locking, and the relative size of the moon and the Earth, then engineer rockets and rovers. In their Ecosystems, Adaptation, and Evolution project, students study a local ecosystem over the course of the year, noting changes in biodiversity through the seasons, observing how animals and plants adapt to their environment and grappling with the impact of changes, both natural and human, on the ecosystem. Second graders end the year with a study of force and motion, learning about inertia and friction, magnetism, and static electricity. Alongside this work, the EARTHlings study bridges and civil engineering, collaborating to iterate on bridge designs, considering strength, stability, and the properties of the materials they use for their bridges.
Social Emotional Learning
Social emotional learning is threaded throughout the second curriculum through the Toolbox Project, class meetings, small group dialogue and role-play, project work and book-talks. The theme of Change lends itself well to recognizing and strengthening growth and flexibility, as well as staying open-minded about our peers’ capacity for growth, learning and change. Learning to collaborate effectively through active listening, understanding another’s perspective, giving and receiving constructive feedback, and learning to compromise is an essential component of group project work all year long.
Social Justice
Students begin by looking inward, reflecting on their own growth. By sharing aspects of their identity that have changed and remained the same, they learn to recognize the uniqueness and complexity in themselves and others. Recognizing and valuing the diverse perspectives and experiences that each person brings to a project becomes the foundation for building strong collaborative skills to their work as mathematicians, scientists, engineers, writers, readers and friends. Reading stories of changemakers who have worked to make a difference in their communities provides inspiration for the EARTHlings to take a close look at their own communities (classroom, school, and beyond), to identify changes that would make things more fair, and take actions that make a positive impact.
Specialist Classes
Specialist classes are part of the daily schedule for all students, including art, music, physical education, wood shop, and Latin. Our rich specialist program ensures a well-rounded daily experience for all students.
