2nd Grade

Unit 6: Fighting for a Cause

Summary of Unit :

We will be wrapping up our Ancient Greece unit and diving into our final unit of the school year. In this Unit, students will learn our third and final social studies topic of the year. They will learn all about activists and their fight for equal rights.  The students will be exposed to activists such as Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges, Jackie Robinson, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Staton, Caesar Chavez, and Malala Yousafzai.  They will also continue to work on opinion writing during their writing period.  They will begin by learning to write a letter and finish the unit writing about an activist they learned about in reading. 

Reading: 

Curriculum: In Unit 6, students will be exposed to nonfiction texts such as biographies about many different activists.  The students will be making connections between the text and self, making connections between the different activists, looking at the challenges these activists faced, and more!

Guided Reading: At this point in the year students should be nearing reading level L/M. 

Home Connection:  Have your child read for at least 20 minutes each night with Raz-kids and choose one comprehension strategy to answer about the reading.  

Materials: RazKids

Writing: 

Curriculum:  In Unit 6, students will be writing an opinion essay.  The writing piece will be based on information learned in Reading. In this unit, Fighting For a Cause, students are writing their opinion about a person in history that, in their opinion, was most influential.  The format of this writing piece will be the same as the last unit.  It will consist of 3 paragraphs: an introduction paragraph, a body paragraph, and a closing paragraph.  The person students chose must be a person we study within the unit.

Home Connection: Having your child complete their writing homework will help them.  You can also help your child with opinion writing by asking them their opinion about things.  Have them give you reasons to back up their opinions.  For example: Ask which do you like more apples or bananas?  Have them give you 2-3 reasons why they like one fruit more than the other. 

Materials: Notebook, pencil, graphic organizers, the materials provided in the Google Classroom there is a scaffold folder for Writing that has: an Opinion Writing Checklist and Rubrics, Portable word walls etc., and text from the unit.

Math 

Curriculum: We are currently in Module 6 which lays the conceptual foundations for multiplication and division in Grade 3 and for the idea that numbers other than 1, 10, and 100 can serve as units.  Students begin by making equal groups using concrete materials, learning to manipulate a given number of objects to create equal groups, and progress to pictorial representations where they may begin by circling a group of 5 stars, adding 5 more, then adding 5 more. They determine the total and relate their drawings to the corresponding repeated addition equation. Then students organize the equal groups created into arrays, wherein either a row or column is seen as the new unit being counted. They use manipulatives to compose up to 5 by 5 arrays one row or one column at a time and express the total via repeated addition equations. We will also build upon their work with arrays to develop the spatial reasoning skills they need in preparation for Grade 3’s area content. Lastly we will focus on doubles and even numbers, thus setting the stage for the multiplication table of two in Grade 3. In our next Module students will work with data in bar graphs, line plots. Students will record and count data and organize it into a table. They will draw picture graphs where a picture represents an object. Students will also display money data in a line graph. Students will then learn about bills and coins. Students will use coins to follow the decomposition of a dollar. Students will also learn to make change from a dollar by counting on. 

Home Connection: Please continue practicing adding and subtracting up to 20! Also, students can review their doubles facts. They should also practice skip counting by 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, etc which will help tremendously with multiplication.  For Module 7 practice identifying the coins and their worth.  

Materials: wipe board, strategy chart

Art

Students will learn about Amate Bark Paintings. This style of painting involves creating bark paper and painting on it with the use of brightly colored scenes of daily life, nature, or history. This art form comes from Mexico, and the Otami and Nahua people. Students will include birds, animals, plants, flowers, and scenes from everyday life to create their own artwork in the style of Mexican folk art. 

Music

In second grade music, students are learning about the fundamentals of reading rhythm including quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter rests. They are also learning to read melodies on a two lined staff, and inflect their voices to match what they are reading. 

Home Connection: Use the link below to practice singing with your child!

https://www.youtube.com/@VisualMusicalMinds

Noel Pointer Violin Partnership: In their weekly violin instruction, students are learning to identify the open strings on the violin, read the notes on the staff and play them using the bow. They will be sharing their skills with their families at the end of the year.

Parent & Student Voice

PICTURES COMING SOON