2nd Grade

Unit 4

Unit 6: Fighting for a Cause

Summary of Unit (Social Studies):

We will be wrapping up our Immigration 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 to name a few.  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!

Check out our Fighting for a Cause Collection on Epic! https://www.getepic.com/collection/31686588/fighting-for-a-cause?utm_source=t2t&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=collection&share=35957137262

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 Unit 4.  It will consist of 3 paragraphs: an introduction paragraph, a body paragraph, and a closing paragraph.  

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: In Module 7, 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 learn to make change from a dollar by counting on. Students will review the measurement concepts and review their measurement skills with a variety of objects. Students will compare lengths and will generate measurement data with a line plot. 

Lastly, Module 8 we will extend our understanding of part-whole relationships through the lens of geometry. As students compose and decompose shapes, they begin to develop an understanding of unit fractions as equal parts of a whole.  Students will build on prior knowledge of shapes defining attributes to recognize and draw categories of polygons with specified attributes. Students see that they can arrange two-dimensional shapes to create a new whole or composite shape which can become part of an even larger whole. Students will decompose circles and rectangles into equal parts and describe them as halves, thirds, and fourths or quarters. Lastly we will have students apply their understanding of partitioning the whole into halves and fourths to tell time to the nearest five minutes, using both analog and digital clocks. They will construct simple clocks and see the relationships to partitioning a circle into quarters and halves, thereby decomposing 60 minutes. 

Home Connection: Practice identifying and adding up coins.  Practice identifying shapes around you.  Maybe use play dough and practice making shapes and then evenly cutting the shape up and identifying the fraction.  Lastly you can practice telling time on an analog clock.  

Materials: money, shapes white boards

Art: 

Our second grade artists will make ELA connections to their Fighting for a Cause Unit by creating a peace sign. Students will learn how to draw and paint a peace sign using color theory. Students will incorporate words related to what peace is and what peace means to you.

Ballet Tech: 

Students in second grade will be visited by teaching artists from Ballet Tech on April 19th during the school day. They will be participating in a ballet workshop. Students who show aptitude for ballet will be selected to participate in a Saturday ballet program in the fall.

Parent & Student Voice

We are eagerly awaiting our chicken eggs to hatch!!