GRADE 2 LANGUAGE ARTS CURRICULUM

READING

Word Recognition and Word Study

Phonemic Awareness

Students Will:

Demonstrate phonemic awareness by the wide range of sound manipulation competencies including sound blending and deletion.

Recognize that words are composed of sounds blended together and carry meaning.

Phonics

Students Will:

Understand the alphabetic principle, that sounds in words are expressed by the letters of the alphabet.

Use structural cues to recognize and decode words with long and short vowels, consonant digraphs, and irregular vowels in isolation and in context including; letter sound, onset and rimes, whole word chunks, word families, long and short vowels, digraphs wh, ph, irregular vowels ei, ie, ea, ue.

Word Recognition

Students Will:

Recognize, automatically, frequently encountered words in print whether encountered in connected text or in isolation with the number of words that can be read fluently increasing steadily across the school year.

Make progress in automatically recognizing the 220 Dolch basic sight words and 95 common nouns for mastery in third grade.

Make progress to automatically read by sight the Dolch First 1000 Words for mastery in fifth grade.

Use previously learned and new strategies to identify unknown words and construct meaning by re-reading a sentence or paragraph when meaning is unclear, using contest as a basis for predicting meaning of unfamiliar words, sub-vocalization, and/or sounding out unknown words.

Know the meanings of words encountered frequently in grade-level reading and oral language contexts.

Use syntactic and semantic cues including reading context; picture clues; prefixes re-, un-; and suffixes –s, -ed, -ing to determine the meaning of words in grade-appropriate texts.

Fluency

Students Will:

Recognize automatically and fluently read identified grade-level high frequency words encountered in or out of context.

Use punctuation cues (periods and question marks) when reading aloud with intonation, pauses, and emphasis.

Read aloud unfamiliar text with a minimum of 90% accuracy in word recognition at an independent reading level.

Vocabulary

Students Will:

Determine, in context, the meaning of words and phrases including objects, actions, concepts, content vocabulary, and literary terms, using strategies and resources including contest clues, mental pictures, and questioning.

Narrative Text

Students Will:

Describe the similarities of plot and character in classic, multicultural, and contemporary literature that is recognized for quality and literary merit.

Identify and describe the basic elements and purpose of a variety of narrative genre including poetry, fantasy, legends, and drama.

Identify and describe characters’ actions and motivations, setting (time and place), problem/solution, and sequence of events.

Identify and explain how authors/illustrators use literary devices including illustrations and titles to depict major story events, and comparisons including metaphors or similes to reveal characters’ thoughts and actions.

Respond to individual and multiple texts by finding evidence, discussing, illustrating, and/or writing to reflect, make connections, take a position, and/or show understanding.

Informational Text

Students Will:

Identify and describe the basic form, features, and purpose of a variety of informational genre including simple “how-to” books, personal correspondence, science and social studies magazines.

Discuss informational text patterns including descriptive, sequential, enumerative, and compare/contrast.

Explain how authors use text features including boldface text, graphs, maps, diagrams, and charts to enhance the understanding of key and supporting ideas.

Respond to individual and multiple texts by finding evidence, discussing, illustrating, and/or writing to reflect, make connections, take a position, and/or show understanding.

Comprehension

Students Will:

Connect make text-to-self and text-to-text connections and comparisons by activating prior knowledge, connecting personal knowledge, experience, and understanding of others to ideas in text through oral and written responses.

Retell in sequence the major idea(s) and relevant details of grade-level narrative and informational text.

Compare and contrast relationships among characters, events, and key ideas within and across texts to create a deeper understanding by mapping story elements, graphically representing key ideas and details, and asking questions as they read.

Apply significant knowledge from grade-level science, social studies, and mathematics texts.

Metacognition

Students Will:

Self-monitor comprehension by recognizing when meaning is breaking down and use strategies including making credible predictions to increase comprehension when reading or listening to text.

Self-monitor comprehension by using strategies including constructing mental images, visually representing ideas in text, and asking questions before, during, and after reading.

Self-monitor comprehension by re-reading or listening again if uncertain about meaning, making inferences, and summarizing the most important ideas and themes in a text.

Plan, monitor, regulate, and evaluate skills, strategies, and processes to construct and convey meaning (e.g., using context to predict meaning of unfamiliar words), and discuss which comprehension strategies worked and did not work.

Self-monitor comprehension by using graphic organizers such as a Venn diagram and paragraphs to compare and contrast or indicate a sequence of ideas.

Determine which resources contain appropriate information for the intended task using teacher/student generated criteria.

Critical Standards

Students Will:

Develop and discuss shared standards and begin to assess the quality and accuracy of their own writing and the writing of others.

Reading Attitude

Students Will:

Be enthusiastic about reading and learning how to read.

Do substantial reading and writing on their own during free time in school and at home.

WRITING

Writing Genre

Students Will:

Write a narrative piece such as realistic fiction, fantasy, or personal narrative depicting major story events, using illustrations to match mood, and containing setting, problem/solution, and sequenced events.

Approximate poetry based on reading a wide variety of grade-appropriate poetry.

Writing Process

Students Will:

Set a purpose, consider audience, and begin to use styles and patterns derived from studying authors’ craft when writing a narrative or informational piece.

Develop a plan narrowing a broad idea for narrative and informational writing including graphic organizers that represent specific organizational patterns (e.g., problem/solution, sequence, description, or compare/contrast).

Draft focused ideas in written compositions using paragraph clusters, each containing a main idea and some supporting details.

Write in first and third person based on genre type and purpose.

Draft a coherent piece with appropriate grammar, usage, mechanics, and temporary spellings.

Revise drafts based on constructive and specific oral and written responses to writing; identify sections of the piece that need to be revised using reorganization, additions, deletions, and appropriate use of transitions; make stylistic changes in content and form to suit intended purpose and audience.

Attempt to proofread and edit writing using appropriate resources including dictionaries and a class-developed checklist both individually and in groups.

Personal Style

Students Will:

Develop personal style in oral, written, and visual messages in both narrative (e.g., descriptive language, use of imagination, varying sentence beginnings) and informational writing (e.g., facts, effective conclusions).

Grammar and Usage

Students Will:

Use, correctly in the context of writing, more complex complete sentences, nouns and verbs, commas (in a series, in a letter, and with dates), contractions, colons to denote time, and capitalization of proper nouns.

Spelling

Students Will:

Spell, correctly in the context of writing, frequently encountered words (e.g., two-syllable words including common prefixes and suffixes); for less frequently encountered words use structural cues (e.g., letter/sounds, rimes) and environmental sources (e.g., word walls, word lists). correctly.

Handwriting

Students Will:

Write, fluently and legibly, upper and lower case manuscript letters.

Writing Attitude

Students Will:

Be be enthusiastic about writing and learning to write.

SPEAKING

Conventions

Students Will:

Use common grammatical structures correctly when speaking including subject/verb agreement, pronoun/noun agreement, nominative and objective case pronouns, and more complex conjunctions (e.g., although, instead of, so that).

Explore and use language to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes including questions and answers, discussions, and social interactions.

Speak effectively adopting appropriate tone of voice and intonation patterns in narrative and informational presentation.

Present in standard American English if it is their first language. (Students whose first language is not English will present in their developing version of standard American English.)

Understand, providing examples of how language differs from school and home as a function of linguistic and cultural group membership.

Discourse

Students Will:

Engage in substantive conversations, remaining focused on subject matter, with interchanges building on prior responses in book discussions, peer conferencing, or other interactions.

Tell or retell stories (e.g., fantasy, legends, drama), using story grammar (e.g., elaborated information about characters, characters’ actions and motivations, plot, and setting as related to plot), while maintaining appropriate intonation and tone of voice.

Respond to multiple text types by reflecting, making connections, taking a position, and/or showing understanding.

Plan and deliver presentations using an informational organizational pattern (e.g., descriptive, cause/effect, compare/contrast) providing supportive facts and details to make their point, reflecting the source of information, while maintaining appropriate intonation and tone of voice using a prop.

LISTENING AND VIEWING

Conventions

Students Will:

Understand, restate and follow three- and four-step directions.

Ask appropriate questions for clarification and understanding during a presentation or report.

Listen to or view knowledgeably while demonstrating appropriate social skills or audience behaviors (e.g., eye contact, attentive, supportive) in small and large group settings; listen to the comments of peers and respond on topic adding a connected idea.

Understand how the source of the message affects the receiver’s response (student/student, student/teacher, student/parent).

Begin to evaluate the messages they experience in broadcast and print media distinguishing between factual information and opinion, advertising hype, or propaganda.

Response

Students Will:

Listen to or view knowledgeably and discuss a variety of genre.

Select, listen to or view knowledgeably, and respond thoughtfully to both classic and contemporary texts recognized for quality and literary merit.

Respond to multiple text types listened to or viewed knowledgeably, by discussing illustrating, and/or writing in order to reflect, make connections, take a position, and/or show understanding.