During 2nd grade, students will become more independent readers and writers as they learn more skills. Your child will:

• Explore vowel sounds in words and read regular and irregularly spelled words;

• Form uppercase and lowercase cursive letters;

• Compose and publish a variety of writing pieces;

• Listen to, read, talk and write about 2nd-grade fiction and nonfiction using clues from the text to make sense of and analyze what they have read;

• Speak and write appropriately using parts of speech, capitalization, punctuation and generalized spelling patterns, as well as language that shows a growing vocabulary; use glossaries/beginning dictionaries.

During 2nd grade, students will develop the ability to add and subtract up to 20 and add and subtract up to 100 using place value and properties of operations. Your child will:

• Understand shapes and their attributes; and

• Begin working with equal groups of objects to build a foundation for learning multiplication;

• Use measurement to make a dot chart.

During 2nd grade, your child will be an active learner who will be doing science to learn science. They will learn skills that promote analysis and interpretation of data, critical thinking and problem solving similar to professionals in the field while making connections across the different areas of science to develop a deeper understanding of the science concepts. Your child will:

• Observe the different kinds of plants and animals living in different environments and areas;

• Understand how wind and water can change the shape of land by erosion, and how people can prevent or slow down these changes by doing things like planting trees and building fences;

• Explore how different materials look, feel and act differently; and

• Determine what plants need to grow and how they depend on animals for seed dispersal and pollination.

In 2nd grade, students begin to understand how communities work together throughout North America (Canada, Mexico and the U.S.). Your child will:

• Compare the rights and responsibilities of citizens;

• Compare the ways various cultures in North America connect and interact;

• Categorize different limited resources as renewable and nonrenewable; and

• Identify and compare the diverse cultural groups of North America in the past and today.