Second grade represents the critical juncture between lower and upper elementary school.
In Language Arts, the second grade students transition from guided reading groups to small group independent reading discussions and, in writing, from highly structured, teacher directed revisions to peer and self-editing. Math includes crafting and responding to open ended word problems with real world applications, as well as moving rapidly through math facts to gain automaticity. Social Studies requires independent research using texts and carefully selected websites that students paraphrase, summarize, and transform into papers, projects, and presentations. In science, the second grade students are given responsibility for generating their own hypotheses, then collecting, organizing, and presenting data to support or refute their claims.