Second Grade Specials
NFS Curriculum Update :: January, 2016
ART
Second grade artists will continue to cover the Swedish dala horses they build out of newspaper with plaster strips, creating a hard shell. Students will paint and add traditional decorative motifs onto the horse. This will most likely take the majority of the month so we will finish out January learning about artists Jacob Lawrence and Horace Pippen.
LIBRARY
Second Grade begins a unit on biographies. We will read numerous picture book biographies of the famous, the infamous, and a few unsung heroes. In January these include Uncle Andy's (Andy Warhol), An Eye for Color (Josef Albers), Daredevil (Betty Skelton), and The Boy Who Loved Math (Paul Erdos).
MUSIC
The second graders will be reviewing the difference between beat and rhythm, reading and writing music using quarter notes, quarter rests and eighth notes, and learning about half notes, dotted half notes, and whole notes! Our composer of the month is American composer John Williams.
P.E.
This month we will continue to develop our physical fitness and work on our muscular strength with a focus on core. The class will move forward with our basketball unit with an emphasis on shooting the basketball. We will be using size appropriate balls and baskets so students will be able to focus on the proper techniques of shooting a basketball. Each class will use the rock wall once this month. We will also play large group games like Pilo Polo and Flag Grab. We will also begin to learn the skills of jumping and jumping rope as we prepare for our fifth annual Jump Rope for Heart event in February.
SCIENCE
Second graders spend January delving into erosion, weathering and deposition. Typically, erosion refers to the gradual wearing away of soil, dirt, rock, or other land structures over time through natural forces such as water or wind. We will get messy with sand, water and ice as we model in the classroom what happens in nature.
SPANISH
!Feliz año nuevo! (Happy New Year). In January we will videotape and share the Spanish dialogues students have written with their classmates. That will signal the end of that unit, however we will continue to use and practice the Spanish they’ve learned in this unit throughout the year. Next we will move on to personal description. Second Grade will learn how to give basic physical and personality descriptions of themselves and others in Spanish. The final project for this unit will incorporate technology using Wixie. We have started adding questions about the weather to our classroom routine and we will continue practicing those phrases, along with other calendar vocabulary, each class.