Norris School District, Curriculum

 Language Arts Communication  2

TITLE  

                Language Arts 2

TEXTBOOK

                Houghton Mifflin Reading Series, 2005.

                Student workbook, Houghton Mifflin Reading Series, 2005.

DESCRIPTION

Second grade students practice and develop the five components of reading which include; phonics, spelling, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.  Skills groups are organized to teach each of the 5 reading components.  The reading series, Houghton Mifflin is divided into 6 reading themes for the school year.  Students are assessed using the series theme tests and reported each quarter. 

Students practice reading at their instructional level in a variety of forms including small groups with the teacher, peer reading, independent reading, choral reading or reader’s theatre, and one on one with a teacher or Para educator.  Reading materials used include the student anthology, phonics library, leveled readers, and literature sets to accompany the 6 Houghton Mifflin reading themes.  Students are provided with additional daily take home books at their own reading level for further practice at home.  Computer software programs including Essential Skills; Sight words 1 and 2, and Success Maker add to the reading practice in the elementary computer lab and pod computer labs.  Sound Partners, a one to one tutorial program is used as a reading intervention.

Students practice and develop writing skills through with personal narratives, journaling, letter writing, and the writing process.  Spelling skills are taught in conjunction with the phonics skills, and the students are given weekly spelling tests.    The various genres of literature are introduced and incorporated into science and social studies. 

COURSE OBJECTIVES

1.        Students will speak clearly and audibly in large, small groups, or one-on-one. (4.3.1, 4.3.2)

2.        Students will use rules of grammar appropriately. (4.2.1)

3.        Students will contribute self-generated ideas to the topic. (4.3.1, 4.2.5)

4.        Students will identify statements and questions. (4.3.1)

5.        Students will retell events in logical order. (4.2.2)

6.    Students will listen and respond to statements and questions. (4.4.1)

7.    Students will write a five-part friendly letter in correct form. (4.2.4)

8.        Students will write in complete sentences using nouns and verbs, capitals, (beginning, names of people), and correct punctuation (periods, exclamation marks, and question marks). (4.2.1)

9.         Students will be able to identify root word and use suffixes – ed, es, est, ex, less, ness, ful, ly,     and prefixes – re, un, dis.(4.2.1)

10.      Students will demonstrate the use of editing skills and symbols within the context of personal writing. (4.2.1, 4.2.3)

11.      Students will spell high frequency words for level two. (4.2.1)

WRITING ACTIVITIES

Students are taught and practice journaling, spelling, the writing process (prewriting, rough draft, revising, editing, and final drafts) poetry writing, literature response, and letter writing.  Personal narrative writing is practiced and assessed.

MULTICULTURAL ACTIVITIES

1.        Students will participate in oral discussions and respond to questions related to multicultural multimedia presentations and literature.