Grade 2

List of 10 items.

• Literacy

  Students become active readers with the skills to question the text, summarize, analyze, and make predictions, while connecting personally to elements of character and plot. As nonfiction writers, students learn to research, take notes, paraphrase, and organize new information to share with others. Through free writing cycles and realistic fiction projects, students develop their voice as authors, including skills like use of dialogue, character development, problems and solutions, and structuring a story arc. In Word Study, students analyze spelling patterns and practice applying them to their own written work.

• Mathematics

  Students extend their understanding of place value and build fluency as they develop the ability to work flexibly and efficiently with larger numbers. Using a variety of mathematical models, students record and share their problem solving process as they work through more complex addition and subtraction problems. Students learn more about time, geometry, currency, standard units of measure and fractions, and apply their growing understanding to real-life situations.

• Social Studies

  Students explore their family histories along with the ways that our city functions and responds to the needs of New Yorkers. Students design an interview protocol for use with each of their families, then share what they learn about traditions, experiences, and how their family came to live in or near New York City. This personal lens broadens into a study of community geography, as students learn foundational mapping skills and practice reading and giving cardinal directions. Using research, field trips, and expert interviews, students explore interconnected systems that keep the city moving: learning about how food, waste, and transportation are managed. Students apply all they’ve learned as they design potential solutions for real-world challenges related to these community systems.

• Art

  Work in the art studio offers instruction and practice in new skill sets, along with the freedom to explore and take risks. Students build confidence in their own creative instincts as they learn to express themselves visually with a wide variety of materials including paint, clay, and collage. Creating a movable Mini-Me puppet engages students in the challenge of depicting the body in motion. Collage offers the opportunity to explore repetition, symmetry, and composition, deepening students' understanding of patterns. With clay, students hone their skills as they create pinch pots with sculptural attachments.

• Dance

  Students explore aspects of jazz, ballet, and modern dance, along with choreographic tools from Laban Movement Analysis, as they practice skills and design dance pieces of their own. Working in pairs and small groups, students develop their collaboration skills with strong support for positive process. Students learn to represent movement using Language of Dance symbols, integrating literacy tools as part of their dance experience.

• Physical Education and Athletics

  Students develop body awareness, strength, power and flexibility as they learn proper technique for a variety of manipulative skills such as throwing, catching, dribbling, kicking, striking, and volleying in isolation and in organized games. Advanced tumbling movements combine balance, flexibility, and strength, including some work with apparatus. With abundant opportunities for partner work and teamwork, students build confidence in their skills for communication, self-assertion, listening, negotiating, and collaborating to achieve a common goal.

• Science

  Students use scientific skills as they learn about simple machines and magnetism at the start of the year. They continue to build skills needed to work as scientists, engaging in both “fair test” experiments and the Engineering Design Process with these principles. In their unit “Science of Sound” students study the concepts of vibration, amplification, timbre, and pitch by building their own instruments using recycled materials. They hone their observational skills with a final investigation of snails, to learn about habitat and adaptations.

• Spanish

  Students develop their listening and speaking skills as they’re immersed in Spanish language dialogue, activities, songs, and games. Vocabulary focuses on communication about real-world topics such as days of the week, months, seasons, colors, shapes, numbers, parts of the body, clothing, vehicles, jobs, and professions. In assigned written work, students review and build upon the everyday communication skills covered in class.

• Music

  Students engage with music through singing and listening activities, creative movement, multi-sensory projects, improvisation, and composition using instrumental and vocal music from around the world. Working in ensembles, students hone their musical memory as well as their rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic accuracy. Sight-singing and ear-training become more complex and nuanced as their musical confidence and sensitivity to other singers and the conductor grows. Students enjoy the safe and engaging space of music class, learning about themselves, their classmates, and the world around them through active music making.

• STEAM

  The Grade 2 STEAM curriculum integrates the design process of Think, Make, Improve with basic coding principles using physical and digital materials. Students brainstorm and plan projects and then use tools such as LEGOs and ScratchJr to create them. They refine their work through iterative testing and feedback. Projects include building models, programming simple animations, and coding basic robots. Through these activities, we foster our students' creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. This hands-on, collaborative approach nurtures resilience and digital fluency, which prepares students for future STEAM learning.