Meet Our Teachers
Miss Biernat | Bio
Mrs. Turkowski | Bio
- Throughout the year, students prepare for the sacraments of Reconciliation and First Holy Communion. In daily religion lessons, students gain a better understanding of the seven sacraments, Ten Commandments, sequence and parts of the Mass, and research backgrounds on individual Catholic Saints. In addition, students develop and participate in a grade level prayer service and religious retreat.
- Students continue to develop reading comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, writing, and spelling skills, while reading and reporting on books of their choice in engaging and interactive ways.
- Real-life skills are incorporated in a three month project that results in a small café run solely by second graders. This project includes parent and personal interviews, restaurant research, individual resumes, job training, as well as taking on an individual role of their choice in the restaurant (open for parents and parishioners). These various stages incorporate reading, writing, critical thinking, basic research, problem solving, collaboration, team-building, and presentation skills. This educational and engaging experience has become a memorable tradition for second graders at SJS.
The students will prepare for the sacraments of Reconciliation and First Communion. Our Religion lessons include our focus of the day, Scripture, prayers, music, activities, biographies, Bible stories, and doctrine. Our second grade curriculum includes:
- God’s Promise and Word
- God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
- Making good choices and God’s Mercy
- Praying as Jesus did
- God’s word
- Jesus’ sacrifice
- Sharing the Holy Meal
- Forever in Heaven
We will cover two reading texts this year. The texts are divided into weekly stories taken from children’s literature. Along with our texts, we have a reading workbook and leveled books for independent reading. Our daily reading class will include lessons in:
- Reading aloud and silently
- Study skills
Each week we will teach a spelling lesson, and most weeks there will be a written test on Friday. We will stress the recognition of structural similarities as well as phonetic similarities. Students are asked to study for weekly spelling tests with a parent. Review tests encompassing the past several lessons will be given at times.
In our daily work and homework, correct spelling is encouraged. We will teach it in the writing process (prewriting, writing, revising, proofreading and publishing).
Both classes use the text for information, Science vocabulary, experiments and activities. Each student will keep a Science notebook to record Science experiments and information. Our units of study are Life Science, Physical Science, Earth Science, and the Human Body. Science projects will be assigned periodically.
Our Math program follows our Math teaching standards very closely. We will start the year studying strategies for addition and subtraction facts to 20 and also include word problems. We will study place value, money, adding and subtracting 2-digit and 3-digit numbers, time, data, graphs, fractions, probability, and multiplication and division. Our Math lessons will include the problem of the day, Math Vocabulary, strategies, an introduction to the lesson, and practice and maintenance. We would like to stress the importance of keeping Math skills sharp. Practice at home with flash cards or other materials would be very helpful. There are also some wonderful websites dealing with the basic addition and subtraction facts that many of the children are using.
Social Studies is taught three times a week. We enjoy doing this while giving the children an in-depth approach to the experience of changing classes. Our Social Studies topics include where we live, our Earth, working together, our country today, our country long ago, and people and places in history. Holidays and calendar activities will also be included.
The Zaner-Blaser handwriting method will be used for instruction. We will review letters and handwriting skills early in the year. We will stress correct letter formation, appropriate size and spacing, pencil grip, paper position, margins, headings, and legibility.
We will teach cursive strokes and begin cursive letters. We will work on the connection of letters and reading cursive writing. Practice in cursive homework will be given as letters are learned. It is our goal to have the students writing in cursive by the end of the year. Our spelling book introduces the lessons in cursive later in the year, and we will work with that slowly.
We will be using our Language Arts series this year in conjunction with our Reading and Spelling series. We will cover grammar, speech, usage, mechanics, punctuation, vocabulary, speaking, listening, study skills, and writing. A very strong emphasis will be placed on the six traits of writing:
- Ideas and Content
- Sentence Fluency
- Word Choice