2nd Grade Reading Curriculum

It’s a common myth that struggling readers will improve with enough time and exposure to more reading materials. But these students don’t just need more reading. They need systematic, immersive practice with foundational reading skills.

At The Academy of Scholars, we believe in teaching research-backed reading fundamentals on a daily basis, and we start this at the pre-K level. We also believe in assessing students along the way to make sure they’re keeping up with the standards. If students start to fall behind, we believe in intervening quickly and proactively to get them back on track with reading mastery.

Why 2nd Grade Reading Matters

Second grade expectations are slightly higher than the previous grades because the focus has shifted to applying the phonics skills students have previously learned. It is no longer an introduction lesson to a new skill. Instead, students are reviewing and applying the vowel patterns or digraphs they have learned. Teachers are now looking for accuracy in their spelling, which carries into their reading. Students must use their decoding skills to accurately and fluently read a passage or story.

Intentional, strategic reading instruction is important no matter the age of the student, but it is especially critical for second graders in light of what they’re about to face: an avalanche of multi-syllable words! By the third grade, students are expected to know all kinds of “big” words, and struggling readers will begin to fall back from the pack.

Here’s why. When a student has trouble sounding out words, they often rely on their memory to get them by. When we test struggling readers, we often see that they can rattle off a long list of familiar words because they have memorized them. However, if we put an unfamiliar word in front of the same students, they will usually resort to guessing rather than strategically sounding out the word.

A good memory can keep struggling readers flying under the radar. They seem to know all of the common words, allowing them to hide the fact that they don’t have the tools to make sense of new words. But when third grade hits, their cover is blown.

Even the best memorizers will drown in the giant ocean of multi-syllable words, from “crucible” to “cacophony” to “convivial.” Suddenly, kids who have done fine in past years are landing in the lowest reading group and feeling bad about themselves as their parents wonder what happened.

Fortunately, this is not an inevitable fate. At The Academy of Scholars, our reading program for second graders here on our Decatur campus makes sure that your child is ready to face advanced reading armed with the needed skills.

What Sets The Academy of Scholars’ Reading Curriculum Apart?

Our second grade reading curriculum is among Atlanta’s best thanks to these features:

Research-based

We pride ourselves on having a curriculum built on the most current research. There are many approaches to reading, and some are more effective than others. Research makes clear, for example, that certain elements, such as phonemic awareness instruction, are indispensable when it comes to teaching children to read.

Focused on Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

Studies now show that phonemic awareness is the best predictor of success in beginning reading. In second grade, many believe that instruction should solely focus on phonics. The reality is that a phonics lesson is only effective if a student has strong phonemic awareness.

By second grade, most students have developed strong phonological awareness, such as syllables and rhyming. However, some second graders, especially those struggling to read, need additional practice to master their phonemic awareness skills. Students in second grade need to be assessed on their phonemic awareness to ensure that they are isolating the sounds in a word and not looking at them as a whole (memorizing).

At The Academy of Scholars, even our pre-K students get daily practice with phonemic awareness—and that continues through the grade levels until it becomes a natural process for all of our young readers. This skill is still a key component of our second-grade reading curriculum and prepares students to segue naturally into multi-syllable reading instruction.

Focused on Phonics

Students are using their phonics skills to be able to decode words when reading. They are quickly and accurately applying their letter-sound knowledge to sound out unfamiliar words.

Phonics is different than phonemic awareness but also essential. Phonics deals with letter-to-sound correspondence. When students are asked to spell a word, they are encoding by spelling each sound they hear in the word. It is imperative to have a phonics-based reading program because there is only a small percentage of English words that cannot be spelled using common phonics rules.

Comprehension Strategies

Decoding words is important but only insomuch as it allows students to gain meaning from the text they read. Students who rely on memorization or context clues when reading tend to have lower comprehension skills.

Our brain can only store words in our working memory for a short amount of time, and often the words are lost before the entire text or content is read. This causes poor comprehension because the text has no meaning by the time it is processed. Our explicit phonics instruction allows students to focus on comprehending the text they are reading instead of dedicating their mental energy to decoding.

We also devote additional time to developing comprehension skills, such as finding the main idea and details, drawing conclusions and inferences, identifying the plot, and sequencing events.

Our second grade reading comprehension curriculum uses rich, high-quality reading materials that are interesting to students and relevant to their lives. This not only helps kids develop a love of reading but also allows them to make meaningful connections to what they are reading.

Frequent Practice for Skills Mastery

While many schools teach correct reading principles, they don’t provide students with enough opportunities to practice those skills. This does students little good because they can’t internalize principles that they need to read fluently. Our curriculum is set up so that students get daily practice on key skills for as long as they need to master those skills. This system allows for increased autonomy as students become independent, self-correcting readers.

Diagnostics

When you’re tutoring one child, you can easily assess how well they are grasping the basics of reading. But in a classroom setting, this can be more difficult. That’s why diagnostics are so important.

At The Academy of Scholars, we regularly measure students’ progress on key benchmarks. In addition to frequent and close monitoring of student progress, teachers are equipped with computer-adaptive reading diagnostic tools that accurately highlight areas of improvement for each individual student. This allows us to intervene appropriately to help students stay on top of the skills they need for reading mastery.

Trained Faculty

Some people believe that having a teacher with many years of experience is beneficial, but in reality, that teacher may only be trained in traditional and sometimes outdated teaching methods or instructional approaches.

On the other hand, there are teachers eager to teach students to read, but they have not been formally trained to do so. To ensure our scholars’ success, we dedicate time to train our teachers on how to use our research-backed reading curriculum.

Our teachers not only know the “whys” behind reading mastery but exactly how to teach key reading principles daily and how to intervene when students are falling behind.

Curriculum Consistency

Because our faculty is intensively trained in our reading curriculum, there’s consistency in reading instruction between classes and grade levels. One grade picks up seamlessly where the other leaves off without instructional gaps. This consistency also allows content to build on previous knowledge, which minimizes overlaps in content while still reinforcing skills and concepts necessary to develop exceptional readers.

Unlocking a Passion for Reading

It is essential that students develop a passion for reading. Research shows that early reading success sets the stage for broader academic and lifelong reading success. Through reading, students have enhanced communication skills, improved critical thinking skills, and even more confidence. We focus on making every lesson engaging to foster a love of reading.

If you’re looking for unparalleled reading instruction for second graders here in Decatur, contact The Academy of Scholars. The proof is in our track record. We’ve helped countless students learn to love and excel at reading, and we look forward to doing the same for your child.