Second-grade students are becoming more competent communicators and thinkers. They are developing more capability for applying strategies that enhance comprehension. These strategies help students to construct their own meanings from oral, written, and visual material. Students read for pleasure and to gain information as they continue to develop fluency. Through reading, hearing, and viewing literature and through studying language and how it works, these students are growing in their appreciation and understanding of language. They express meaning more effectively, competently, and confidently in various spoken and written formats. As they become more adept in process writing, their written products show improvement.

Through a variety of language experiences, students develop important critical-thinking skills. By responding to questions that are thought-provoking and through participating in class discussions, they learn to paraphrase, interpret, analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and defend their judgments. Classroom situations allow students frequent opportunities to express how they perceive literature, language, and personal experiences. Language is composed of reading, writing, grammar, phonics, and spelling.  It seems like a large group of subjects, but they are all related.  Due to the close relationship of these subjects, I feel they are best taught together rather than separately.