Second Grade - Math

In second grade, students in SFUSD engage in 60 minutes of daily math instruction. Math instruction supports students in building agency and supports their identities as mathematicians. Math lessons provide both concrete and conceptual understanding for students by giving them opportunities to deepen their understanding of concepts through play and exploration. By the end of the year, second-grade students fluently add and subtract within 100 and know all sums of two one-digit numbers from memory.

During math instruction, students are engaged in a number of instructional contexts and routines: math talks, counting routines, and learning stations. Math talks feature flexibility with numbers and developing understanding of the base 10 system, and developing strategies such as repeated counting of groups of objects such as coins or objects arranged in arrays. In addition, engaging in collaborative tasks and games will result in joyful math learners.  

The second-grade fluency requirements are single-digit sums and differences and adding and subtracting within 100.

In addition to grade-specific content standards, all grades K-12 share the same 8 Standards for Mathematical Practice that describe the behaviors of mathematicians.

• Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
• Reason abstractly and quantitatively
• Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
• Model with mathematics
• Use appropriate tools strategically
• Attend to precision
• Look for and make use of structure
• Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

Class norms help students, and give them opportunities to be accountable to the community and to act on the prosocial values of responsibility, respect, fairness, caring, and helpfulness. They support equitable participation, engagement with the practices of doing math, and the establishment of a positive classroom climate. Establish class norms at the beginning of the school year and continue to reinforce them every day.

Math Talks are teacher-led, student-centered techniques for building math thinking and academic discourse. They allow for multiple entry points and encourage students to value the thinking of others so that they can build a better understanding of their own thinking. Math Talks support students in developing their mental math skills.

The Three Read Protocol is one way to do a close read of a complex math word problem or task. This strategy includes reading a math scenario three times with a different goal each time. The first read is to understand the context. The second read is to understand the mathematics. The third read is to elicit inquiry questions based on the scenario.

Groupwork feedback is a strategy to publicly recognize the class norms and math focus of students as they work in groups. Groupwork is loosely defined to include partners, trios, or larger group sizes. The teacher takes public notes about the quality of the group work and the quality of the mathematical discussions. This feedback should focus on the specific nature of group work interactions as well as target mathematics of the lesson rather than general positive reinforcement.

Daily routines are the cornerstone of the mathematics curriculum in the early primary grades. This structure provides opportunities for deeper learning that requires students to continuously revisit potentially abstract concepts in a concrete context. Although the basic routine structures will stay the same throughout the year, the complexity and focus will change and develop over time. 

Learning stations are an activity-based structure that provides students with opportunities for student-led engagement with, or extensions of, previously taught concepts. Stations can also be used to explore new manipulatives/tools before they are used in a formal lesson. You can use this time to observe students, pull small groups for targeted instruction or formative assessment, or teach the lessons in small groups.