Second grade is when reading stops being the lesson and becomes the tool. The workbooks on this shelf are the floor: math, reading, writing, spelling, science, social studies. The series are the ceiling, and the ceiling is where the year is won. A second grader who reads forty Boxcar Children and Magic Tree House books has done more than second grade.
How to use it: twenty minutes of math, twenty of reading and writing, science or social studies twice a week. Then a chapter book, read alone, told back to you at lunch. That telling back is narration, and it is the whole of second-grade language arts if you let it be.
The whole year in one place: The Whole Year: 2nd Grade.
Why it works: The Whale Who Won Hearts follows explorer-photographer Brian Skerry through three true encounters with marine animals. His unexpected bond with a whale and the challenges of observing animals underwater turn marine behavior and field observation into the events readers want to follow.
Why it works: Jane Goodall's life story carries readers into the observations that changed what scientists knew about chimpanzee tools and emotions. Photographs and an early-reader biography make animal behavior and conservation part of meeting a real person rather than a detached zoology lesson.
