Today I’m sharing with you what my son with Down Syndrome did for second grade.

My kindergarten and first grade curriculum posts align with standard grade-level expectations. But second grade is different. As children with Down Syndrome get older, the academic gap between them and their typically developing peers widens.

So, this “Second Grade Curriculum” I’m sharing with you is not based on the chronological age of typically developing children. Rather, it is a combination of the materials that worked best for my son with T21 at 8 years old and what I think could be appropriate for the other 8 and 9 year old children who came to our Down Syndrome Co-op last year.

Of course, each child learns at his/her own pace, and even within Down Syndrome there is great variability. But I hope this list will help you develop a curriculum that will best suit your child and will reduce the amount of adapting you’ll have to do. I hope you’ll find some things here that will help your child/student succeed in “Second Grade.”

Language Arts

Reading

For many children with Down Syndrome, reading is a relative strength. In second grade, many are continuing to develop their reading skills; others are still struggling. When it comes to phonics, the children with Down Syndrome who make little progress seem to get stuck on two things: Blending and Orthographic mapping (which is essentially moving newly decoded words into long term memory so you don’t need to keep sounding them out.) I have written a lot on Teaching Children with Down Syndrome to Read, so if your child is still struggling to read, please visit that post.

My favorite reading curricula for kids with Down Syndrome between 7-10 years old who are still learning to read are:

Note: The more I work with children with Down Syndrome, the more I am convinced that not being able to move newly decoded words into long term memory for automatic recall is what hinders progress in phonics.

This is why starting with sight words first is so important for most children with Down Syndrome. Studies have shown that children with Down Syndrome who have a large bank of sight words (100+) before staring phonics make faster progress once they do start phonics.

If your student is “stuck” on phonics and has difficulty moving newly decoded words into long-term memory for automatic recall and fluency, consider taking a break from phonics and focusing on building a bank of sightwords. Read Teaching Children with Down Syndrome to Read for ideas on how to do that.

You can find all my Sight Word resources here, and all my Phonics resources here.

Besides the “main course” of a sight word or phonics program, you’ll want to supplement with real books. These are generally more motivating than packaged curricula, especially when you offer books that fit your child’s interests. So, check out Our Favorite Books for Emergent Readers to help your child develop his/her reading skills.

Reading Comprehension: Read-Aloud and Shared Reading

Sometimes parents and teachers place such an emphasis on phonics and decoding that comprehension takes a back seat. We need to remember that comprehension is the whole point of reading. If children are decoding without comprehending, (which can often be the case when blending/decoding causes cognitive overload) we need to take the extra time help them comprehend what they have just read.

In a recent meeting with a group of international Down Syndrome reading specialists, Sue Buckley reminded us that Comprehension is Key. The text MUST link to the child’s world, and the joy of reading must be a priority.

Hence the importance of Shared Reading / Read Alouds. In second grade, reading aloud to your child continues to be an important way of building vocabulary, grammar, and comprehension, while expanding their horizons.

If your child is reading well, taking turns reading pages of a book is a fun way to share reading while modeling expressive reading. Talking about unfamiliar words as well as plot and characters is an important way to build comprehension.

See this post on Shared Book Reading for ideas on how to discuss a book in order to build vocabulary and comprehension.

Spelling

My favorite spelling curriculum continues to be All About Spelling. This year, my son completed Level 2

Spelling can be very challenging for our kids. It requires:

• phonological awareness skills in order to segment a word into sounds,
• good short term working memory to remember the sequence of sounds in each word,
• and long-term memory in order to remember how to spell previously learned words so a student does not always have to segment.
• good visual memory to be able to “see” if a word is spelled incorrectly.

To help my son with I created adapted spelling worksheets.

Using these adapted spelling worksheets alongside phonogram tiles has really enabled my son to gain independence in spelling and writing words. It may take him a week or two of practicing a set of words with and then without the phonogram tiles, but eventually he can spell the words independently.

Continual review of learned spelling words is important, so each spelling lesson consists of practicing new words and reviewing old ones.

For more details on how we work on spelling, see this post: Teaching Spelling to Children with Down Syndome.

Handwriting

We continue to work on handwriting on a daily basis because my son still sometimes forgets how to properly form letters, particularly uppercase letters which are not used frequently. Or, if I am not vigilant, incorrect strokes will begin to slip in.

If I see my son has formed a letter incorrectly or too sloppily, I will take note and later that day, we will take turns practicing that letter. For example:

Copy-work (old-fashioned though it sounds) is still an important way to work on handwriting skills. Copying requires good working memory. Children need to be able to look at a letter, hold it in their memory, and then write it. A child with Down Syndrome may need to look at a letter multiple times while trying to copy it. So if your student is copying a word or a sentence, it will be very helpful if you point to each letter in the word while he/she is copying it. In addition, make sure whatever your student is copying is written in a large font. Writing large letters gives them more time to process their strokes.

To make copy-work meaningful, let your child dictate a sentence for you. You write it down and he/she copies it right below your handwriting. When students get to copy/write their own sentences, they are more motivated. They can make up sentences about what they just learned, what they did, what they like, where they want to go, etc.

As you will see, copy-work is also easily incorporated into other subjects, as students narrate/dictate what they have learned in writing, geography, science, etc.

By the way, what your students use to write with matters. Please don’t give your student regular 2HB pencils. Instead, visit this post on My Favorite Handwriting Tools for Kids with Down Syndrome.

Creative Writing

Creative writing and journalling is SO important for our students. With a no-pressure approach, creative writing allows kids to process emotions, helps them organize their thoughts, improves fine motor skills, and over time, builds grammar skills. Children with special needs often have things done to and for them. Creative writing allows them to be in control of what is written. Finally, sharing a journal entry or story helps our students communicate to others the things that matter to them.

Since many children with Down Syndrome are so averse to handwriting, the point of these activities are to build a love for writing as a way of communicating. We keep them short and fun, and always praise any efforts.

Conversational writing – I love Mrs. Brown’s approach to creative writing, which is to make it conversational. Again, you can write out questions or comments about things that interest them, and let them freely respond. If your student makes mistakes with grammar, spelling, or handwriting, correct only one thing (or nothing at all!), take note of any mistakes and address them at a later time. Correcting all their mistakes in the moment would likely discourage them from doing this activity and take the fun and joy out of it.

When your student is ready, (and you’ll know this when he/she wants to) let him/her write a question that you answer. Then you can take turns asking and answering questions.

Journaling helps our students remember and tell what happened in the past, which for my son is a real challenge. Showing my son a picture of something he did helps him remember and talk about the event. If he draws a blank, I use the WH words (who is in this picture, what are they doing, where is this, when did this happen, why are they happy/sad, ) to prompt ideas. Because the task of remembering something in the past and telling about it is so challenging for my son, I let him dictate while I write down what he says. Then he copies the sentences.

Letter Writing – Encourage your student to write letters to friends and family members and put them in the mail. People love getting these letters and its good for our kids to think about bringing joy to others. These letters can be as long or short as the child wants. Let your child dictate and then copy a letter for you if he/she prefers. Knowing that their letter is going to someone special makes writing it more appealing.

Story Telling/Writing – One activity I did this year with a student in our do-op was personal story writing with AI generated pictures. I showed him the pictures and he dictated his own story while I wrote it down. He then read it back to me chose one sentence to copy. Creating the images on AI is time consuming, but his level of interest and motivation made it so worth it. Here’s a sample from a story composed by a student in our Down Syndrome Co-op. As part of this exercise, we were working on using adjectives (huge, large) and strong verbs (leapt, declared) to expand his vocabulary.

I would love a nicely packaged writing curriculum for kids with Down Syndrome. But for our students, creative writing is a subject that needs to be personal and interest-driven. My recommendation is to simply rotate through these four activities (conversational writing, journaling, letter writing, and story telling).. daily or weekly, or simply based on what your student wants to write about in the moment. Once your student is used to dictating stories and letters, encourage the use of more descriptive words.

Poetry

I’ve written this many times before… memorizing and reciting poetry develops the memory and imagination and fills the mind with beautiful imagery. For children with speech delays, poetry helps to develop articulation and pacing in speech.

Math

This year, my son made slow but steady progress with math.

In first grade, he completed about half of Math with Confidence, Gr. 1 alongside Simply Addition 1 and Simply Subtraction 1.

In Second Grade, my son was starting to get frustrated with the unpredictability of the activities in the Math With Confidence workbook, so we took a break. Instead we did the following:

We focused on addition and subtraction within 20 with Simply Addition 2 and Simply Subtraction 2.

And we practiced one or two of these math skills daily using math manipulatives:

• counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s
• filling in missing numbers on a hundreds chart
• building and comparing numbers within 100 with rekenreks
• telling the time on a large clock
• counting coins and bills and playing shopping
• idenitfying and building simple fractions
• measuring with a ruler with inches and feet
• identifying shapes and patterns

In addition, I wrote these math worksheets for my son and the kids in our co-op:

In the spring, we returned to Math with Confidence Gr. 1. By then, most of the concepts were already familiar, and he was able to do the workbook with help but with greater confidence. He completed the Gr. 1 book during the summer.

Which goes to show that when a curriculum is not working, its ok to take a break from it, try other resources, and return to it later.

By the end of second grade, my son was adding and subtracting double digits with a rekenrek and support.

For a list of all my favorite math manipulatives and how we used them, see this post: My Favorite Math Manipulatives for Kids with Down Syndrome.

If your student is still working on kindergarten level math skills, such as counting to 20 or adding withing 10, see this post: Ten Essential Math Skills that Prepare Children with Down Syndrome for Addition.

You may also be interested in checking out all my Math Resources for Students with Down Syndrome.

Science

This year, for each science lesson we either read a few pages of a science book and made a journal page about it or we played with Montessori Three- Part-Cards.

Here are some of the favorite books we used for science this year:

We also enjoyed several books from the Let’s Read and Find Out Level 1 series . This series covers a lot of topics within life science. Many of them are available at the library. We will continue reading more of these in third grade.

Because my son enjoys Montessori Three Part Cards, we continued using these cards from Etsy (which we also used in first grade.)

Social Studies

For Social Studies, we played with a Continents Map/Puzzle and a USA Puzzle.

I also put this laminated map up on the wall, and we would take turns naming and finding states.

Whenever we came across the name of a state in a book, we would find it on the map.

We also learned about the different land and water forms using this very simple Land and Water book and this wonderful set of Landform Cards:

And, since we’re always trying to build vocabulary, we also played with this set of Community Workers cards:

Art and Music

For art, we practiced drawing very simple objects, such as a house, apple, balloon, snowman, people, a sun. I’d show my son step-by-step how to draw, and he would copy.

He also completed a coloring page several days each week, either from a Kumon Coloring Book or something of high interest I’d pull off the internet, such as a Thomas the Train coloring page or seasonal coloring pages. Coloring is so great for building hand strength.

These Art Masterpieces Cards are a great spring-board for conversation, and the teacher’s guide is helpful for pointing out interesting aspects of each piece of art. For each masterpeice, students are also given the opportunity to identify similar artwork from the same artist. My son enjoyed looking at the art work and finding the similar painting.

And last, but most importantly..

Religion

My son LOVES listening to stories about the lives of the saints with these audio Glory Stories by Holy Heroes. There are over 20 saint stories in this series.

You can purchase them as CDs or MP3s. I turn them into Yoto cards so he can freely choose what to listen to without having to ask me.

He also continued Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Classes... hands down the best religion program for young children and children with special needs.

And that’s our second grade curriculum!

For lists of all my favorite curriculum for children with Down Syndrome, see my page on Down Syndrome Homeschool Resources.