In first grade, students still naturally feel themselves very much part of the group. In second grade, students begin to loosen up from the group a bit – they start to feel themselves more as individuals. They are ready to try out “standing on their own two feet”, and they experience this as a new sense of freedom. Though up to now, children have been living with parental and cultural group ethics, this new flirtation with freedom ushers in the possibility of conscious moral development. Second graders are experimenting with freedom, and begin to develop a moral code. This means they are often very naughty! Trickster tales and Aesop’s fables reflect this naughtiness, and serve as a common thread throughout the year.
Separation from the group brings with it the experience of duality. 
This is addressed in the curriculum with a focus on polarities – me and you, up and down, mine and not mine, fast and slow, ad infinitum. In a year of duality, the polar opposite of the fables must be brought as well, and consequently stories of heroes and saints also form a theme for the year.
Students continue working with the four processes, addition and subtraction, and multiplication and division. Place value is taught this year and students continue to memorize math facts such as the multiplication and division tables. Cursive writing is often introduced and students begin working more explicitly with phonics and the mechanics of reading.