Second Grade

Family guide to the standards for second grade developed by Kentucky Department of Education can be found here.

In second grade we have divided your child's learning into a progression of units or clusters that will lead to understanding of mathematics in four major areas:

1. Number and Operations in Base Ten

• Students extend their understanding of the base-ten system. This includes ideas of counting in fives, tens, and multiples of hundreds, tens, and ones, as well as number relationships involving these units, including comparing.
• Students understand multi-digit numbers (up to 1000) written in base-ten form recognizing that the digits in each place represent amounts of thousands, hundreds, tens, or ones (e.g., 853 is 8 hundreds + 5 tens + 3 ones).

2. Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Numbers and Operations in Base Ten

• Students use their understanding of addition to develop fluency with addition and subtraction within 100.
• Students solve problems within 1000 by applying their understanding of models for addition and subtraction.
• Students develop, discuss, and use accurate methods to compute sums and differences of whole numbers in base-ten form using their understanding of place value and the properties of operations.
• Students select and accurately apply methods that are appropriate for the context and numbers involved to mentally calculate sums and differences for numbers with only tens or only hundreds.

3. Measurement and Data

• Students recognize the need for standard units of measure (centimeter and inch).
• Students use rulers and other measurement tools with the understanding that linear measure involves repetition of units.
• Students recognize that the smaller the unit, the more repetition they need to cover a given length.

4. Geometry

• Students describe and classify shapes as polygons or non-polygons.
• Students investigate, describe and reason about decomposing and combining shapes to make other shapes.
• Students draw, partition and analyze two-dimensional shapes to develop a foundation for understanding area, congruence, similarity and fractions in later grades.

To access math resources to support your child, use the drop menu from above or click here.

In the area of Reading/Writing, there are five critical components in which your child will focus his/her learning as a second grader. The instruction in your child's classroom through the reading units will help your child increase skill development in the following:

1. Phonics and Word Recognition

• Students identify when a vowel is short or long when reading regularly spelled one-syllable words.
• Students know spelling-sound correspondences for additional common vowel teams.
• Students decode regularly spelled two-syllable words with long vowels.
• Students identify, decode and know the meaning of words with the most common prefixes and derivational suffixes (a type of suffix that creates a new word e.g., adding ed to teach to create teacher).
• Students identify words with inconsistent but common spelling-sound correspondences.
• Students recognize and read grade appropriate irregularly spelled words.

2. Fluency

• Students read fluently (accuracy, speed and prosody - the patterns of rhythm and sound) on grade level to support comprehension.
• Students read grade level text with purpose and understanding.
• Students orally read grade level text fluently on successive readings.
• Students use context to confirm or self correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.

3. Reading Comprehension (Literature and Informational)

• Students ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why and how, and make and support logical inferences to construct meaning from the text.
• Students identify implicit and explicit information from a summary to determine the author's message, lesson learned, moral or central idea including but not limited to fables, folktales from diverse cultures or a text.
• Students describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges in order to make meaning of the story development.
• Students describe the connection between individuals, historical events, scientific ideas or concepts or steps in technical procedures over the course of a text.
• Students describe how words and phrases, including but not limited to regular beats, alliteration, rhymes and/or repeated lines, supply rhythm and shape meaning in a story, poem or song.
• Students describe how parts of the text contribute to the overall structure of poems, stories and dramas, including but not limited to linear, nonlinear and circular structures.
• With prompting and support, students acknowledge differences in the perspectives of characters, including speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue aloud, and how those perspectives shape the content of the text.
• Students determine the meaning of general academic words and phrases and how those words and phrases shape meaning in a grade level text.
• Students identify and describe informational text structures, including sequence/chronological and descriptive structures, and describe the logical connection between particular sentences and paragraphs in a text and how they contribute to the overall structure.
• Students identify the main purpose of a text, including what the author wants to answer, explain or describe, and how that purpose shapes the content of the text.
• Students use a story's illustrations and words in print/non-print texts to demonstrate understanding of characters, setting and plot.
• Students identify information gained from visuals and words in the text, and explain how that information contributes to the understanding of the text.
• Students describe how reasons support specific claims the author makes in a text.
• Students describe the relationship between information from two or more texts on the same theme or topic.
• Students compare/contrast two or more versions of the same story by different authors or from different cultures.
• By the end of the year, students flexibly use a variety of comprehension strategies (i.e., questioning, monitoring, visualizing, inferencing, summarizing, using prior knowledge, determining importance) to read, comprehend and analyze grade level appropriate, complex literary or informational texts independently and proficiently.

4. Handwriting and Composition Writing

• Students learn and practice the formation of all upper- and lowercase cursive letters.
• Students compose opinion pieces, informative and/or explanatory texts, and narratives using a combination of writing and digital resources.
• With guidance and support, students strengthen writing through peer/adult collaboration and add details through writing and/or pictures as needed.
• With guidance and support, students produce writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task and purpose.
• For opinion writing, students introduce the topic, followed by an opinion statement, create an organizational structure, provide reasons with details to support the opinion, use grade-appropriate transitions, provide a concluding section and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising and editing.
• For informative/explanatory writing, students introduce the topic, supply information with detail to develop the topic, use grade-appropriate conjunctions to develop text structure within sentences, use grade-appropriate transitions to develop text structures across paragraphs, provide a concluding section and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising and editing.
• For narrative writing, students recount a single event or multiple events, memories or ideas, include details which describe actions, thoughts and emotions, use temporal words and phrases to signal event order, create a sense of closure and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising and editing.
• With guidance and support from adults, students use a variety of digital resources to create and publish products, including collaboration with peers.
• Students conduct shared research and writing projects that build knowledge about a topic.
• Students collect information from real-world experiences or provided sources to answer or generate questions.

5. Language and Vocabulary:

• In writing or speaking, students demonstrate appropriate use of collective nouns, frequently occurring irregular nouns, reflexive pronouns, past tense of frequently occurring irregular verbs, adjectives/adverbs in sentence formation and producing, expanding and rearranging complete simple and compound sentences.
• Students capitalize proper nouns, including but not limited to holidays, product names and geographic names.
• Students demonstrate appropriate use of commas in varied communication formats (e.g., letter, email, blog).
• Students use apostrophe to form contractions and possessives.
• Students generalize spelling patterns.
• Students use reference materials to self-check and correct spelling.
• Students use knowledge of language and conventions when writing, speaking, reading or listening and compare formal and informal uses of English.
• Students determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 2 reading and content by choosing flexibly from an array of strategies such as:

a. using sentence level context as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.

b. determining the meaning of the new word formed when a known prefix is added to a known word.

c. using a known root word as a clue to the meaning of an unknown word with the same root.

d. using knowledge of the meaning of individual words to predict the meaning of compound words.

e. using glossaries and beginning dictionaries to determine or clarify the meaning of words and phrases.

f. using words and phrases acquired through conversations, reading and being read to, and responding to texts, including using adjectives and adverbs to describe.

• Students demonstrate understanding of word relationships and nuances in word meanings by relating them to their synonyms and antonyms.
• Students demonstrate understanding of word relationships and nuances in word meanings by distinguishing the shades of meaning among closely related verbs (e.g., toss, throw, hurl) and closely related adjectives (e.g., thin, slender).

To access reading and writing resources to support your child, use the drop menu from above or click here.