Throughout the school year, 2nd grade students will spend the most time working on the following topics. They should understand them well by the end of the year.

• Solving challenging addition and subtraction word problems with one or two steps. (For example, a “one-step” problem would be: “Lucy has 23 fewer apples than Julio. Julio has 47 apples. How many apples does Lucy have?”

• Mentally adding the sum of any two single digit numbers (remembering that 7+9=16). Subtracting mentally with ease from a number 20 or less.

• Understanding what the digits mean in three-digit numbers. (The number 342 refers to 3 hundreds, 4 tens, and 2 ones).

• Using understanding of place value to add and subtract three-digit numbers. (811+367). Adding and subtracting two digit numbers with ease (77-28).

• Measuring and estimating length in standard units.

• Solving addition and subtraction word problems involving length. (For example, “The pen is 2 cm longer than the pencil. If the pencils is 7cm long, how long is the pen?”)

• Ask children addition and subtraction problems with one or two steps as they engage with their world. For example:

  1. One step: “Today we are going to spend 70 minutes reading and doing puzzles. 25 minutes will be for doing puzzles. How many minutes will we read?”

  2. Two step: “You gathered 60 vegetables from the community garden. You gathered 30 cobs of corn and 20 tomatoes. The rest of the vegetables were peppers. How many peppers did you collect?”

• Practice addition. Add ones and ones, tens and tens, and hundreds and hundreds for problems like 413 + 281.