• By the end of second grade your child should be able to do the following:

    Listening

    • Follow 3-4 oral directions in a sequence
    • Understand direction words (e.g., location, space, and time words)
    • Correctly answer questions about a grade-level story

    Speaking

    • Be easily understood
    • Answer more complex "yes/no" questions
    • Ask and answer "wh" questions (e.g., who, what, where, when, why)
    • Use increasingly complex sentence structures
    • Clarify and explain words and ideas
    • Give directions with 3-4 steps
    • Use oral language to inform, to persuade, and to entertain
    • Stay on topic, take turns, and use appropriate eye contact during conversation
    • Open and close conversation appropriately

    Reading

    • Have fully mastered phonics/sound awareness
    • Associate speech sounds, syllables, words, and phrases with their written forms
    • Recognize many words by sight
    • Use meaning clues when reading (e.g., pictures, titles/headings, information in the story)
    • Reread and self-correct when necessary
    • Locate information to answer questions
    • Explain key elements of a story (e.g., main idea, main characters, plot)
    • Use own experience to predict and justify what will happen in grade-level stories
    • Read, paraphrase/retell a story in a sequence
    • Read grade-level stories, poetry, or dramatic text silently and aloud with fluency
    • Read spontaneously
    • Identify and use spelling patterns in words when reading

    Writing

    • Write legibly
    • Use a variety of sentence types in writing essays, poetry, or short stories (fiction and nonfiction)
    • Use basic punctuation and capitalization appropriately
    • Organize writing to include beginning, middle, and end
    • Spell frequently used words correctly
    • Progress from inventive spelling (e.g., spelling by sound) to more accurate spelling