Your Child's Communication: Second Grade
By the end of second grade, your child should be able to do the following tasks in each area.
Listening
- Follow 3–4 directions in a row.
- Understand direction words, like here, there, over, next to, before, or later.
- Answers questions about a second grade-level story.
Speaking
- Speak clearly.
- Answer harder yes/no questions.
- Ask and answer who, what, when, where, and why questions.
- Use more complex sentences.
- Explain words and ideas.
- Give directions with 3–4 steps.
- Use words to inform, persuade, and entertain.
- Stay on topic, take turns, and keep eye contact during conversations.
- Start and end conversations.
Reading
- Know how letters make sounds in words, called phonics.
- Recognize many words by sight.
- Use clues when reading to figure out words. For example, looking at pictures or titles to help read a word.
- Reread parts of a story and fix mistakes.
- Find information to answer questions.
- Explain important points of a story, like the main idea, characters, and plot.
- Use personal experiences to guess what might happen next in a story.
- Read and retell a story in the correct order.
- Read grade-level stories and poetry silently and out loud smoothly.
- Read on their own.
Writing
- Write clearly.
- Use different sentences to write essays, poetry, or short stories.
- Use basic punctuation and capitalization.
- Organize writing with a beginning, middle, and an end.
- Spell words correctly that they use a lot.
- Stop spelling by sound and start spelling correctly. For example, they may move from "grl" to girl."
