As parents it’s hard to keep up with our kids’ learning schedules. When are they supposed to know their math facts? By what age should they be able to read simple chapter books? Are they on track with their grade-level learning or do we need to help them catch up?
These are all questions we cover in our series on what kids learn in each grade. Today, we’ll continue with grade 2.
Some Background
In grade 2 your kids will have settled into the routines of school and are ready to take on some serious learning. They now apply what they learned about meanings of letters and numbers to more complicated material and start to develop analytical abilities. At this age, they’re able to learn more difficult concepts in one area and apply them to other situations.
Kids who were not ready to completely grasp the concepts introduced in grade 1, often are ready to master them in grade 2.
Reading
Grade 2 is a pivotal year for young readers. They are expected to move beyond the decoding skills they use to figure out unfamiliar words and to move onto using context clues instead. Grade 2 kids will also be asked to summarize and retell stories in their own words as they develop their reading comprehension skills. Teachers will focus on helping your child become fluent readers, so that they grasp the overall fiction stories or facts that they are reading.
By the end of grade 2, your child will know and understand suffixes and prefixes, outcome prediction, self-correction and how to use a dictionary to look up words they don’t know.
Writing
In grade 2, your child will also become a better writer – putting basic sentences together to create a short story or write about events that have happened to them. Kids will also be asked to explore different kinds of writing, for example, writing in the first or third person.
Teachers start focusing on handwriting, making sure students’ printing skills are neat and introducing cursive handwriting. There will also be a closer watch on grammar and spelling in grade 2.
Math
In math, your child will move beyond knowing and recognizing numbers to learning and understanding that numbers are part of a system. Second graders start to learn to add and subtract by regrouping numbers. They will move up to 2-digit addition and subtraction. They’ll also practice skip counting, as a precursor to multiplication.
They’ll also explore basic fractions, units of measure, basic money and how a thermometer works.
Science
In second grade, your child will learn about the Earth and its natural resources. Students will get an introduction to how people use these resources to gain energy, they’ll look at how the earth has changed over history and they’ll carry out deeper studies of plants and animals. They will also be asked to find patterns in the natural world and make predictions.
Teachers will also cover the body and they will cover how bones, muscles and organs function.
Social Studies
In social studies, your grade 2 child will continue on the path set in kindergarten and grade 1, learning about neighborhoods, communities, cities and countries. Kids will learn about the rules our societies set and comparing different kinds of communities.
