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Second Grade

Each child passes through a range of social, academic and developmental stages at his own pace. Below are some guidelines for what to look forward to in the year ahead.

Physical and social skills you can expect of your second grader:

  • Begin to reason and concentrate
  • Have a better ability to process information
  • Work cooperatively with a partner or small group
  • Understand the difference between right and wrong
  • Make connections between concepts so she will be better able to compare and contrast ideas

Academic skills you can expect of your second grader:

  • Expand his vocabulary
  • Read fluently with expression
  • Recognize most irregularly-spelled words such as because and upon
  • Begin to use a dictionary
  • Add single and multi-digit numbers with regrouping
  • Tell time to the quarter-hour
  • Know the concept of multiplication, such as 2×3 is represented by two rows of three objects.

Expanding Knowledge

In second grade your child will make considerable leaps in reading, writing and math skills. She will use new vocabulary, orally and in writing. By the end of the year your child should be reading fluently. Work will become more challenging, and the amount of homework will increase. To support your child, set up a library at home with books and magazines at different reading levels and genres. Read plays aloud with your child to build fluency and expression.

In math your child will solve addition and subtraction word- problems, tell time to the quarter-hour, learn about place value in three-digit numbers and work with measurement. To practice these skills at home have your child write an addition word-problem about how many books he read over a period of time or on another topic.

Technology also becomes a more important part of the second grade classroom as students learn about and use it more, specifically for publishing their writing. Read more about Instructional Technology at Clarkston Community Schools.

From "What to Expect in Second Grade" by Miriam Myers, www.greatschools.org.