Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
By the end of the second grade year, children should reach the following milestones.
Listening Skills
- Follows multiple oral directions in order like, “Stay in your seat, wait for the bust to stop, and don’t forget your backpack.”
- Understands words related to place and time, such as “on top of”, “behind”, “after” and “yesterday”
- Answers questions about a story
- Understands material and topics being taught in class
Talking Skills
- Answers complex yes/no questions like, “Was the boy in the story telling the truth when he said he was going to a friend’s house?”
- Explains words and ideas logically
- Asks and answers “who, what when, where and why” questions
- Uses more complex sentences when speaking
- Provides directions with three to four steps
- Uses oral language to inform, persuade and entertain
- Stays on topic, takes turns, and uses eye contact during conversations
- Opens and ends conversations properly
- Talks for various reasons such as to comment on something, argue a point, and make someone laugh
Reading Skills
- Knows all letters and sounds
- Links speech sounds to written words
- Knows many words by sight
- Identifies and uses spelling patterns such as “cat” and “hat” end with the same sound
- Reviews and self-corrects when necessary
- Finds facts to answer questions
- Uses clues (such as pictures and titles) to figure out what words mean
- Explains the main parts of a story including main topic, characters and plot
- Predicts what might happen in stories
- Reads and retells a story in the correct order
- Reads second-grade stories, poetry or plays silently and out loud
- Reads smoothly and doesn’t need to sound out many words
- Reads for fun!
Writing Skills
- Writes neatly
- Uses many types of sentences in stories, journals, poetry, etc.
- Uses capital letters and basic punctuations like commas, periods and question marks correctly
- Writes stories that have a clear beginning, middle and end
- Spells common words correctly and begins to spell more challenging words
