Second Grade Resources

• Listen to your child read aloud.

• Write down any words your child reads incorrectly.

• Look for patterns. What types of words does your child need to practice: words with regularly spelled long and short vowels, words with affixes, or high frequency words?

• Turtle Diary: Long and Short Vowels
• ABCYA: Slimezilla vs Compound Words
• Kids Academy: Dividing Words into Syllables

• FCRR: Long adn Short Vowels
• FCRR: Affix Hunt
• FCR: High Frequency Words
• IES Recommendation 3: Blending Letters, Recognizing, and Reading Words
• Change a Letter, Change the Word (Video)
• Change a Letter, Change the Word

Model Fluent Reading: Read aloud often and with expression. Reading aloud helps your child understand what fluent reading sounds like.

* I Read/You Read: You and your child take turns reading a book, making sure he/she is following along or whisper reading along when it’s not his/her turn.

* Echo Read – You read and then the child reads the exact same sentence, using the parent’s model of fluent reading to guide how to change his/her voice to match the text for phrasing, expression, accuracy, etc.

* Choral reading together, as one. Both parent and child reads the page aloud. This helps model appropriate pace and intonation, and encourages your child to match his/ her voice to what your voice is doing

• Scholastic: Digital Books for Choral Reading
• Understood: Why Kids Read Slowly
• Choral and Echo Reading
• IES Recommendation 4: Reading for Understanding
• What Reading Fluency Looks Like in Second Grade
• FCRR: Listen to Me Read

Help your child to understand word relationships and nuances by asking him/her questions:

• Where do you think the word _______ comes from?

• Why did the author use the word _______?

• In what other context could this word be used?

• Without changing the meaning, what word could you add to make the sentence stronger?

• What word would best describe this character?

• What is the literal meaning of this sentence?

• What real-life connection can you make?

• Make a list from ____ to ____ so that you can decide which word is best to use. Examples: hot to cold, slow to fast, walk to run.

• Room Recess: Prefix Popper
• Read Aloud: The Word Collector

• 9 Tips to Build Your Child's Vocabulary ay Home
• Reading Rockets: Semantic Gradients
• IES-REL: Grocery Shop Talk

Read a story aloud to your child, read a story with your child, or listen as your child reads a story aloud to you.

Ask your child to retell the story. Ask questions such as the following:

How did the story begin?

Who were the characters in this story?

Where did the story take place?

What happened next?

How did the story end?

What was the main problem in the story?

How was the problem solved?

Did the character change from the beginning of the story to the end of the story?

After Reading: Ask your child specific questions about the story.

• Who were the characters in this story? What kind of traits did the character have (happy, sad, kind, friendly, disrespectful, mischievous, jealous)?

• Did the character change from the beginning of the story to the end of the story?

• Where did this story take place (setting)? Did the setting change throughout the story?

• What was the problem in the story? How did this problem get solved? Is there a lesson to learn from this story?

• Room Recess: Main Idea Game
• Room Recess: Main Idea Video
• Storyline Online: Video Books
• Room Recess: Compare and Contrast
• CPalms: Compare and Contrast
• eSpark: Using Pictures and Words to Help Understand Text

• Reading Brightly: 50 Best Books for 7 and 8 Year-Olds
• FCRR: Story Element Activities
• FCRR: Character Characteristics
• Read Brightly: Multicultural Fairy Tales
• FCRR: Story Element Activities
• FCRR: Story Pieces

Before Reading: Previewing a text and asking questions are two terrific ways to navigate nonfiction texts. Enjoy spending more time with some fascinating informational books!

During Reading: Help your child use a map or graphic organizer to keep track of the main ideas of each paragraph.

After Reading: Have your child combine his or her list of main ideas to name what the entire text was mostly about. Help your child create a timeline to sequence the historical events mentioned in the text. Help your child show how scientific ideas or concepts are the same and how they are different.

Ask your child to identify the reasons why the author wrote a text, such as: What was the author trying to answer? explain? describe?

It’s also a good practice to ask your child to show evidence from the text when responding to questions. Your child can reference specific details in the text to support his or her thinking.

Help your child by completing a thinking map to show what ideas are alike and different between two texts on the same topic.

• PBS Kids: Molly of Denali
• CPALMS: Tropical Travels
• Nat Geo Kids!
• Room Recess: Author's Purpose
• CPALMS: Storms
• Nat Geo Kids!

• Reading Rockets: How to Read Nonfiction
• FCRR: Just the Facts
• BrainPop: 5 Ws: A Graphic Organizer
• Brightly: Strategies to Improve Nonfiction Comprehension
• FCRR: Compare and Contrast
• FCRR: Author's Purpose

Remind your child that good conversations include the following:

• Listening and taking turns

• Speaking clearly

• Speaking in complete sentences

• Interacting person to person and not interrupting

Read a book to your child or have your child read a book to you. Talk with your child about the book.

• Tell me about the book.

• Tell me about your favorite part of the book and why.

• Tell me about your favorite character and why

• PBS Kids Shows Conversation Cards
• Scholastic: School Day Conversation Cards
• IES: Summarize a Story
• IES Recommendation 1: Developing Language
• Strategies for Supporting Speech and Language

A Day in the Life Use a disposable camera or a phone to capture one day in your child’s life. Start the day by photographing your child asleep just before you wake him or her. Then have your child take a photo every hour throughout the entire day. (Set a timer to help you remember.)

The next day help your child write the details that explain each picture telling why he or she picked the subject, and why it is important to his or her day. Make a title page by writing “A Day in the Life of …”.

Publish the book using construction paper and yarn. Keep the book forever, and show it to everyone. Talking about your child’s ideas is a crucial part of writing. It helps your reluctant writer capture those elusive details that sometimes scramble in the brain.

• Understood: Graphic Organizers to Help Kids with Writing
• Scholastic: Narrative Graphics Organizer
• Read, Write, Think: Help Your Child Edit and Revise
• PBS Kids: Make a Memory Book