Attributes of Second Graders

At seven, students begin to calm down a bit. They:

• Begin to reason and concentrate.
• Worry, are self-critical, and may express a lack of confidence.
• May try to hide from failure and criticism.
• Demand more of their teacher's time.
• Dislike being singled out, even for praise.
• Have great sensitivity about their bodies, which they do not like to have exposed or touched.

Second Grade Basic Skills

Second grade offers the opportunity for plenty of review so that students truly master all the skills presented in first grade. Students will also learn to recognize familiar words more rapidly, read new words, add and subtract faster, compose more complex sentences, spell many new words, and increase their reading and speaking vocabularies. In second grade, a typical student will:

• Apply more complex phonics skills in his reading.
• Automatically read the 200 most commonly used words.
• Write sentences using correct punctuation and capitalization.
• Recognize and use nouns and action verbs in sentences.
• Write legibly in cursive.
• Add and subtract any 2-digit number.
• Handle place value concepts for 3-digit whole numbers.
• Identify time to include half-hour and 5-minute intervals.
• Identify the value of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollars, and dollars.