Second grade is another year full of learning and mastering life skills for your child. Essentially, second grade is a year when teachers will work on reinforcing the skills your child learned in first grade and kindergarten. PBS explains, “Second graders apply what they learned about the meanings of letters and numbers to the more complicated material, and begin to develop their analytical abilities even further.”
Reading Comprehension Skills
By second grade, most students are readers. Second grade focuses on helping your child become a fluent reader. Becoming fluent requires students to learn how to comprehend texts. You should expect your child to read chapter books and be able to identify the main story elements such as characters, plot, and setting.
Writing Skills
Second graders will begin writing their own narratives. They should understand how to write in complete sentences using proper capitalization and punctuation. Additionally, they will begin to experiment with writing stories with a complete plot. Students will also start to do research on nonfiction subjects and begin learning how to report what they learn.
Math Skills
By this school year, students will learn how to add and subtract double digit numbers. Students will also be introduced to multiplication and division. The math skills they learned in first grade will be expanded on. For example, students will learn how to round numbers and how to solve more complicated word problems.
Science and Social Studies
Science and social studies will vary from one state to the next, but most second-grade students will be learning how science and social studies relate to their world. Students will learn about the Earth and its resources and how it affects them. Furthermore, students will learn more about the world around them. In particular, in social studies, they will learn about world religions, as well as the history of their community.
How to Understand Humor
If you have been waiting for your child to understand your jokes, this is around the time when children begin to understand puns, sarcasm, and tricks. They can understand how words and meanings change depending on how they are used, so be prepared for more jokes around the dinner table than before.
Societal Pressures
Unfortunately, most second grade students begin to discover how the world works. For example, they are more aware of the pressure to fit in. It is normal for them to become more worried about the things happening around them and the way they are perceived by their peers.
Second grade is also when students begin taking standardized tests. Your child will be asked to demonstrate basic knowledge of these key subject areas. Try not to fret about the examinations and just encourage your child to do his/her best.