Grade Two

The Nantucket Elementary School teaches to the standards of the Massachusetts Department of Education. The information below helps families understand those standards and measures of progress. The information is taken from the document linked at the bottom of the page.

New Expectations for Second Grade:

• Notice and talk about the structure of a text. For example, describe how the beginning of a story introduces the characters, or explain what the last paragraph of an article says. 
• Explain the overall purpose of a text: for example, the idea the author is trying to explain or the lesson the author is trying to teach.
• Use knowledge of word parts to figure out meanings. For example, if you know that un means not, then you can figure out that unhappy means not happy.
• Compare formal and informal English. For example, notice how classmates speak differently when playing with friends and when giving a class presentation.

By the End of Second Grade, Students Can:

• Read aloud in a way that shows they understand what they are reading.  
• Stop and reread a sentence to figure out the meaning of an unknown word. 
• Describe what characters do in response to events or problems in a story.  
• Explain how a picture or diagram helps show what a text is saying.  
• Gather information from different texts to answer a question. 
• When presenting, speak loudly and clearly enough to be heard and understood.
• Print all letters quickly enough to write sentences without losing track of ideas.
• Use apostrophes (’) in words like can’t, don’t, cat’s, and dog’s. 
• Capitalize proper nouns like Thanksgiving, Boston, and Cape Cod. 
• Write poems with patterns of sounds (like rhythm and rhyme).

Focus Areas for Second Grade:

• Understand place value in numbers up to 1,000. For example, know that the 6 in 564 represents 6 tens (60). 
• Use various methods to add and subtract with numbers up to 1,000. For example, find the total cost of three items at a clothing store.
• Understand and use standard units and tools of measurement. For example, estimate the length (in feet or meters) of row of desks.
• Recognize and draw shapes with specific characteristics: for example, a shape with four sides and angles.

By the End of Second Grade, Students Can: 

• Count to 1,000 by ones, fives, tens, and hundreds.
• Notice patterns as they count. 
• Mentally (without objects or writing) add and subtract with numbers up to 20.
• Fluently (quickly and correctly) add and subtract with numbers up to 100.
• Know addition facts up to 9 + 9 = 18 and their related subtraction facts (like 18 - 9 = 9). 
• Arrange pairs of objects to tell whether a number is odd or even. 
• Understand and create visual displays of information, like bar graphs.
• Solve one-step and two-step word problems, including problems involving length.
• Solve word problems involving dollars and coins with amounts up to $10. 
• Use analog and digital clocks to tell time to the nearest five minutes. Write the times. 
• Separate a rectangle into pieces of equal size. Count the pieces.
• Understand that the pieces can be the same size without being the same shape. 

Focus Areas of Second Grade: 

• Understand that different kinds of plants and animals live in different environments and areas. For example, compare living things in a desert with living things in an ocean.
• Understand how wind and water can change the shape of land, and how people can prevent or slow down those changes by doing things like planting trees and building fences.
• Explore how materials like wood and stone look, feel, and act differently. For example, test how hard they are and whether they bend or break.
• Begin to understand friction: what happens when objects rub against one another. For example, compare how a toy car slides on smooth and rough surfaces.

By the End of Second Grade, Students Can

• Create maps to show the bodies of water (like rivers) and landforms (like mountains) in an area.
• Explain that water exists on Earth in different places (like lakes) and forms (like ice). 
• Ask questions about how plants and animals depend on their surroundings to meet their needs (like finding food and water).
• Describe and sort materials by how they look, feel, or act: for example, things that are green or things that absorb water.
• Observe that breaking something does not change its material. For example, tearing a paper in half does not change the fact that it is paper. 
• Explore how heating and cooling things can cause them to change. Understand that some changes (like melting ice) can be reversed but other changes (like cooking an egg) cannot.
• Compare two ways of solving the same problem and think about which one is better.
• For example, test two paper bags to find out which is stronger.

Focus Areas for Second Grade:

• Understand how people interact with the physical world (environment). 
• Explain why people decide to live (settle in) particular places and why they move (migrate).
• Describe countries using their physical characteristics (like climate or geography) as well as their human ones (like population or culture).
• Understand how people earn a living, exchange goods and services, and save for the future.

By the End of Second Grade, Students Can:

• Identify countries, continents, and physical characteristics such as rivers, deserts, and peninsulas.
• Explain how people adapt to the environment they live in, and how they change that environment as well.
• Describe various ways people maintain cultural traditions. 
• Investigate different reasons people migrate and what individuals and families bring with them when they migrate (like memories, objects, ideas, languages, and habits). 
• Give examples of goods and services and the choices people make about buying them.
• Give some reasons people try to save money (like for a future purchase, a charitable donation, or an emergency).
• Explain how visual features like maps, charts, and diagrams can help readers understand a history or social science text.