This resource accompanies our Rethink 2nd Grade ELA course. It includes ideas for use, ways to support exceptional children, ways to extend learning, digital resources and tools, tips for supporting English Language Learners and students with visual and hearing impairments. There are also ideas for offline learning.  

This unit was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 2nd Grade ELA.

This parent guide supports parents in helping their child at home with the 2nd Grade English Language Arts content.

Students are involved in an interactive read-aloud of A My Name is Alice by Jane Bayers, during which they identify and examine the characteristics of alphabet books. Students then engage in shared writing to create a class alphabet book. After completing the class book, they work in small groups using technology to write their own alphabet books. These books are later shared with an audience, giving an authentic purpose to the writing experience.

In this adaptation of the ReadWriteThink lesson, after a read aloud of Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish, students discuss text-dependent questions to promote an understanding of the story's character. 

In this unit, students will read several books by Kevin Henkes. Students will study the characters, retell the stories, and will compare and contrast the plots of the different stories written by Kevin Henkes.

This leson meets the learning needs of most students. Students are called upon to be careful readers without jeopardizing the pleasure they gain from reading. It is best to allow students to read the entire story before engaging in a detailed study of the work. Students will examine the front cover illustration and the information on the title page to try and determine what the book will be about. They will also explore how the author uses figurative language. "

In this lesson, students read and answer questions about a short story called "The Case of the Disappearing Water," in which characters investigate a possible crime scene and use observations about water evaporation to deduce how many days the "victim" might have been missing.

In this lesson, students will read Shel Silverstein's "Sick" aloud, students summarize the poem and count the words in their summary. They then summarize the poem again, using only one word. Students explain their choices and discuss the various words offered as a summary. The class then chooses the one word that best represents what is happening in the poem. Finally, students read a second poem, individually or in small groups, and summarize it using only one word.

In this lesson, students explore the different purposes readers have and how to determine what their purpose for reading is. Students also learn how to evaluate whether a book is at the right reading level and length for their abilities.

In this lesson, students complete two prewriting activities, one on brainstorming ideas using story maps, and one on creating beginnings of stories. They then work on two collaborative-writing activities in which they draft an "oversized" story on chart paper. Each student works individually to read what has been written before, adds the "next sentence," and passes the developing story on to another student. The story is passed from student to student until the story is complete. In a later lesson Collaborative Stories 2: Revising, the story is revised by the groups.

This lesson introduces the concept of cause and effect with Trinka Hakes Noble's books about Jimmy and his boa constrictor. Each lesson begins with the teacher reading a new story about Jimmy and his boa and the chaos they bring to each place they visit. Class discussions about each event and its cause are followed by tasks for the students to help illustrate understanding of the concept. Students create cause-and-effect pictures, puzzles, and flow charts as they explore the genre. As a culminating activity, students write their own book with causes and effects, which are assessed with a rubric.

Students will read two similar versions of the same fairy tale, such as the traditional tale of The Three Little Pigs and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by John Scieszka.  Students will acknowledge differences in the points of view of the characters, including speaking in different voices of each character when reading dialogue. Students will use illustrations and details in the two versions to describe the characters, setting, events and plot through questioning and analysis. The product of the lesson will a graphic organizer used to compare and contrast the two different versions of this story.  This lesson fits into the larger context of examining different genres in literature, learning the elements of the particular genre and comparing and contrasting literature. This lesson would fit well into a unit on fairytales, folklore, myths etc. This lesson was developed by NCDPI as part of the Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project. This lesson plan has been vetted at the state level for standards alignment, AIG focus, and content accuracy.

Students will read books about families and make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections using those books. Students gain a deeper understanding of a text when they make authentic connections. Beginning with a read-aloud of Donald Crews' "Bigmama's", the instructor introduces and models the strategy of making connections. Read-alouds of "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats and "The Relatives Came" by Cynthia Rylant are followed by activities that help students learn to apply each type of text connection when responding to texts. After sharing and discussing connections in a Think-Pair-Share activity, students plan and write a piece describing a personal connection to one of the texts.

Getting children to use their imaginations when writing a story can sometimes be difficult. Drawing, however, can create a bridge between the ideas in a child's head and the blank piece of paper on the desk. In this lesson, students use factual information gathered from the Internet as the basis for creating a nonfiction story. Story elements, including setting, characters, problem, solution, and endings, are then used as a structure for assembling students' ideas into a fiction story.

Students collect data within their school about current social issues and create graphs to display and analyze the data. Students simultaneously read and write fables based on the prevalent social issues. Students then make 2D illustrations for their fables and practice reading their stories aloud with fluency. The culminating event is a Meet the Author showcase for parents to hear the stories and get autographs from the new authors.

In this lesson, students will read Laura Joffe Numeroff's 'If You Give a Mouse a Cookie' to combine word-skill work with prediction and sequencing practice. Students learn about cause-effect relationships during a shared reading of the book and then complete a cloze exercise that uses context and initial consonant clues. Students then create story circles that display the events of the story and use these circles to retell the story to a peer. Finally, the students compose their own stories featuring themselves in the role of the mouse.

Students will read a description and example of how to find rhyme scheme. Students will then read poems and write to identify the rhyme scheme. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

In this activity, students read The Icky Sticky Frog, practicing literacy skills as they develop an understanding of the life cycle of frogs, specifically tadpoles.

In this lesson, students engage in independent literacy centers to become proficient in completing activities about the stories they read. Although this lesson uses Seven Blind Mice as an example, the framework is adaptable to almost any text.