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.

In this lesson, students will read Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish. Students will discuss text-dependent questions to promote an understanding of the story’s character. Through subsequent readings, they construct and support arguments concerning the character traits of Amelia Bedelia and use the text to determine how Amelia Bedelia and the Rogers can have different reactions to the same events. After these discussions, students demonstrate their understanding of character by completing a trading card for Amelia Bedelia.

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.

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.

In this unit, students will read and explore a folktale from Vietnam, while utilizing interdisciplinary connections in language arts, geography, science and social studies. Opportunities are provided for differentiated instruction as well as the development of story vocabulary. Terms include: narrator, point
of view, main character, dialogue, setting, title and quotation marks.

In this lesson, the repetition, rhythm, and rhyme of Martin’s works provide opportunities for students to hear fluent reading modeled before participating in the readings through literary performance. The lesson provides students the chance to focus on their fluency and comprehension. The readers theater section of the lesson allows students to demonstrate these skills for an audience, while improving their literacy skills further.

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.

ABCya! presents its fifth children's storybook for the classroom. It's called Marvin Makes Music, an original work by Michelle Tocci. The story is about a frog that is sad because he cannot sing like his friends, until one day when he gets a new musical instrument. This is a great storybook to share with kids using an interactive whiteboard.

*This storybook has narration! Students can click the speaker button to have the story read to them.

As part of a literature unit, the AIG students will be grouped to extend character analysis. They will work collaboratively to create a new character they would add to the selected story, and create a Voki, a digital avatar, to represent their created character. They will determine a specific purpose for the new character and analyze the relationship of the added character to the story's plot and sequence of events. 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.

In this lesson, students will use a weekly poem to explore meaning, sentence structure, rhyming words, sight words, vocabulary, and print concepts. After studying the poem, students are given a copy of the poem to illustrate and share their understanding. All of the poems explored are then compiled into a poetry portfolio for students to take home and share with their families. To further connect home to school, a family poetry project is suggested.

In this lesson, students make the connection that the words sung in a song are part of a book that can be read. They explore this connection through children's song storybooks and interactive websites. Students complete a project by writing new lyrics to a familiar song and creating illustrations related to the lyrics. During the lesson students engage in various levels of reading and writing activities.

An interactive activity that supports critical thinking and problem solving while also building students' comprehension and spelling skills. Students will complete puzzles based on popular children's books.