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 in Writing.

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

In this lesson, students will write free-verse acrostic poems about themselves using the letters of their names to begin each line. They then write an additional acrostic poem about something that is important to them. After proofreading, both poems are recopied or typed and illustrated and then mounted on construction paper for display. Several opportunities for sharing and peer review are incorporated.

Using a wide variety of nonfiction literature, students learn to sort and categorize books to begin the information-gathering process. Then, working with partners and groups, using pictures and text, students are guided through the process of gathering information, asking clarifying questions, and then enhancing the information with additional details. Students complete the lesson by collaboratively making “Question and Answer” books for the classroom library.

Students will learn about an animal and complete a graphich organizer to show their understanding.

Students and the teacher produce a class book through a group-writing activity, focusing on a basic before-during-after sequence of events. After discussing what they know about pumpkins, the class carves a jack-o-lantern, pausing at each step to chart their observations on before, during, and after charts. The class then uses their sentences from the chart to write the sequence of events for carving the pumpkin. Finally, the class publishes their work, using one of several publishing options.

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.

In this lesson, using a story which has been written collaboratively, students engage in a whole-group revising process by having each student add a sentence at a time. The teacher leads this shared-revising activity to help students consider story content. Students begin by reading their collaborative story and then discuss ways of making changes. Then, after revisions have been made, they reread the story as a group. Finally, students come to a consensus on a title for their story.

"Reading like writers," students will explore the ways that stories are structured; then, "writing like writers," students explore organizational structures in their own writing. Students listen to a reading of Long Night Moon, a circular story. Nexzt, they develop their own examples of circular stories which they share out with their peers.

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to identify and describe the function of external hardware, such as desktop computers, laptop computers, tablet devices, monitors, keyboards, mice, and printers. The students will be able to explain each component's function and how it works together.

In this lesson, students will use KWL charts and interactive writing as key components of organizing information. As a class, students list what they know about insects, prompted by examining pictures in an insect book. Students them pose questions they have about insects, again using picture books as a visual prompt. Students then search for answers to the questions they have posed, using Websites, read-alouds, and easy readers. Periodic reviews of gathered information become the backdrop to ongoing inquiry, discussion, reporting, and confirming information. The lesson culminates with the publishing of a collaborative question and answer book which reports on information about the chosen topic, with each student contributing one page to the book.

After the whole class science unit of study on sound, which includes biographical information about Helen Keller, the AIG students will select an additional famous person with a disability to research. They will engage in research and write a short biography of their selected notable person to be compiled in a class e-book. They will also increase their leadership and social skills through presenting to the whole class. 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 summarize biographies of leaders, including Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Lydia Maria Child, William Lloyd Garrison, Claudette Colvin, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

This lesson guides students in writing descriptions of 100th day bottles they create at home. Students will write clues about their bottles for a guessing game, practice descriptive writing, and create a class book. Several pieces of literature appropriate for use with this lesson are suggested.

This extended task will be integrated with a second grade social studies unit on the contributions of historical figures. AIG students will research Leonardo da Vinci's futuristic inventions, and then work collaboratively to design original inventions for the future. Emphasis will be on inventions that will help solve a real-world problem or issue. They will write descriptive paragraphs about their invention and publish the finished product using a digital program. They will also build a model of their innovative creation. 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 first write a message to their families explaining what they have learned about a topic. Next, they write a message comparing what they know to new information that they are just learning. Finally, they write a message saying how they feel about something they encountered in class, such as a favorite character in a book.

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.

This research task for gifted learners will extend classroom integrated instruction within a science unit on states of matter using close reading of informational texts and creation of a differentiated product. Students will connect the hands-on regular classroom instruction and demonstration of changes of water in a container before and after freezing with the effects of global warming on the melting of the polar ice cap. AIG students will choose from a menu of learning style-based tasks which include technology and collaborative learning experiences. Upon completion, they will give an oral presentation to the class. 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 take turns taking home a book bag that includes a stuffed toy, a book to read with their families, art supplies, a topic to discuss, and a journal to complete as a family. The students then return the bag the following day and share their entries with the class. After every student has taken the bag home, the journal is bound into a book for the classroom library. The goal is to invite parents to join their children in these literacy activities.