Second Grade

Essential Content

Two students doing science

Guiding Question: Are All Students Working With Content Aligned to the Appropriate Standards for Their Subject and Grade?

Ensure that all students are working with content aligned to the appropriate standards for their subject area and grade. Each content area listed includes a summary of the priority standards that students should be able to demonstrate proficiency in by the end of kindergarten. These prioritized items are considered foundational understandings that students will build upon in first grade and beyond.

Priority Standards

What students will know, what students will do, and what thinking skills students will develop to apply and transfer understandings that endure within the discipline, leverage deeper understandings, and/or support readiness for success at the next grade level. These are the standards that should anchor and drive instruction.

 

Signature Elements

The practices, strategies, and routines at the core of teaching and learning within the content area/discipline.

Second Grade Standards

This is the list of second-grade standards found on the SFUSD report card. They represent understandings that endure within the discipline, leverage deeper understandings within the content area, and/or support readiness for success at the next grade level.

Arts
  • Engages and develops the ability to express self with increasing creativity, complexity, and depth through 2D and 3D
    visual art
  • Engages and develops the ability to express self through creative movement and creative expression
  • Engages and develops the ability to create music through instruments, voice, or with objects
Digital Learning
  • Uses digital tools with greater independence for longer periods of time
  • Identifies the appropriate tools needed to complete a project
  • Uses presentation tools and public speaking to share learning with an audience
English Language Arts
  • Recounts stories and identifies the central message; identifies the main topic in informational texts
  • Compares and contrasts the main points presented by two texts on the same topic
  • Writes narratives about events in the correct order; includes details to describe actions, and provides a sense of closure
  • Writes informative/explanatory pieces; introduces the topic, supplies facts to develop points, and provides a concluding statement
  • Writes opinion pieces; introduces a topic, states an opinion supported by reasons, and provides a concluding
  • statement
  • Participates in discussions, asks and answers questions about topics and texts
  • Uses grade-level phonics and word analysis skills to read words
  • Uses grade level writing conventions for capitalization, punctuation, and spelling
  • Reads at grade level expectations for the trimester
English Language Development
  • Contributes to discussions in all settings by asking relevant questions, and building on others’ ideas
  • Expresses an opinion to persuade and negotiate using expanded learned phrases in conversations in all settings
  • Listens actively to read alouds, presentations, and discussions by asking and answering detailed questions, restating and paraphrasing
  • Describes ideas, experiences, key text elements and details from a variety of grade level texts and multimedia
  • Understands and applies how writers and speakers use language
  • Knows and applies basic literacy skills in reading and writing
Health
  • Identifies and chooses healthy foods according to MyPlate recommendations
  • Distinguishes between helpful and harmful substances, and makes safe and healthy choices accordingly
  • Knows and practices healthy behaviors to promote mental wellness
History/Social Studies
  • Differentiates between life now and life in the past
  • Demonstrates map skills by describing the location of people, places and environments and locating geographic features
  • Understands the role of government, rights, and responsibilities
  • Describes food production and consumption long ago and today
  • Understands how heroic figures contribute and make a difference
Mathematics
  • Reasons about problems, explains thinking, and considers thinking of others
  • Uses concrete models and drawings to solve multi-step word problems involving situations of adding to and taking from with unknowns in different positions
  • Fluently adds and subtracts within 20 using mental strategies
  • Uses place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract
  • Understands place value as composing and decomposing 10s or 100s in order to add and subtract within 1000
  • Measures length using appropriate tools such as rulers, yardsticks, and measuring tapes; estimates and records units in inches, feet, centimeters and meters
  • Solves word problems involving dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies
  • Writes and tells time to the nearest five minutes
  • Partitions rectangles and circles into equal shares and describes them as halves, thirds, and fourths
  • Uses tables, picture graphs, bar graphs, and line plots to represent and interpret data
  • Uses addition to find the total number of objects arranged in a rectangular array, and writes as an equation
Physical Education
  • Rolls a ball for distance using proper form
  • Jumps a turned rope repeatedly
  • Catches a thrown ball above and below the waist
  • Demonstrates proper form for stretching specific muscle groups
  • Explains how to reduce the impact force of an oncoming object
Science
  • Asks and identifies questions that can be answered by an investigation
  • Uses scientific models to represent relationships, such as size and pattern, in the natural and human-made world
  • Plans and conducts investigations collaboratively, and evaluates different ways of collecting data to best answer a question
  • Designs or builds a device that solves a specific problem, and provides evidence to support their design decision
Social-Emotional Development
  • Works/plays collaboratively with others
  • Regulates emotions and works with focus
  • Approaches challenges as learning opportunities
  • Accomplishes personal and academic goals
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Essential Content CORE Rubric Teaching Practices

Design Lessons that Advance Students to Grade-Level Standards and/or IEP Goals
  • Demonstrate knowledge of subject matter and academic content standards.
  • Address rigor and depth of standards.
  • Select appropriately demanding instructional materials, tasks, texts for grade/course and time in the school year based on guidance in standards, students’ language development, and/or students’ IEP goals (e.g. Lexile level and complexity of text).
  • Use developmentally appropriate practices.
  • Use subject-appropriate pedagogical practices, including those found in SFUSD curricula (Reader’s Workshop, Writer’s Workshop, Math Signature Strategies, ELD practices).
  • Explicitly address how English works through complex texts (i.e. text level, sentence level, phrase level, word level)
  • Develop and provide accommodations and modifications as needed to ensure all students are able to attain learning goals.
  • Address students’ IEP goals and other specific learning needs in developing learning goals and preparing lessons.
  • Design single lessons and sequences of lessons.
    • Develop a vision for student success and standards-aligned, long- and short-term goals that are ambitious, measurable, and appropriate for all students.
    • Develop and/or uses a long-term, sequential plan that leads to mastery of the most important content for the grade or course.
    • Develop and clearly communicate a well-framed, standards-aligned, and appropriately rigorous instructional objective(s) and language objective(s) to describe the goal(s) of the lesson.
    • Develop and/or use daily lesson activities that are well-sequenced and move students toward mastery of grade-level standards.
    • Develop and/or use appropriately demanding instructional materials, such as texts, questions, problems, exercises, and assessments.
  • Plan differentiated instruction considering students’ individual learning needs and levels of readiness, ensuring content is accessible to all students.
  • Anticipate common student misunderstandings given the content and ensure strategies are in place to overcome those misunderstandings.
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Teaches Lesson Content Accurately and Coherently
  • Explain and model accurate content, practices, and strategies, and all content necessary for students to achieve the learning goal(s).
  • Use explanations of content that are clear, coherent, and support student understanding of content.
  • Provide opportunities for engagement and identity exploration through a variety of creative, technological, and artistic forms and disciplines.
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This page was last updated on August 29, 2023