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Language Arts - Elementary Curriculum English Language Arts Grade 2
Course Preface Course Preface
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Core Standards of the Course

College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for K-5 Reading

The K–5 standards on the following pages define what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade. They correspond to the College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards.

Reading Standards for Literature

The following standards offer a focus for instruction each year and help ensure that students gain adequate exposure to a range of texts and tasks. Rigor is also infused through the requirement that students read increasingly complex texts through the grades. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades.

Key Ideas and Details

Reading: Literature Standard 1
Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.


Reading: Literature Standard 2
Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral.

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Reading: Literature Standard 3
Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.


Craft and Structure

Reading: Literature Standard 4
Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.


Reading: Literature Standard 5
Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.

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Reading: Literature Standard 6
Acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters, including by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue aloud.


Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

Reading: Literature Standard 7
Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.


Reading: Literature Standard 8
(Not applicable to literature)


Reading: Literature Standard 9
Compare and contrast two or more versions of the same story (e.g., Cinderella stories) by different authors or from different cultures.

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Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

Reading: Literature Standard 10
By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories and poetry, in the grades 2–3 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.


Reading Standards for Informational Text

Key Ideas and Details

Reading: Informational Text Standard 1
Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.


Reading: Informational Text Standard 2
Identify the main topic of a multiparagraph text as well as the focus of specific paragraphs within the text.


Reading: Informational Text Standard 3
Describe the connection between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text.


Craft and Structure

Reading: Informational Text Standard 4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 2 topic or subject area.


Reading: Informational Text Standard 5
Know and use various text features (e.g., captions, bold print, subheadings, glossaries, indexes, electronic menus, icons) to locate key facts or information in a text efficiently.


Reading: Informational Text Standard 6
Identify the main purpose of a text, including what the author wants to answer, explain, or describe.


Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

Reading: Informational Text Standard 7
Explain how specific images (e.g., a diagram showing how a machine works) contribute to and clarify a text.


Reading: Informational Text Standard 8
Describe how reasons support specific points the author makes in a text.


Reading: Informational Text Standard 9
Compare and contrast the most important points presented by two texts on the same topic.


Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

Reading: Informational Text Standard 10
By the end of year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, in the grades 2–3 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.


Reading Standards: Foundational Skills

These standards are directed toward fostering students’ understanding and working knowledge of concepts of print, the alphabetic principle, and other basic conventions of the English writing system. These foundational skills are not an end in and of themselves; rather, they are necessary and important components of an effective, comprehensive reading program designed to develop proficient readers with the capacity to comprehend texts across a range of types and disciplines. Instruction should be differentiated: good readers will need much less practice with these concepts than struggling readers will. The point is to teach students what they need to learn and not what they already know—to discern when particular children or activities warrant more or less attention.

Phonics and Word Recognition

Reading: Foundational Skills Standard 3
Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.

a.
Distinguish long and short vowels when reading regularly spelled one-syllable words.

b.
Know spelling-sound correspondences for additional common vowel teams.

c.
Decode regularly spelled two-syllable words with long vowels.

d.
Decode words with common prefixes and suffixes.

e.
Identify words with inconsistent but common spelling-sound correspondences.

f.
Recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words.


Fluency

Reading: Foundational Skills Standard 4
Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

a.
Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding.

b.
Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings.

c.
Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.


College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Writing

The K–5 standards below define what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade. They correspond to the College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards for Writing.

Writing Standards

The following writing standards offer a focus for instruction each year to help ensure that students gain adequate mastery of a range of skills and applications. Each year in their writing, students should demonstrate increasing sophistication in all aspects of language use, from vocabulary and syntax to the development and organization of ideas, and they should address increasingly demanding content and sources. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades. The expected growth in student writing ability is reflected both in the standards themselves and in the collection of annotated student writing samples in Appendix C.

Text Types and Purposes

Writing Standard 1
Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply reasons that support the opinion, use linking words (e.g., because, and, also) to connect opinion and reasons, and provide a concluding statement or section.


Writing Standard 2
Write informative/explanatory texts in which they introduce a topic, use facts and definitions to develop points, and provide a concluding statement or section.


Writing Standard 3
Write narratives in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide a sense of closure.


Production and Distribution of Writing

Writing Standard 4
(Begins in grade 3)


Writing Standard 5
With guidance and support from adults and peers, focus on a topic and strengthen writing as needed by revising and editing.


Writing Standard 6
With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.


Research to Build and Present Knowledge

Writing Standard 7
Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., read a number of books on a single topic to produce a report; record science observations).


Writing Standard 8
Recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.


Writing Standard 9
(Begins in grade 4)


Range of Writing

Writing Standard 10
(Begins in grade 3)


College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for K-5 Speaking and Listening

The K–5 standards below define what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade. They correspond to the College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards for Speaking and Listening.

Speaking and Listening Standards

The following Speaking and Listening standards offer a focus for instruction each year to help ensure that students gain adequate mastery of a range of skills and applications. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades.

Comprehension and Collaboration

Speaking and Listening Standard 1
Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 2 topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.

a.
Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., gaining the floor in respectful ways, listening to others with care, speaking one at a time about the topics and texts under discussion).

b.
Build on others’ talk in conversations by linking their comments to the remarks of others.

c.
Ask for clarification and further explanation as needed about the topics and texts under discussion.


Speaking and Listening Standard 2
Recount or describe key ideas or details from a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media.


Speaking and Listening Standard 3
Ask and answer questions about what a speaker says in order to clarify comprehension, gather additional information, or deepen understanding of a topic or issue.


Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas

Speaking and Listening Standard 4
Tell a story or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking audibly in coherent sentences.


Speaking and Listening Standard 5
Create audio recordings of stories or poems; add drawings or other visual displays to stories or recounts of experiences when appropriate to clarify ideas, thoughts, and feelings.


Speaking and Listening Standard 6
Produce complete sentences when appropriate to task and situation in order to provide requested detail or clarification. (See grade 2 Language standards 1 and 3 for specific expectations.)


College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for K-5 Language

The K–5 standards on the following pages define what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade. They correspond to the College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards for Language.

Language Standards

The following Language standards offer a focus for instruction each year to help ensure that students gain adequate mastery of a range of skills and applications. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades. Beginning in grade 3, skills and understandings that are particularly likely to require continued attention in higher grades as they are applied to increasingly sophisticated writing and speaking are marked with an asterisk (*). See the table on page 33 for a complete list and Appendix A for an example of how these skills develop in sophistication.

Conventions of Standard English

Language Standard 1
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

a.
Fluently, independently, and legibly write all upper- and lowercase letters.

b.
Produce grade-appropriate text using legible writing.

c.
Understand that cursive is different from manuscript.

d.
Use collective nouns (e.g., group).

e.
Form and use frequently occurring irregular plural nouns (e.g., feet, children, teeth, mice, fish).

f.
Use reflexive pronouns (e.g., myself, ourselves).

g.
Form and use the past tense of frequently occurring irregular verbs (e.g., sat, hid, told).

h.
Use adjectives and adverbs, and choose between them depending on what is to be modified.

i.
Produce, expand, and rearrange complete simple and compound sentences (e.g., The boy watched the movie; The little boy watched the movie; The action movie was watched by the little boy).


Language Standard 2
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

a.
Capitalize holidays, product names, and geographic names.

b.
Use commas in greetings and closings of letters.

c.
Use an apostrophe to form contractions and frequently occurring possessives.

d.
Generalize learned spelling patterns when writing words (e.g., cage → badge; boy → boil).

e.
Consult reference materials, including beginning dictionaries, as needed to check and correct spellings.


Knowledge of Language

Language Standard 3
Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening.

a.
Compare formal and informal uses of English.


Vocabulary Acquisition and Use

Language Standard 4
Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 2 reading and content, choosing flexibly from an array of strategies.

a.
Use sentence-level context as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.

b.
Determine the meaning of the new word formed when a known prefix is added to a known word (e.g., happy/unhappy, tell/retell).

c.
Use a known root word as a clue to the meaning of an unknown word with the same root (e.g., addition, additional).

d.
Use knowledge of the meaning of individual words to predict the meaning of compound words (e.g., birdhouse, lighthouse, housefly; bookshelf, notebook, bookmark).

e.
Use glossaries and beginning dictionaries, both print and digital, to determine or clarify the meaning of words and phrases.


Language Standard 5
Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships and nuances in word meanings.

a.
Identify real-life connections between words and their use (e.g., describe foods that are spicy or juicy).

b.
Distinguish shades of meaning among closely related verbs (e.g., toss, throw, hurl) and closely related adjectives (e.g., thin, slender, skinny, scrawny).


Language Standard 6
Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, reading and being read to, and responding to texts, including using adjectives and adverbs to describe (e.g., When other kids are happy that makes me happy).



UEN logo http://www.uen.org - in partnership with Utah State Board of Education (USBE) and Utah System of Higher Education (USHE).  Send questions or comments to USBE Specialist - Sara  Wiebke and see the Language Arts - Elementary website. For general questions about Utah's Core Standards contact the Director - Jennifer  Throndsen.

These materials have been produced by and for the teachers of the State of Utah. Copies of these materials may be freely reproduced for teacher and classroom use. When distributing these materials, credit should be given to Utah State Board of Education. These materials may not be published, in whole or part, or in any other format, without the written permission of the Utah State Board of Education, 250 East 500 South, PO Box 144200, Salt Lake City, Utah 84114-4200.