Second graders refine and expand their writing, growing as writers as they begin to write texts that are more detailed, longer, and of different types. Technology is an important part of 2nd grade as students begin to use it to publish their writing. You can help support this by using technology at home with your child in an appropriate and supervised manner.
Similar to reading, writing occurs throughout the day as students learn a variety of subjects in addition to the specific writing lessons or times in class. For example, students may write about a math problem, explaining how they solved it, or write about a topic they learned in science or social studies. All of this work makes them better writers overall.
In order to build writing skills, your 2nd grader:
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Writes a variety of types of texts including:
- Opinion Pieces: Students state their opinions and provide reasons to support them, closing with a conclusion.
- Narrative Pieces: Students write about an event, describing actions, thoughts, and feelings, and provide a conclusion.
- Informative/explanatory Pieces: Students introduce a topic, use facts and definitions to develop points, and provide a conclusion.
- Revises and edits his writing in order to improve it.
- Uses digital tools (with the aid of the teacher) to publish his writing.
- Researches topics for shared, group, or class-wide research and writing projects.
Writing Activities
- Keep a Journal: Keep a family journal of trips, weekends, and special times spent together. Your child can both write and illustrate the journal. Pick a favorite entry from the journal and use it to expand your child’s writing. You and your child can write a longer piece or story about that event and illustrate it with photographs or drawings.
- Research and Report: Pick a topic your child is passionate about and research it. Go to the library or look online together for information. Then work together to create an informative collage, magazine, or article about the chosen topic, using illustrations or photographs from magazines or online.
- Write What You Think: Kids have very strong opinions! Ask your child to express her opinion about something through writing and be sure to explain reasons behind her thoughts. Your child can then read the piece out loud to family members and take questions from the “audience.”
- Read Other People’s Writing: Second grade is a great time for your child to start reading magazines like Scholastic News that are made especially for kids. These often have many types of texts including narratives, fiction, non-fiction, and opinion pieces. Read the magazines together and talk about the articles. Reading these pieces will help your child become a better writer.
