Skip to main content
Alabama Standards

Alabama 2nd Grade ELA Standards

All 51 Alabama English language arts standards for 2nd grade, each explained in plain English. The official wording is in Alabama State Department of Education's document, linked at the end of this page.

51 standards

Recurring Standards for K-3

5 standards
2.R1
Listen with care in pair, group, and whole-class discussions and follow the agreed rules, like building on what a classmate just said.
2.R2
Use what you know about sounds, spellings, and word parts to read and write words correctly, like splitting rabbit into rab and bit.
2.R3
Deepen background knowledge and grow vocabulary by discussing, reading, and writing, like learning the word erosion while studying landforms.
2.R4
Use digital tools wisely, safely, and honestly to research and write, both alone and in teams, like searching a kid-safe site for facts.
2.R5
Carry writing from planning and drafting through revising, editing, and publishing across genres, like a story, a report, or a letter.

Oral Language

7 standards
2.1
Take part in conversations and group discussions with classmates, following the class rules for talking together.
2.2
Present aloud in full, clear sentences at a good volume, using complex sentences to inform, entertain, or persuade, and ask questions to clear up meaning.
2.3
Show speaking and listening skills by joining many kinds of oral activities, like retelling, reciting poems, and class discussions.
2.4
Respond aloud in complete sentences to the five W questions plus how about something read or discussed, giving the key ideas and details.
2.5
Make audio or video recordings of stories or poems being read or told aloud.
2.6
Use visuals and technology when presenting key ideas about a text or talk, and add drawings or displays to stories or recounts to make thoughts and feelings clearer.
2.7
Use correct English when speaking, like group nouns such as flock, plurals like teeth, words like myself, past forms like ran, adverbs, and compound sentences.

Phonological Awareness/Phonemic Awareness

2 standards
2.8
Tell apart sounds that are easy to mix up, like short e and short i or /f/ and /v/, by noticing voicing and how the mouth makes each sound.
2.9
Change sounds in spoken words of up to six sounds, like taking the s off stop to get top, swapping one sound at a time, and with help saying a word's sounds backward.

Phonics

1 standard
2.10
Read and spell longer words by splitting them into syllables and using patterns like vowel teams, -le endings, blends, soft c and g, prefixes, and contractions.

Fluency

4 standards
2.11
Use the sound-spelling patterns already learned to read words of two or more syllables quickly and correctly, alone and in sentences.
2.12
Read and reread second grade texts accurately and smoothly, with expression that shows meaning, at a pace that supports understanding.
2.13
Read second grade poems aloud while paying attention to phrasing, rhythm, and rhyme.
2.14
Read the sight words that often appear in second grade texts, like because, could, and their.

Vocabulary

7 standards
2.15
Learn new academic and subject words by tying them to known words and background knowledge and by studying how each word sounds, is built, and is spelled.
2.16
Explain how words relate, using synonyms, antonyms, and homophones, telling apart shades of meaning like toss and hurl, and with help reading figurative language.
2.17
Break words into meaningful parts, like base words, compound words, prefixes, and suffixes, and use those parts, plurals, and possessives as clues to meaning.
2.18
Use a dictionary along with clues in the text to work out unfamiliar words or words with more than one meaning.
2.19
Spot new words in a text and connect their meanings to real life, like linking harvest to a trip to a farm.
2.20
Use second grade school and subject words to understand what a text says, like knowing what life cycle means in a science article.
2.21
Put grade-level academic and topic words to work in writing, like using predator and prey in an animal report.

Comprehension

15 standards
2.22
Use knowledge from read-alouds and independent reading of stories and fact texts by discussing the topic with classmates or writing about it.
2.23
Identify a story's elements, like the events in order, characters' traits and feelings, the setting, the central message, and the theme of a fable or myth.
2.24
Find the main idea and supporting details of stories and fact texts, explain how the details back up the main idea, and sum up the key ideas.
2.25
Use text features like captions, bold print, subheadings, indexes, maps, and glossaries to find facts, and explain how they make a text easier to understand.
2.26
Compare and contrast key details in two texts on one topic, versions of a story from different authors or cultures, and the elements of different stories.
2.27
Identify how stories and fact texts are organized, like cause and effect, problem and solution, or events in order.
2.28
Set a reason for reading before starting a story or fact text, like wanting to learn how bees make honey, to understand it better.
2.29
With help, notice and explain linking words like but, then, and because, and pronouns like she or it, that tie sentences together and aid understanding.
2.30
Read and understand stories and fact texts by making and checking predictions, linking to what is already known, and drawing conclusions.
2.31
Use details in a text to figure out why the author wrote it, like to teach, entertain, or persuade.
2.32
Find the rhyme patterns in poems or songs, like lines that rhyme in pairs.
2.33
Read and name kinds of poems, like free verse, rhyming poems, haiku, and limericks.
2.34
Tell facts from opinions in a text, using research and prior knowledge to judge opinions and evidence from reliable sources to prove facts.
2.35
Show careful listening during read-alouds by asking and answering questions that build background knowledge.
2.36
Combine and rearrange words and phrases to build simple and compound sentences, joining ideas with words like and, but, or, and so.

Writing

10 standards
2.37
Write neat, well-spaced print with smooth handwriting, and begin cursive by practicing its basic strokes and forming capital and lowercase cursive letters.
2.38
Spell longer words by syllable type and spell patterns like three-letter blends, vowel teams, soft c and g, prefixes and suffixes, contractions, and homophones correctly.
2.39
Put a list of words in ABC order by the first, second, and third letters, like cap, car, and cat.
2.40
Write a true or made-up story with events in a sensible order, details about what characters do, think, and feel, and a clear ending.
2.41
Write informational pieces that introduce a topic, build points with facts and details, and finish with a conclusion.
2.42
Write an opinion about a topic or text, back it with details, link ideas with words like because and also, and end with a closing.
2.43
Write complete, correctly punctuated sentences, like commas in a list, apostrophes in can't and Sam's, an exclamation mark after wow, and joining words to expand ideas.
2.44
With help, write a well-built paragraph that opens with a topic sentence, gives supporting details, and ends with a closing sentence.
2.45
Use correct grammar in writing, like naming the job of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, adding -s or -es, using past tense, and changing y to ies.
2.46
Pick a topic, write questions, gather facts from several sources, and use them to complete a research project, explaining what plagiarism is and why to avoid it.

The official Alabama documents

The plain-English lines on this page are EMStudio's own explanations of Alabama's standards, not the official wording, which Alabama State Department of Education publishes in the documents above. Codes and strand names identify each standard.