Language

In this unit you will grow as a listener, speaker and reader. First you will practise listening and talking: showing interest, restating what you hear, asking relevant questions, and using your voice, body and best words to share ideas. Then you will become a stronger word reader. You will read words with blends and consonant teams (street, catch, phone), silent letters (knee, write), silent e and soft c and g (city, page), vowel teams (rain, eight, key, coin, cloud, moon), and bossy r (bird, chair, bear). You will learn to read two-syllable words, use prefixes, suffixes and base words, read heart words quickly, read smoothly with expression, use punctuation and pronouns to understand sentences, and figure out new word meanings.

Every lesson has a hands-on activity you can do at home, lots of practice questions and a short quiz. Spelling, printing and writing sentences are in the companion unit, Printing, Spelling and Sentences.

Curriculum expectations covered: B1.1, B1.2, B1.3, B1.4, B1.5, B2.1, B2.2, B2.3, B2.4, B2.5, B3.1, B3.2, B3.3, with Strand A1 (transferable skills) woven in (The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Language, 2023, Grade 2).

In this unit you will build the skills that make your writing easy to read and easy to understand. You will print neatly and smoothly, spell longer words one syllable at a time, choose the right spelling pattern by looking at where a sound is in a word (like ck in duck but k in milk, or ay in play but ai in rain), learn new vowel spellings, and learn tricky heart words. You will add endings, prefixes and suffixes and learn the spelling changes they bring.

Then you will write all four kinds of sentences and join ideas into compound sentences, learn new kinds of nouns, pronouns, the verb to be, adjectives that compare and adverbs, and use capital letters for proper nouns, commas in lists, apostrophes and quotation marks.

This unit goes with Foundations of Reading. Every lesson has a hands-on activity, practice questions and a short quiz.

Curriculum expectations covered: B2.1, B2.2, B2.3 (spelling), B3.1, B3.2, B3.3 (Ontario Language, Grade 2, 2023). Printing fluency is Strand D expectation D2.2 and is included here because it supports spelling and writing.

In this unit you will become a stronger, smarter reader, listener and viewer. You will learn about different kinds of texts (fables, poems, fact texts, how-to texts, journals and media texts) and their text features, like tables of contents, charts and icons. You will see how pictures and design add meaning, and you will practise reading strategies: predicting, checking that it makes sense (rereading, visualizing, asking questions), making connections, finding the main idea, and making inferences.

You will also think like a critic: you will notice how writers use similes, consonance and strong word choice, figure out who is telling a story, compare perspectives, and learn from texts about and by First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. Finally, you will learn to find reliable information and be safe and kind online.

Every lesson has short read-alouds written for this site, a hands-on activity, practice questions and a quiz. A grown-up can read the texts aloud: listening and talking about texts is a big part of Grade 2 reading.

Curriculum expectations covered: A1.1, A1.2, A2.1–A2.7, A3.1–A3.3, C1.1–C1.7, C2.1–C2.7, C3.1–C3.8 (The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Language, 2023, Grade 2).

In this unit you will grow as a writer. You will plan by thinking about topic, purpose and audience, find and grow ideas, and research using three or more sources. Then you will write many kinds of texts: personal narratives, letters and persuasive texts, how-to (procedural) texts, information reports, poems and simple media texts like posters. You will learn to add your own voice, choose strong words, revise with feedback, edit with a checklist, and publish and present your work, reading it aloud with expression.

Every lesson has a model text or example, a hands-on activity, practice questions with answers and a short quiz. Talking about ideas before writing is a big part of Grade 2 writing, so a grown-up can help by listening, asking questions and being a real audience.

Curriculum expectations covered: D1.1–D1.5, D2.1–D2.6, D3.1–D3.3, with connections to Strand A (A1.1, A1.2, A2.1–A2.5, A3.1, A3.3) (The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Language, 2023, Grade 2).