Third Trimester Benchmarks

For your information, here are the third trimester benchmarks for second graders. These align to the common core state standards and are taken into consideration for determining student progress in the spring trimester.

3rd Trimester Second Grade Benchmarks

LANGUAGE ARTS

• Identify the main topic of a multiparagraph text as well as the focus of specific paragraphs within the text and the main purpose of a text.
• Describe the connection between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text.
• Know and use various text features to locate key facts or information in a text.
• Explain how specific images contribute to and clarify a text.
• Describe how reasons support specific points the author makes in a text.
• Compare and contrast the most important points presented by two texts on the same topic.
• Know spelling-sound correspondences for additional common vowel teams.
• Decode regularly spelled two-syllable words with long vowels and words with common prefixes and suffixes and determine the meaning of the new word formed when a known prefix is added to a known word.
• Identify words with inconsistent but common spelling-sound correspondences and recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words.
• Read aloud with accuracy and fluency (grade level benchmark) to support comprehension.
• Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings and use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.
• Write opinion pieces, informative/explanatory texts, and narratives.
• With support, strengthen writing as needed by revising and editing and use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing.
• Recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.
• During conversations, build on others' talk in conversations by linking their comments to the remarks of others and during conversations, and  ask for clarification and further explanation if needed.
• Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking and standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
• Capitalize holidays, product names, and geographic names.
• Use commas in greetings and closings of letters and apostrophes in contractions and possessives.
• Generalize learned spelling patterns when writing  and consult reference materials, including beginning dictionaries, as needed to check and correct spellings.
• 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.
• Identify real-life connections between words and their use and distinguish shades of meaning among closely related verbs and closely related  adjectives.

MATH

• Mentally subtract within 20.
• Fluently subtract within 20 using mental strategies.

• Work with equal groups of objects to gain foundations for multiplication.

• Use addition to find the total number of objects arranged in rectangular arrays with up to 5 rows and up to 5 columns; write an equation to express the total as a sum of equal addends.
• Count within 1000; skip-count by 5s, 10s, and 100s.

• Use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract and add up to four two-digit numbers.

• Add and subtract within 1000, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method.
• Explain why addition and subtraction strategies work, using place value and the properties of operations.
• Measure the length of an object by selecting and using appropriate tools such as rulers, yardsticks, meter sticks, and measuring tapes and measure and estimate lengths in standard units.
• Measure the length of an object twice, using length units of different lengths for the two measurements; describe how the two measurements relate to the size of the unit chosen and determine how much longer one object is than another, expressing the length difference in terms of a standard length unit.
• Estimate lengths using units of inches, feet, and meters.
• Use addition and subtraction within 100 to solve word problems involving lengths that are given in the same units, e.g., by using drawings (such as drawings of rulers) and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.
• Tell and write time from analog and digital clocks to the nearest five minutes, using a.m. and p.m.
• Represent and interpret data.
• Generate measurement data by measuring lengths of several objects to the nearest whole unit, or by making repeated measurements of the same object. Show the measurements by making a line plot, where the horizontal scale is marked off in whole-number units.

• Reason with shapes and their attributes.

• Recognize and draw shapes having specified attributes, such as a given number of angles or a given number of equal faces. Identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes.
• Partition rectangles into rows and columns of same-size squares and count to find the total number of them and  circles and rectangles into two, three, or four equal shares, describe the shares using the words halves, thirds, half of, a third of, etc., and describe the whole as two halves, three thirds, four fourths. Recognize that equal shares of identical wholes need not have the same shape.