English
Grade 2 · fall eng.g2.f

Grade 2 Fall — Paragraph Structure, Personal Narrative, and Open-Class Parts of Speech

18 weeks 270 min/week 18 lessons 14 skills 53 exercises 3 assessments

Overview

Grade 2 Fall builds directly on Grade 1 Spring's compound-sentence, descriptive-writing, and revision foundation. The term has five intertwined threads across 18 weeks:

  1. 01
    PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE

    as the central architectural shift of the year — children move from sentence sets to a single organized paragraph with a topic sentence, three to five detail sentences, and a closing sentence.

  2. 02
    NARRATIVE WRITING

    as primary genre — children plan, draft, revise, and publish a 2-3 paragraph personal narrative built on the Small-Moments model.

  3. 03
    OPEN-CLASS PARTS OF SPEECH

    explicitly taught: collective nouns (family, team, herd, flock), irregular plurals (foot/feet, child/children, mouse/mice, tooth/teeth, fish/fish, goose/geese, man/men, woman/women, person/people), past tense of frequently occurring irregular verbs (was/were, had, said, went, came, saw, made, took, gave, knew, thought, brought, ran, ate, swam, flew, drew, slept, woke, hid, found), adjectives chosen for what is modified, and adverbs as an introduction (-ly adverbs of manner, plus common adverbs of time and place).

  4. 04
    CCSS L.2.2 CONVENTIONS

    capitalize holidays, product names, geographic names; commas in greetings and closings of friendly letters; apostrophes in contractions AND in frequent possessives ('the boy's hat'); generalizations about spelling patterns (knowing when to double the final consonant before -ing, when to drop silent e before a vowel suffix).

  5. 05
    REFLEXIVE PRONOUNS

    myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves — taught explicitly per L.2.1.c. Workshop blocks lengthen: drafts grow from Grade-1 Spring's 5-8 sentences to 8-15 sentences across two paragraphs. Revision becomes a named, multi-move routine (reread, add a detail, replace a weak word, combine two short sentences, check tense consistency). HFW Set 5 (next 25 high-frequency words) and Tier-2 Set 5 (10 narrative-action and feeling words: stomped, whispered, beamed, frowned, drifted-revisited-now-as-narrative-verb, trudged, gasped, scampered, sighed, peered) anchor the vocabulary thread.

Essential questions

  • What turns a list of sentences into a paragraph that holds together?
  • What makes a personal narrative one a reader wants to stay inside?
  • How do writers choose between past and present tense — and stay there?
  • How does a strong verb or adverb change what the reader pictures?
  • When do nouns mean a whole group (a family, a flock) and when do they mean one of many (children, feet)?

Enduring understandings

  • A paragraph has a job: it tells a reader one thing, with a topic sentence to begin, details to grow it, and a closing to button it up.
  • Personal narrative is a Small Moment, zoomed in, stretched across pages, in consistent past tense.
  • Reflexive pronouns end in -self or -selves and reflect back to the subject of the sentence.
  • Some plurals do not just add -s: foot/feet, child/children, mouse/mice — we memorize these.
  • Adjectives modify nouns; adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs — pick the word that matches the job.
  • Holidays, product names, and geographic names get capital letters; an apostrophe shows ownership OR a missing letter.
  • Revision is a writer's choice: reread, add, replace, combine, check tense.

Visual reference library 8 assets

MG-1 Illustration Physical / non-image

Unit-opener: a Grade-2 writer at a small-moments planning table with a Single Paragraph Outline (SPO) sheet, mentor texts stacked, and an anchor chart 'Topic + Detail + Detail + Detail + Closing' on the wall. Style: warm watercolor, multicultural classroom, eye-level shot.

MG-2 Chart Physical / non-image

Paragraph-anatomy anchor poster: five labeled boxes stacked vertically — TOPIC SENTENCE (green, with a star icon), DETAIL 1 / DETAIL 2 / DETAIL 3 (yellow, with arrows pointing back to topic), CLOSING SENTENCE (blue, with a closing-bracket icon). Print-ready 11x17.

MG-3 Chart Physical / non-image

Irregular plurals anchor chart: two columns SINGULAR | PLURAL with 12 pairs (foot/feet, child/children, mouse/mice, tooth/teeth, fish/fish, goose/geese, man/men, woman/women, person/people, sheep/sheep, deer/deer, ox/oxen). Each pair illustrated with a small icon. Print-ready 11x17.

MG-4 Chart Physical / non-image

Irregular past-tense verbs anchor chart: present | past columns for 20 most-common irregulars (am-is-are/was-were, have/had, say/said, go/went, come/came, see/saw, make/made, take/took, give/gave, know/knew, think/thought, bring/brought, run/ran, eat/ate, swim/swam, fly/flew, draw/drew, sleep/slept, wake/woke, hide/hid, find/found). Print-ready 11x17.

MG-5 Chart Physical / non-image

Reflexive pronouns anchor chart: I → myself, you → yourself, he → himself, she → herself, it → itself, we → ourselves, you (plural) → yourselves, they → themselves. With sample sentence under each pair. Print-ready 11x17.

MG-6 Photograph
Photograph set of 14 small-moment narrative prompts: a lost tooth in a tissue, a bike scrape on a knee, a birthday candl

Photograph set of 14 small-moment narrative prompts: a lost tooth in a tissue, a bike scrape on a knee, a birthday candle being blown out, a first day of school nameplate, a beach footprint, a dog meeting a baby, a piñata mid-swing, a winter mitten lost in snow, a kitchen pancake flip, a stage with a microphone, a tide pool, a Thanksgiving table, a fireworks night sky, a school-bus window. Print-resolution, culturally inclusive.

MG-7 Video Physical / non-image

2-minute model of a Grade-2 writer using the Single Paragraph Outline tool: voiceover explains how the writer fills in the topic-sentence box, then three detail bullets, then the closing-sentence box; pencil-cam on the outline sheet; closes with the writer drafting the first sentence from the outline. Caption track on. Multicultural child voice.

MG-8 Chart Physical / non-image

Capitalization 'WHEN to capitalize' anchor poster (L.2.2.a): five rows — names of people, days of the week, months, HOLIDAYS (with examples: Diwali, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, Lunar New Year, Eid, Christmas, Juneteenth), PRODUCT NAMES (with examples: Honda, Crayola, Lego, Nike), GEOGRAPHIC NAMES (with examples: Mississippi River, Mount Fuji, Lake Michigan). Print-ready 11x17.

Lessons (18)

# Title Min Skills
1 Fall Launch — Welcome Back Writers, Meet the Paragraph 45 1
2 Writing Strong Topic Sentences — the Hochman Drill 45 1
3 Tier-2 Vocabulary Launch — STOMPED, WHISPERED, BEAMED 45 1
4 Sentence Expansion — Who/What/When/Where/Why/How 45 1
5 Adjectives Color Nouns, Adverbs Color Verbs 45 1
6 Our First Full Paragraph — Topic + 3 Details + Closing 50 1
7 Tier-2 Vocabulary Launch — FROWNED, TRUDGED, GASPED 45 1
8 The Writer's Planning Tool — Single Paragraph Outline (SPO) 50 1
9 Small Moments — The Personal Narrative Begins 50 1
10 Expanded Noun Phrases — the small red ball under the porch 45 1
11 Draft Day — Personal Narrative Paragraph 1 50 1
12 Collective Nouns — One Word for a Group 40 1
13 Tier-2 Vocabulary Launch — SCAMPERED, SIGHED, PEERED, FIDGETED 45 1
14 Peer Conference G2 — Compliment, Question, Suggest (with quoting) 45 2
15 Capital Letters for Holidays, Products, and Places (L.2.2.a) 40 1
16 Irregular Past-Tense Verbs — Twenty You Must Know 50 1
17 Revision Day — Five Named Moves on Paragraph 1 55 1
18 Publishing Day — Anthology Launch and Family Showcase 60 2

Skills (14)

Strand · GR
Strand · SPK
Strand · VOC
Strand · WR

Assessments (3)

  • Summative With Self Reflection week 18 90 min covers 14 skills
  • Formative Summative Mix week 9 40 min covers 5 skills
  • Assessment As Learning week 18 during publishing 20 min covers 1 skill

Standards alignment

Framework
CCSS-ELA
L.2.1.aL.2.1.bL.2.1.cL.2.1.dL.2.1.eL.2.1.fL.2.2.aL.2.2.bL.2.2.cL.2.2.dL.2.2.eL.2.3.a + 24 more
Framework
English National Curriculum
Y2 V/G/P: noun phrases expanded by...Y2 V/G/P: correct choice and...Y2 V/G/P: use of the progressive...Y2 V/G/P: formation of nouns using...Y2 V/G/P: formation of adjectives...Y2 V/G/P: use of the suffixes -er,...Y2 Composition: writing narratives...Y2 Composition: writing about real...Y3 V/G/P entry: introduction to...
Framework
NCTE/IRA Standards
NCTE-4 Adjust use of spoken,...NCTE-5 Employ a wide range of...NCTE-6 Apply knowledge of language...NCTE-11 Participate as...NCTE-12 Use spoken, written, and...
Framework
CEFR (early literacy adaptation)
A1+ Writing — can write a short,...A1+ Writing — can write a paragraph...A2 Writing (entry) — can write a...A1 Speaking interaction — can ask...

Pedagogical anchors

  • The Writing Revolution / Hochman Method — single-paragraph outline (SPO) routine and topic-sentence drills
    Topic-sentence drills in lessons 2 and 6; single-paragraph outline introduced in lesson 8 and used in lessons 12, 14, 17; sentence-expansion (who/what/when/where/why/how) drills in lessons 4 and 10
  • Lucy Calkins' Units of Study — Narrative Writing in the Primary Grades (Small Moments)
    Personal-narrative arc taught in lessons 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18; Small-Moments minilesson (zoom in on one tiny moment, stretch across pages) in lesson 9; end-of-unit publication in lesson 18
  • Handwriting Without Tears — Grade 2 transition from three-line to two-line paper and cursive readiness
    Handwriting routines in lessons 1 and 13; paper-transition decision per child by week 6
  • Beck & McKeown 'Bringing Words to Life' — three-encounter Tier-2 vocabulary with narrative-action emphasis
    Tier-2 launches in lessons 3, 7, 13, 15 with narrative-verb and feeling-word focus that feeds personal-narrative writing
  • Singer, Bashir, Westby — semantic precision via expanded noun phrases (adjective + noun + prepositional phrase)
    Adjective-and-adverb routines in lessons 5 and 10; expanded noun-phrase drill 'the ___ ball under the ___' in lesson 10
  • Strickland & Stahl — distributed retrieval for HFW automaticity
    HFW Set 5 spaced rotation across all 18 weeks per spiral_review_plan

Depth bar

Covers
CCSS
L.2.1.a
collective nouns
L.2.1.b
irregular plural nouns
L.2.1.c
reflexive pronouns
L.2.1.d
past tense of frequently-occurring irregular verbs
L.2.1.e
adjectives and adverbs, chosen depending on what is to be modified
L.2.2.a
capitalize holidays, product names, geographic names
L.2.2.c
apostrophes in contractions and frequent possessives
W.2.3
narrative writing, in full paragraph form
L.2.4
vocabulary work
Exceeds

formally teaching the topic-sentence + 3-5 detail + closing paragraph shape at Grade 2 (English NC Year-3 entry expectation) and by requiring a planned, drafted, revised, and PUBLISHED 2-3 paragraph personal narrative (CCSS W.3.3 entry expectation) at end of unit