English -Suggested Guidelines (Grade 2)

 

DRAFT

 

ENGLISH (Grade 2)Suggested Guidelines

 

Competency A: Oral Communication Skills

Standard 1: Develop competence in listening and spoken language to enhance the effectiveness with which they are able to communicate across a range of contexts and to a range of audiences.

Student Learning Outcomes:

  • Show awareness of the listener through including relevant details in non-verbal and verbal communication and be able to distinguish individual sounds, word stress.
  • Take turns to speak and ask questions for clarity and respond to questions from others
  • Converse audibly with class fellows, teachers and other adults

Knowledge:

 Students will:

  • Learn to take turns to speak and to listen to others and respond appropriately; ask questions for clarity and respond to questions from others.

Skills:

Students will be able to…

  1. Show awareness of the listener through, including, relevant details in non-verbal and verbal communication (e.g., through laughing when a joke is shared, or responding to what is being said)

2.    Listen to and name family members and items in a house.

 

3.  Ask and answer simple questions related to family and friends

4. Identify rhetorical patterns and make simple inferences while listening. (e.g. following commands

Assessments

 

Formative Assessments

Daily class activities with speaking and listening incorporated in it.

 

 

Summative Assessments

Encourage students to speak on matters of immediate interest. Show a picture, ask them to describe it using no more than 3 sentences. A simple audio message can be played encouraging students to repeat it.

Learning Activities

Activity 1

The following activities can also be used to develop and practise speaking and listening skills: 

  • Simple interviewing skills can be developed at this stage. Divide students into pairs and encourage them to interview each other using simple questions e.g., How old are you? How was your weekend? Etc. What is your favourite pastime activity? Encourage students to report about their partner’s interview to the class. Students take turns till all of them got a chance to speak.

 

  • Play ‘Guess who …’. Divide class into groups.

 

Give each group a set of cards showing different characters who all look slightly different, e.g., long hair, short hair, brown hair, black hair, blue eyes, brown eyes. They lay out the cards face up on the table. Ask one student from the group to see the card and the rest of the groups guesses it till they come up with the correct character description. Rule of the game should be that the student with the card can only reply in yes/no.

 

Working in groups, ask them to invent a story character using simple sentences. Students share ideas about the appearance and personality of their character in simple phrases and sentences.

natively, you may want to set a time period in which to play the game.

Activity 2

Students will be asked to sit in pairs. A simple topic will be given to them and they would be expected to talk and listen, by taking turns. At least 3 to 4 sentences to be spoken by each partner and responded by the listener. Topics could be like:

 

My favourite game

A day in a park

My mom

 

 

 

Standard 1Students will be able to develop competence in listening and spoken language to enhance the effectiveness with which they are able to communicate across a range of contexts and to a range of audiences.

Student Learning Outcomes Ask questions to find out general information on a limited range of general and curricular topics

Knowledge:

Students will:

 

  • Recognise the formal and informal forms of communication.

 

Learn to interact in a pair or group setting.

 

  • Ask suitable questions.

 

Skills:

Students will be able to… 

 

Use basic vocabulary for an increasing range of general and curricular topics

 

Communicate meaning clearly using phrases and simple sentences during pair, group and whole class exchange

 

Ask questions to find out general information on a limited range of general and curricular topics

Assessments 

 

Formative Assessments - The students will listen to teachers’ statements and convert them into questions. The class will discuss how the order of the words in the sentences was changed to assist in this transformation. Some examples of statements are given below.

 

  • Ali likes reading.                                Does Ali like reading?
  • It is raining today.                              Is it raining today?
  • I took the bus to school.                     Did you take the bus to school?

 

Summative Assessments - Teachers will divide the students into pairs and ask the students to think about their most favourite personality/celebrity. This can be a male or female person, living or dead who is imaginary or real like Quaid-e-Azam or Mulan. The students have to come up with questions that they might ask this person, for example, what was their personality like when they were growing up or who was their role model. The teacher will give each student a turn to share at least one question they would ask their favourite personality, with the class.

Learning Activities -

 

Activity 1: Starting new friendships

 

Teachers will divide the students into groups of two and ask them to share how easily they can make friends. They will then discuss what questions they usually ask a new person they meet to learn more about them.

 

Activity 2: Guess the animal

 

The main purpose of this activity is to help students ask logical questions and to shortlist animals that these descriptions might correspond to. Teachers choose an animal that they want the students to guess with the help of questions they ask like:

 

  • Where does the animal live (in a desert, in water, in trees, underground, in a house, on a farm, or in a jungle)?
  • Does it have feathers, scales, or fur on its body?
  • Does it have wings, a beak, a tail, or other distinguishing features?
  • Does it have babies or does it lay eggs?
  • What does it eat (plants, insects, or other animals)?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Competency B: Reading and Critical Thinking Skills

Standard 1:

Use knowledge, skills, and strategies related to word identification/decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension to construct

meaning from informational and literary texts, while maintaining a positive disposition towards reading.

Student Learning Outcome:

 

Learn the different ways in which vowels can be pronounced, e.g. how, low, apple, apron etc; Know and apply grade-level word analysis skills to:

a.Read common high-frequency words by sight at an appropriate grade-level 

b)Recognise and read compound words (e.g., farmhouse, textbook, timetable)

 

Use pre-reading strategies to predict some words that might occur in a text by looking at the picture/title (identify the type of text, purpose and intended audience)

Knowledge:

Students will:

 

  • Use phonics as the main method of tackling unfamiliar words
  • Match sounds to their corresponding letters/letter patterns:
  • Initial and final consonants;
  • Initial short  and long vowel sounds;
  • Word families with vowel-consonant patterns (e.g., -at, -an, -ad, -ap, -et, -en, -ill, -ig, -in, -un). 
  • Consonant digraphs in initial position (e.g., th, sh, ch, wh).
  • Initial and double consonant blends
  • Begin to learn to use pre-reading strategies to predict about the words that might occur in the book and begin to read with fluency and expression.

Skills:

Students will be able to

 

  1. Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.
  1. identify upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet
  2. recognize silent letters in words
  3. match sounds to their corresponding letters/letter patterns

2. Identify syllables and split familiar compound words into parts

3. Learn to use pre-reading strategies to predict some of the words that might occur in the book/text

 

3. Read with fluency and expression, taking some notice of punctuation, including speech marks

Assessments

 

Formative Assessments: 

Provide students with cross word puzzle exercises, worksheets on consonant blends, matching exercises etc.

 

 

Summative Assessments:  

End of unit assessment, oral quiz, class tests etc

Learning Activities: 

 

  • As learners’ phonic knowledge develops, they need to begin to segment words for spelling and blend them for reading using bigger ‘chunks’ of the word than phonemes. The most useful chunk is often the syllable. Teach learners to recognise syllables both orally and in writing.
  • Clap names and the rhymes of songs. Can learners match words to the claps?
  • Show learners how compound words can be broken into syllables, each of which is a word (e.g. foot-ball, light-house, hand-bag).
  • Demonstrate how to find syllables to blend for reading. Teach learners to look for the vowel phonemes in a word and find the associated consonants. That is usually a syllable (and all syllables must have a vowel phoneme).
  • Demonstrate how to segment a word into syllables as a strategy for spelling (e.g. im-por-tant, teach-er)

 

Use regular opportunities to reinforce segmenting and blending. Say the word, the phonemes, and the word. Ask students to repeat. For example, say, ‘Point, p-oi-n-t, point. Cart, c-ar-t, cart. House, h-ou-se, house.’ 

  • Revisit the long vowel phonemes ‘ai’, ‘ee’, ‘ie’, ‘oa’, ‘ue’, as well as introducing ‘oi’, ‘ar’ and ‘ou’. Use card/wooden cut-out letters so that learners have both an aural and a visual input for these sounds. Alternatively, write them on the board.
  • Ask students to make sets of rhyming words on analogy with a given word with a long vowel phoneme. They will find different ways of spelling each of the long vowel phonemes, but encourage this awareness and try to spot generalisations which could account for different spelling variations. 
  • These activities combine segmenting a word for spelling and blending the phonemes for reading.

 

 

  Competency B: Reading and Critical Thinking Skills

Standard 2:

Use a variety of reading strategies appropriate to the reading purpose, meaning and type of text to comprehend and analyse a range of literary (prose, poetry and drama) and informational texts (expository, persuasive, procedural, and functional texts).

Student Learning Outcome:

 

Read a range of common words on sight and show some awareness that texts have different purposes; distinguish between fact and opinion in a range of texts and other media; Identify and read the title of an article, book, or chapter; the function of captions and sub-heads

Knowledge:

Students will:

 

  • Learn to read a range of common sight words and understand the importance of reading the title of an article or a book and show some awareness that texts have different purposes; find factual information from different formats, e.g. charts, labelled diagrams and answer questions in complete and correct sentences.

Skills:

Students will be able to

 

  1. Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.
  1. identify upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet
  2. recognise silent letters in words
  3. match sounds to their corresponding letters/letter patterns

2. Identify syllables and split familiar compound words into parts

3. Learn to use pre-reading strategies to predict some of the words that might occur in the book/text

4.  Begin to read with fluency and expression, taking some notice of punctuation, including speech marks

5. Learn to read and respond to question words, e.g. what, where, when, who, why using pre and while reading strategies

 

 

 

Assessments

 

Formative Assessments: 

Write a number of sentences with missing words on the board. Ask students to read the sentences and fill in the missing words. E.g., We______ a boat (sail), I ________ a bicycle (ride) etc.

Write a number of statements on the board/provide a worksheet. Ask students to identify whether it is a question or a simple sentence e.g., What is the colour of the sky?, The sun always rises in the East and sets in the West etc.

 

Worksheets on question words. Provide a series of questions, asking students to answer them. An effective way is to use simple comprehension passages based on a range of texts.

 

Summative Assessments:  

Class tests, end of unit assessments etc.

Learning Activities: 

 

  • Share simple large print books with pictures with students. Develop pre-reading skills by showing front cover and title to students encouraging them to:
  • Predict what the story might be about;
  • Tell them about the front and back cover of the book; explaining that in English language, script is from left to right.
  • Read new and high frequency words. (A good idea is to display them on the side of the board and refer them repeatedly throughout the year.)
  • Ask students to phonetically pronounce regular words which are easily decodable.
  • Strategies students can use to work out unknown words, including using context and grammar
  • Interesting and significant words/phrases they could add to their own vocabulary and spelling log.

 

While reading aloud, ask what, where, when, who and why questions. If reading fiction, ask them if they can guess the ending of the story.

 

  • As students read aloud individually, encourage them to:
  • read with increasing independence
  • use knowledge of grammar and context in deciphering words and sentences
  • monitor themselves when reading to make sure they don’t lose the sense of what they are reading
  • think about what they like and/or dislike about the fiction/non-fiction text they are reading
  • Identify interesting words/phrases they could add to their own vocabulary.
  • read with awareness of punctuation, including speech marks
  • read with expression, altering tone when interpreting dialogue
  • ask and answer questions about sections of the text.

 

Reading is the most effective way to develop language skills. Encourage students to read as extensively as possible. Tell them to read newspaper headlines, title covers of books, go through picture dictionaries etc. Ask questions and encourage discussions on the read books. Display book charts in class. This helps develop a sense of competition and inculcate the habit of reading.

 

  Competency C: Vocabulary and Grammar

Standard 1: Use vocabulary accurately and appropriately as well as understand how speakers/writers put words together and use vocabulary to communicate meaning in familiar and unfamiliar settings.

Student Learning Outcomes: Identify & classify vocabulary, apply word-formation techniques and parts of speech concepts for reading, writing and spoken language.

Knowledge:

 Students will:

understand and use punctuation, syntax, grammatical functions, rules and applications for developing accuracy and meaning in their spoken and written communication.

 

Skills:

Students will be able to…

1. Sort words into different categories from reading materials and use

 

  1. simple action words and naming words from pictures and immediate surrounding (e.g. animals, fruits, vegetable, parts of body, objects in the classroom and at home)
  2. colours, shapes, numbers (cardinal and ordinal), days of the week, months of the year, feeling words
  3. words belonging to the same lexical field (e.g. ‘pupil’ and ‘recess’ belong to the lexical field of ‘school’)

2. Recognize and speak simple grade-level words that show feelings and emotions (e.g. sad, happy, angry).

3. Articulate and use simple rhyming words in writing (e.g -nd, nk, nt, mp).

4. Learn to arrange words alphabetically based on the first letter (ABC order apple, bag, cat).

5. Learn to join words with prefixes, and recognize and locate some compound words from various text sources.

6. Describe the use of joining words in speaking to join words and sentences.

7. Use of simple present, past and future tenses  to show actions

8. Identify the difference between direct speech and speech bubbles.

Assessments

 

Formative Assessments

Provide a worksheet with sample statements asking students to correct the incorrect statements.

  1. Mr. Li speaks three languages: chinese, english, and Japanese.
  2. In june we spent a lot of time at the metropolitan museum and at central park.
  3. Next year I'm going to study international business. I'm looking forward to taking the course, economic history of europe.
  4. We had a very hot Summer. I cannot wait until September.
  5. They took their daughter to see dr. Lucas last friday.

Answer Key: 1 (Chinese, English, Japanese); 2. (June, Metropolitan Museum, Central Park); 3. Economic History of Europe); 4. (summer); 5. (Dr., Friday)

Design simple practise worksheets on Tenses.

Word puzzles, word games can be used extensively to develop a strong understanding of Prefixes and suffix

Summative Assessments

Encourage students to use correct punctuations in their creative writings. Class tests and end of term assessments.

 

Learning Activity:

  • Introduce the terms suffixes and prefixes to students. Write a few words on the board and introduce common prefixes un- and dis- and suffixes like -ing, -ed, and -s.

Share words with commonly used prefixes and suffixes. Encourage students to read and pronounce these words. Explain meanings of these words.

Students can make a list in their notebooks.

  • A list of high frequency words should be available for students to pronounce and spell. Display list on a wall or at the corner of whiteboards. Refer to them again and again till the students have memorised high frequency words.

 

 Competency C: Vocabulary and Grammar

Standard 2: Understand and use punctuation, syntax, grammatical functions, rules and applications for developing accuracy and meaning in their spoken and written communication.

Student Learning Outcomes:

  • Learn regular formation of plural naming words; recognise the use of subject and objective pronouns words with verbs; develop an understanding of using articles appropriately in sentences
  • Identify and use describing words as adjectives Identify and use common action words as verbs
  • Identify sensing verbs
  • Construct simple sentences using a subject, verb, objects e.g. He eats quickly, He eats apples
  • Comprehendd and respond to simple wh-questions.

Knowledge:

 Students will:

  • Understand and use punctuation, syntax, grammatical functions, rules and applications for developing accuracy and meaning in their spoken and written communication.

Identify, use and simple sentences:

  • Using subject, verbs and objects 
  • For instructions, commands and requests

 

 

Skills:

Students will be able to…

  1. Sort words into different categories from reading materials and use them as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverb
  2.  Use of simple present, past and future tenses (and continuous forms)  to show actions with verbs in sentences and various contexts
  3. Recognise contractions and use them in their writings
  4. Identify and use simple words that tell the position i.e. in, on, under, behind, next.
  5. Apply knowledge of punctuation on different types of sentences e.g., capital letter, full stop, question marks and exclamation marks.
  6. Respond appropriately to wh-questions in their writings with correct punctuation

 

Assessments

 

Formative Assessments

  • During reading or writing activities, talk to students about:
  • punctuation, including speech marks / using capital letters, full stops and question marks
  • identifying/using past and present tenses
  • identifying/using words that connect sentences, e.g. and, but, then, because
  • Identifying/using sentence openings, e.g., adverbs.

 

  • Create sets of words by taking two different types of sentences – a question and a statement - and writing the words on separate pieces of card. Divide students into groups and give each group a set of word cards. Students create two sentences from the cards. Ask one group to read out their sentences and to explain why they put the cards in the order they chose. Other students listen carefully and decide whether they agree with the word order.

        Ask students to suggest changes to their sentences to e.g. change them from present to past tense, to add an appropriate sentence opening.

Summative Assessments

Encourage students to use correct punctuations in their creative writings. Class tests and end of term assessments.

 

Activity 1:

  • Talk to students about when and how to use punctuation, including speech marks/using capital letters, fullstops and question marks. Form sentences on board and ask students to identify the missing punctuation and ask them to put them at the proper place.
  • Introduce wh- words. Tell them these are question words. Write who, what, why, where on the board and explain students these are question words and the statement that follows it, is a question sentence and we put a question mark at the end of a question statement.
  • Create sets of different type of sentences. Either write them on board or provide a worksheet with question sentences and statements. Tell students to identify whether each sentence is a simple statement or a sentence.

 

Activity 2:

  • Introduce the terms suffixes and prefixes to students. Write a few words on the board and introduce common prefixes un- and dis- and suffixes like -ing, -ed, and -s.

Share words with commonly used prefixes and suffixes. Encourage students to read and pronounce these words. Explain meanings of these words.

Students can make a list in their notebooks.

  • A list of high frequency words should be available for students to pronounce and spell. Display list on a wall or at the corner of whiteboards. Refer to them again and again till the students have memorised high frequency words.

 

 

  Competency D: Writing Skills

Standard 1: Write English legibly, fluently and with correct grammar, punctuation and spelling, for a variety of purposes. Apply skills and strategies for idea generation, selection, development, organization and revision for a variety of writing purposes and text types.

Student Learning Outcomes:  Generate ideas on a topic to project implicit and explicit meanings, and to use the storytelling technique to convey ideas or factual writing style.

Knowledge:

      Students will …

  • Develop writing readiness by tracing and writing letters, words and sentences legibly, consistently and with correct formation and spelling, on three/four-lined paper.
  • Generate ideas on a topic to project implicit and explicit meanings, and to use the storytelling technique to convey ideas or factual writing style. 

Skills:

Students will be able to….

 

  1. Form words correctly and consistently
  2. Practise handwriting patterns and the joining of letters
  3. Learn the different common spellings of long vowel phonemes.
  4. Use two to three descriptive words based on sight and personality.
  5. Memorize the meaning of the words through oral discussion by giving more examples
  6. Use different parts of speech in writing

Assessments 

 

Formative Assessment:

Students will be asked to write a small introduction about themselves, using correct formation of words and usage of parts of speech, like nouns and pronouns. (4 to 5 sentences)

 

  • Observation of work during the lesson. Focus on how the child grips a pencil, the direction of movement, formation of letters.
  • Check for Understandings

Sample: The teacher may ask a child to show her in the air how the letter ‘b’ is written. The teacher may write a letter incorrectly on the board and ask the children if it is correct, and what might be wrong with it.

 

Summative Assessments:

Write a short paragraph of  to 7 sentences on any given topic using a minimum of 2 nouns, one adjective, two verbs and one describing word. Marks will be given for the correct usage of these parts of speech. 

Learning Activities:

Activity 1:

  • Introduce joining of letters that represent long vowel phonemes to reinforce that two or more letters represent one phoneme. This assists students to spell and write the letters to make words.

 

Encourage students to:  

  • draw controlled patterns to develop fine motor control and to develop the shapes and movements used for joining letters
  • Use handwriting as part of teaching high frequency words and phonics.
  • Form simple sentences about their likes, dislikes and begin to form small paragraphs of around 30 to 50 words.

 

Handwriting:

  • Encourage students to write in a legible handwriting on four lines. The script needs to be simple and easy to read. Use sentences comprising of both upper and lower case sentences.
  • write in clear sentence
  • use a range of interesting words and phrases
  • Use a range of words to connect sentences. A sample sentence can be:

                                   The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy fox.

  • Give a time frame to complete the handwriting page depending on the page size. Encourage students not to erase their work repeatedly. Reduce time as the term progresses, it will help them develop handwriting speed.

 

  Competency D: Writing Skills

Standard 2:  Apply skills and strategies for idea generation, selection, development, organization and revision for a variety of writing purposes and text types.

Student Learning Outcomes:  Write 3-5 simple, meaningful sentences of their own on the given text types, using correct capitalisation, punctuation and spelling using pre-writing strategies;

Knowledge:

      Students will …

 

  • Learn to fill in missing information to complete a simple paragraph and begin to write a few sentences describing a personal experience;

 

  • Use speech bubbles and cartoon strips with appropriate formulaic expressions or a simple dialogue to convey meaning in writing

 

Skills:

Students will be able to….

 

  • Write 3-5 informative/explanatory sentences on one topic/in which they name a topic, provide some facts about the topic, and provide some sense of closure.

 

  • Develop a story of their own; using the beginning, middle and ending as an important component inserting a dialogue.

 

 

 

Assessments 

 

Formative Assessment:

Students will be asked to write a small introduction about themselves, using correct formation of words and sentences.

Summative Assessments:

Write a short paragraph/story on any given topic using simple nouns, verbs, adjectives & adverbs.

Learning Activities:

Pre Writing Strategies:

Read different types of books (Fiction, non fiction).  Discuss different elements of a story with students. Develop a sample draft on the board with students. Developing a draft with students is an excellent way to develop writing skills.

 

Once students have read, discussed and considered a story, they should attempt to write their own version of it. Before they write their story, encourage them to plan it using a simple flow diagram to map out the basic structure of the story – beginning, middle and end.

 

While Writing:

Encourage them to write simple words and phrases to describe the main characters and the setting. (If possible, prepare a plan sheet with simple headings:

 

Beginning: _____________________________

Middle:________________________________

Ending: _______________________________

 

While they are writing, encourage them to use:

  • high frequency words
  • a variety of sentence openings e.g., Once upon a time…, once it happened…, Long ago… etc.
  • full stops or question marks to mark the end of sentences

 

Post Writing:

Ask students to volunteer and read their writings to the class. Encourage them to improve their work by suggesting a different word where necessary.