At Grade 2 level, your child's confidence in reading and writing should be growing. They will have a basic understanding of key concepts in both areas, such as grammar, and will be ready to take the next learning leap! Here are some of the main skills needed to master grammar at second-grade level:
- Use common irregular nouns
- Use plural nouns and irregular plural nouns
- Use collective nouns
- Use reflexive pronouns
- Use adjectives and adverbs
- Use adjectives that compare (for example: greater, greatest)
- Use past tense of irregular verbs
- Use correct subject-verb agreement in sentences
- Use adverbs to describe verbs
Let’s take a look at some of these concepts in detail.
Collective Nouns
A collective noun is a word that names a group of people, animals, or things.
Example: The choir sang loudly.
- Choir is the collective noun for a group of singers.
Example: I saw a herd of elephants drinking.
- Herd is the collective noun for a group of elephants.
Practice Tip: On nightzookeeper.com, your child can practise and build up on their knowledge and understanding of collective nouns. In the activity below, children have to match the collective noun with the group it describes.
Plural Nouns
Most nouns can be singular or plural. A singular noun is just one, a plural noun is more than one.
Singular noun: apple
Plural noun: apples
Singular noun: fox
Plural noun: foxes
Usually, to make a singular noun plural, we add the letter "s" or the letters "es".
Nouns that cannot be made plural by adding "s" or "es" are called irregular plural nouns. Irregular plural nouns need to be learned as they do not always follow a pattern.
Here are some common examples:
foot ⇨ feet
child ⇨ children
tooth ⇨ teeth
mouse ⇨ mice
Practice Tip: Ask your child to turn singular nouns into plural nouns throughout the day. You might be able to do this activity over breakfast or whilst taking a walk in the park.
Reflexive Pronouns
Pronouns are words that replace nouns to avoid repetition in a sentence. Some of the most commonly used pronouns are she, her, hers, he, him, and his.
Reflexive pronouns are used to refer back to the subject of a sentence.
Examples:
1) Will smiled to himself.
- The reflexive pronoun refers back to the noun, Will.
2) Sam and the Grandmaster kept the bananas for themselves.
- The reflexive pronoun refers back to the nouns, Sam and Grandmaster.
3) I chose the gift myself.
- The reflexive pronoun refers back to the pronoun, I.
These are all reflexive pronouns:
myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves
Past Tense Irregular Verbs
Verbs tell us the action that is happening in a sentence. When we want to show that an action happened in the past, we add the letters -ed to regular verbs.
Examples:
walk ⇨ walked
jump ⇨ jumped
cook ⇨ cooked
Irregular verbs don’t follow the pattern of adding -ed when we want to show an action happened in the past. Past tense irregular verbs have a different spelling.
Examples:
go ⇨ went
make ⇨ made
smell ⇨ smelt
There are about 200 irregular verbs in the English language that children need to learn. You can download the full list here.
Adjectives and Adverbs
Adjectives and adverbs are both types of describing words, but they describe different things.
Adjectives describe nouns (naming words).
Examples:
1) quiet dog - adjective noun
2) clean kitchen - adjective noun
Adverbs describe verbs (action words).
Examples:
1) quickly run - adverb verb
2) softly pat - adverb verb
How Night Zookeeper can help
Writing with great fundamentals such as grammar and spelling requires a huge amount of practice. That’s why at Night Zookeeper, we’ve built a game around the process of practising these core language skills, and there are hundreds of challenges that help your child master the fundamentals of grammar. Find out more.
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