Stanford Achievement Activities for Grade 2

Provide the students with a short story (no longer than two or three events) and instruct the students to read the story. Then ask the students to break down the story into events and recall the important information including the plot, characters, setting and main ideas. Finally, provide the students with a list of comprehension questions and vocabulary words (with definitions) that are related to the story. The questions can ask the students such things as to recall details, make inferences from the story and determine the cause and effect at play in the story. This activity mimics the reading comprehension and reading vocabulary sections that take up a majority of the SAT reading section.

Provide the students with two worksheets, one with words that they may not necessarily know (but words that they may have heard in class or outside of class) and a second with sentences that contain a word error. The first worksheet should have the words printed and a space next to the words to write the correct number of syllables. The second worksheet should have sentences printed that either contain a word that is misused (signified by an underline) or are missing a word (signified by a blank space). Instruct the students to count the syllables of the words on the first worksheet and sound out each word. Then instruct the students to determine what word is missing or what word should replace a misused word on the second worksheet. These worksheet activities will help the students with the word study skills portion of the SAT test.

Provide the students with a worksheet that has several geometric shapes on it in a set pattern with one shape absent from the pattern. Instruct the students to label the sides, vertexes and surface of the shapes and then identify the shapes themselves. Then, instruct the students to determine what geometric shape is missing from the pattern of shapes. This activity helps students with the geometry portion of the SAT math section, as well as the patterns portion.

Provide the students with a worksheet that has the numbers 1 through 20 printed on it and a space beneath each number for its word-number equivalent. Beneath this section, there should be separate sections for counting by 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s. In each of these sections, fill in the counting pattern to 10 integers (for example, "2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20" for 2s) but leave two of the integers blank in each section (2, 4, , 8, 10, , 14, 16, 18, 20, for example). Instruct the students to write the word-number equivalent underneath the printed numbers and fill in the blanks in each of the counting pattern sections. This activity will help the students recognize counting patterns and word-number spellings and help them with number ordering, each of which takes up a large portion of the SAT math section.