The New Zealand Curriculum · Phase 1

Year 2 English Worksheets

For the second year at school (Year 2), the topics English covers in the New Zealand Curriculum, with the skills we have worksheets for, each described in our own words.

484 worksheets

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Trace the Letter A Years 1–2 · English ★ Trace the Letter B Years 1–2 · English ★ Trace the Letter C Years 1–2 · English ★ Trace the Letter D Years 1–2 · English ★ Trace the Letter E Years 1–2 · English ★ Trace the Letter F Years 1–2 · English ★ Trace the Letter G Years 1–2 · English ★ Trace the Letter H Years 1–2 · English ★

What students learn in Year 2 English

New Zealand Year 2 English has 3 topics: Talking and listening in class; Phonics, reading and understanding; and Handwriting, spelling and writing. Our worksheets cover 39 skills in 2 of them. The most are in Phonics, reading and understanding, with 25 skills, such as reading and spelling sight words, reading comprehension, Year 2 and reading comprehension, Year 3. There are also skills in Handwriting, spelling and writing (19 skills). We have no worksheets yet for Talking and listening in class. Each skill below says in plain words what your child works on, with links to its worksheets.

Phonics, reading and understanding

english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.phonemic-awareness-and-phonics-knowledge.knowledge/01-0253ce english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.phonemic-awareness-and-phonics-knowledge.knowledge/02-706de4 english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.phonemic-awareness-and-phonics-knowledge.knowledge/03-7e2256 english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.phonemic-awareness-and-phonics-knowledge.knowledge/04-e36f3a english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.phonemic-awareness-and-phonics-knowledge.practices/01.1-2635b2 english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.phonemic-awareness-and-phonics-knowledge.practices/01.2-f772c9 english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.phonemic-awareness-and-phonics-knowledge.practices/01.3-c9b14f english/first-six-months..third-year/reading.word-recognition.decoding.knowledge/01-6188d0

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english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.decoding.practices/01-e9a6d9 english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.decoding.knowledge/01-e7e0ea english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.decoding.knowledge/02-70b808 english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.decoding.knowledge/03-710db9 english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.decoding.knowledge/04-19ad6d english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.decoding.knowledge/05-b6c1dc english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.decoding.knowledge/06-27e19f english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.decoding.knowledge/07-000ed7 english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.decoding.practices/01-751e8b english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.decoding.knowledge/01-39341e english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.decoding.practices/01-bfc000 english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.decoding.practices/01-237191 english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.conventions-of-print.knowledge/01-de3215 english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.conventions-of-print.knowledge/02-e2383e english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.conventions-of-print.practices/01-793793 english/second-year..third-year/reading.word-recognition.fluency.knowledge/01-1b2004 english/second-year..third-year/reading.word-recognition.fluency.knowledge/02-891861 english/second-year..third-year/reading.word-recognition.fluency.knowledge/03-9d890b english/second-year/reading.word-recognition.fluency.practices/01-b89b83 english/second-year/reading.comprehension.sentence-structure.knowledge/01-ba1dad english/second-year/reading.comprehension.sentence-structure.knowledge/02-89e41a english/second-year/reading.comprehension.sentence-structure.practices/02-af5623 english/second-year/reading.comprehension.text-form-structure-style-and-features.knowledge/01-f2df71 english/second-year/reading.comprehension.text-form-structure-style-and-features.practices/01-6bc36f english/second-year/reading.comprehension.text-form-structure-style-and-features.practices/02-6afd8f english/second-year/reading.comprehension.comprehension-strategies.knowledge/01-4747d3 english/second-year/reading.comprehension.comprehension-strategies.knowledge/02-8dec9b english/second-year/reading.comprehension.comprehension-strategies.knowledge/03-55f42b english/second-year/reading.comprehension.comprehension-strategies.practices/01-dc757c english/second-year/reading.comprehension.comprehension-strategies.practices/02-8bb84c english/second-year/reading.comprehension.comprehension-strategies.practices/03-ccba2a english/second-year/reading.comprehension.comprehension-strategies.practices/04-2bd9c9 english/second-year/reading.comprehension.comprehension-strategies.practices/05-2f2caf english/second-year/reading.critical-analysis.interpretations-and-connections.knowledge/01-96a12c english/second-year/reading.critical-analysis.interpretations-and-connections.practices/01-743af9

• Reading and spelling sight words. Read the most common words at a glance, including ones that do not sound out the way they are spelled, such as said and the, and spell them correctly. Worksheets: Pre-Primer Sight Words Worksheets (set) · Primer Sight Words Worksheets (set) · Year 2 Sight Words Worksheets (set) · Year 3 Sight Words (set).
• Reading comprehension, Year 2. Read a short story or a short text about real things, answer questions about its key details, put its events in order, retell it, and say its main idea or lesson. Worksheets: Year 2 Reading Comprehension (set) · Predict, Then Check (Year 2) · When It Does Not Make Sense: Fix It.
• Reading comprehension, Year 3. Read a story or a text of a few paragraphs, answer who, what, where, when, why and how questions about it, put its events in order, and say its main idea, lesson or moral and what each paragraph is about. Worksheets: Year 3 Reading Comprehension (set) · How Beavers Build: Year 3 What Each Paragraph Is About.
• Comparing two texts on the same topic or theme. Read two texts on the same topic or with the same theme, and tell how they are alike and different: what each says, how each says it, and what you learn from reading both. Worksheets: Two Texts About Frogs: Year 2 Paired Texts · Two Stories About Lost Things: Year 2 Paired Texts · Two Texts About Seeds: Year 3 Paired Texts · Two Runaway Folktales: Year 3 Paired Texts.
• Commas. Put commas in dates, addresses, letters and lists, before and or but in a compound sentence, after an opening word or phrase, and around words that add extra information. Worksheets: Commas in a Series and in Dates.
• Genres: fiction, nonfiction, fables, myths, poems, plays and biographies. Tell made-up stories from texts that give facts, and name kinds of texts by their features: fables, fairy tales, myths, tall tales, poems, plays, biographies and autobiographies; in Years 7 to 9, the genres of fiction (realistic, historical, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, adventure) and the speeches of a play (dialogue, monologue, soliloquy, aside), and how a playwright shows a character through dialogue and stage directions. Worksheets: Fiction or Nonfiction?.
• Vowel teams: ai, ay, ee, ea, oa, ow and igh. Read and spell words where two or three letters make one long vowel sound: rain and day, feet and seat, boat and snow, and light. Worksheets: Vowel Teams (set).
• R-controlled vowels: ar, or, er, ir and ur. Read and spell words where r changes the vowel sound: car, corn, and the same sound in her, bird and turn. Worksheets: R-Controlled Vowels (set).
• Reading multisyllable words: syllable types and syllable division. Sort syllables into the six types (closed, open, silent e, vowel team, r-controlled, consonant-le), split long words between syllables (VC/CV, V/CV, VC/V, V/V), and read them one syllable at a time. Worksheets: Syllable Types (set) · Syllable Division (set).
• Reading words with endings: -s, -es, -ed, -ing, -er, -est and plurals. Find the base word in a word with an ending (hopping is hop + ing), hear the three sounds of -ed, and read regular and irregular plurals. Worksheets: Words with Endings (set).
• Reading words with prefixes and suffixes. Break a long word into prefix, base and suffix to read it, find the base when a suffix changed it (hoping, cried), read Latin suffixes such as -tion and -ture, and hear t and c change to sh (select, selection; music, musician). Worksheets: Reading Prefixes and Suffixes (set).
• One spelling, more than one sound: ow, ea, oo, c, g, y and ough. Know that some spellings stand for more than one sound (ow in snow and cow, ea in bead and bread, c in cat and city), try each sound, and choose the one that makes a real word. Worksheets: One Spelling, Two Sounds (set).
• Silent letters: kn, wr, gn and mb. Read words with silent letters, such as knife, write, gnat and lamb, and find the letter that makes no sound. Worksheets: Silent Letters (set).
• Text features: headings, captions, bold words, glossaries, diagrams and tables. Use a text's title, headings, captions, bold words, glossary, diagrams and tables to predict what it is about and to find facts, and explain why the author put each one there. Worksheets: The Parts of a Plant: Year 2 Text Features · How a Frog Grows: Year 2 Text Features · The Lever: Year 3 Text Features · From Caterpillar to Butterfly: Year 3 Text Features · A Tree Through the Year: Year 2 Author and Illustrator · How a Sea Turtle Grows: Year 2 Author and Illustrator and 3 more.
• Connections in science and how-to texts. Read a short science or how-to text and explain how its steps, events, and ideas connect: put the steps in order and say why each one matters, tell what happened and why, and explain how two or more things affect each other, with evidence from the text. Worksheets: A Bird Feeder from a Carton: Year 3 Making Connections · Planting Tulip Bulbs: Year 3 Making Connections · Where Did the Puddle Go?: Year 3 Making Connections.
• Reasons that support a point. Read a short informational text that makes a point, find the point and the reasons the author gives for it, tell a reason from a sentence that is only about the topic, and explain how a reason supports the point. Worksheets: Bats Are Good Helpers: Year 2 Point and Reasons · A New Bench for Pebble Lane: Year 2 Point and Reasons · Plant a Tree at Our School: Year 2 Point and Reasons · Earthworms Help the Garden: Year 3 Point and Reasons · A Reading Corner for Room 6: Year 3 Point and Reasons · Time for Bed: Year 3 Point and Reasons.
• Author's purpose and point of view. Tell why an author wrote a text (to persuade, to inform, to entertain) and what the author thinks, who a text is written for, which form of writing fits a purpose and an audience, and name the narrator's point of view (first, second or third person, limited or all-knowing) and how it shapes what the reader learns. Worksheets: How Ducks Stay Dry: Year 2 Author’s Purpose · A Snowy Day in Mossbury: Year 2 Author’s Purpose · How a Kite Flies: Year 3 Author’s Purpose · Why a Pond Freezes on Top: Year 3 Author’s Purpose · The Hollyvale Town Fair: Year 3 Author’s Purpose.
• Context clues. Work out what a new word means from the words and sentences around it: a definition, an example, a word with the same or opposite meaning, or a cause and effect. Worksheets: The Mole’s Burrow: Year 2 Context Clues · Bees in the Hive: Year 2 Context Clues · Life in an Old Log: Year 3 Context Clues · Our Weather Station: Year 3 Context Clues.
• Story words, parts, and narrators. Read a short story, poem, or play closely: work out new words, find feeling and sense words, repeated lines, and rhymes, tell literal from nonliteral phrases, name the parts (poem, chapter, scene), and tell who is telling the story and how each character, and the reader, sees it. Worksheets: The Warm Bakery: Year 2 Feeling and Sense Words · Nell and the Big Box: Year 2 Who Is Telling the Story · Kit and the Morning Drum: Year 3 Repeated Lines and Rhyme · Two Ways to See Snow: Year 3 Characters’ Points of View · Pictures and the Story: Duck and the Kite · The Picture and the Story: Ben and the Rain.
• Prefixes and suffixes. Use prefixes such as un-, re-, dis- and pre- and suffixes such as -ful, -less, -ness and -ly to work out what a word means and to build new words. Worksheets: Word Parts: -s, -ed, -ing, re-, and un-.
• Conjunctions, conjunctive adverbs and interjections. Tell coordinating, subordinating and correlative conjunctions apart, use correlative pairs such as neither ... nor, tell conjunctions from prepositions and interjections, and use conjunctive adverbs such as however and therefore to show how two ideas connect. Worksheets: And, But, Or, So, and Because.
• Reading fluency. Read an on-level story or poem aloud with accuracy, a steady pace, and expression, a little better on each of three readings, understand what was read, and reread to fix a word that does not make sense. Worksheets: Pip and the Big Puddle: Year 2 Read-Aloud Passage · Ben’s Wobbly Tooth: Year 2 Read-Aloud Passage · The Class Fish: Year 2 Read-Aloud Passage · Rain on the Roof: Year 2 Read-Aloud Passage · Grandpa’s Garden Helper: Year 3 Read-Aloud Passage · The Kite Festival: Year 3 Read-Aloud Passage and 1 more.
• Sorting and connecting ideas with diagrams and charts. Use a diagram or chart to sort and connect ideas: compare things, map the parts of a story, put events in order, link causes to effects, and plan writing before starting it. Worksheets: Reading Strategies That Helped Me: The Lost Mitten · Making Connections: The Lost Kitten.
• Concepts of print: words, spaces and sentences. Know how print works: read words from left to right and top to bottom, see that spaces separate words, tell a letter from a word and a word from a sentence, and find the first word, the capital letter and the end mark of a sentence. Worksheets: Words, Pictures, and Symbols (Years 1 and 2).
• Sentences: types, fragments, run-ons, compound and complex. Tell statements, questions, commands and exclamations apart, find and fix fragments and run-ons, and join ideas into compound and complex sentences with words such as and, but, because and when. Worksheets: Linking Ideas Across Sentences.

Sight Word: a Years 1–2 · English ★ Sight Word: away Years 1–2 · English ★ Sight Word: big Years 1–2 · English ★ Sight Word: blue Years 1–2 · English ★

Handwriting, spelling and writing

english/first-six-months..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.handwriting.knowledge/01-7c7208 english/first-six-months..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.handwriting.knowledge/02-a0a1e4 english/second-year/writing.transcription-skills.handwriting.practices/01-d6d0fb english/second-year..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.knowledge/01-0b9922 english/first-six-months..second-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.knowledge/01-c60f89 english/first-six-months..second-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.knowledge/02-2fdc35 english/first-six-months..second-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.knowledge/03-879aa2 english/first-six-months..second-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.knowledge/04-87e31f

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english/first-six-months..second-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.knowledge/05-20d213 english/first-six-months..second-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.knowledge/06-5b97b0 english/first-six-months..second-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.knowledge/07-9d3074 english/first-six-months..second-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.knowledge/08-fb7a5c english/second-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.practices/01.3-10b9c3 english/second-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.practices/01.5-6f188f english/second-year..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.knowledge/02-b27930 english/second-year..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.knowledge/03-49aa25 english/second-year..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.practices/01.1-5919bb english/second-year..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.practices/01.3-eb249a english/second-year..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.practices/01.4-3af30e english/second-year..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.practices/01.6-5ee807 english/second-year..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.practices/01.7-75e959 english/second-year..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.practices/01.8-facde1 english/second-year..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.practices/01.9-685d08 english/second-year..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.practices/01.10-c34d8a english/second-year..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.practices/02-98a37e english/first-six-months..third-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.knowledge/01-be9dbf english/second-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.practices/02-c5c048 english/second-year/writing.transcription-skills.spelling.knowledge/01-4355c7 english/second-year..third-year/writing.composition.audience-purpose-and-language-choice.practices/02-5b37c6 english/first-six-months..second-year/writing.composition.audience-purpose-and-language-choice.knowledge/02-55d168 english/second-year/writing.composition.audience-purpose-and-language-choice.practices/01-786857 english/second-year/writing.composition.audience-purpose-and-language-choice.practices/02-ffd6e0 english/second-year/writing.composition.sentence-structures-grammar-and-punctuation.knowledge/01-7ecbb5 english/second-year/writing.composition.sentence-structures-grammar-and-punctuation.practices/02-9e7b08 english/first-year..second-year/writing.composition.sentence-structures-grammar-and-punctuation.knowledge/01-a621b0 english/second-year/writing.composition.sentence-structures-grammar-and-punctuation.practices/01-518f1d english/first-six-months..second-year/writing.composition.sentence-structures-grammar-and-punctuation.knowledge/01-41f3e0 english/second-year/writing.composition.writing-to-entertain.knowledge/01-aac241 english/second-year/writing.composition.writing-to-entertain.knowledge/02-7f49ec english/second-year/writing.composition.writing-to-entertain.practices/01-5a08f2 english/second-year/writing.composition.writing-to-inform.knowledge/01-563e78 english/second-year/writing.composition.writing-to-inform.practices/01-c21275 english/second-year..third-year/writing.composition.writing-to-persuade.knowledge/01-9f39bf english/second-year/writing.composition.writing-to-persuade.practices/01-3a5536 english/second-year/writing.writing-processes.revising-and-editing.practices/02-0972c8 english/second-year/writing.writing-processes.revising-and-editing.practices/03-d7fd94

• Forming uppercase and lowercase letters. Print every uppercase and lowercase letter with the right strokes, in the right order and direction, sitting on the line. Worksheets: Letter Tracing Worksheets A–Z (set).
• Reading and spelling sight words. Read the most common words at a glance, including ones that do not sound out the way they are spelled, such as said and the, and spell them correctly. Worksheets: Pre-Primer Sight Words Worksheets (set) · Primer Sight Words Worksheets (set).
• Reading and spelling CVC words. Sound out and spell short words made of a consonant, a short vowel and a consonant, such as cat, hen, pig, dog and sun, and see how changing one letter makes a new word. Worksheets: Short Vowel CVC Words Worksheets (set) · Missing Vowel CVC Worksheets (set).
• Spelling, Year 2. Spell short-vowel words, words with blends and digraphs such as sh, ch and th, silent-e words, common vowel teams, and words ending in -s, -ed and -ing. Worksheets: Year 2 Spelling (set).
• Spelling, Year 3. Spell words with vowel teams, r-controlled vowels and silent letters, compound words and contractions, and words with un-, re- and dis- and the endings -s, -es, -ed, -ing, -er and -est. Worksheets: Year 3 Spelling (set).
• Adjectives and adverbs. Find words that describe nouns (adjectives) and words that tell how, when or where (adverbs), choose between them, and use comparative and superlative forms such as taller and tallest. Worksheets: Adverbs with ly · Circle the Adjectives · Adjective or Adverb? · Adverbs of Time and Place.
• Writing, Year 2. Write sentences with spaces between words, give an opinion with a reason, tell events in order with first, next, then and last, and write a short friendly letter. Worksheets: Sentence Writing Worksheets (set) · Opinion Writing Worksheets (set) · Narrative Writing Worksheets (set) · Informative Writing Worksheets (set) · Editing Checklists (set) · Opinion Writing Prompts (set) and 2 more.
• Writing, Year 3. Write an opinion with reasons and linking words, a how-to text in steps, a short story in order and a friendly letter, then check capitals, punctuation and spelling. Worksheets: Writing Journal Pages (set) · Opinion Writing Worksheets (set) · How-To Writing Worksheets (set) · Narrative Writing Worksheets (set) · Informative Writing Worksheets (set) · Editing Checklists (set) and 11 more.
• Writing, Year 4. Plan and write a paragraph with a topic sentence, details and a closing sentence, and plan opinion, informative and narrative pieces. Worksheets: Opinion Writing Worksheets (set) · Opinion Writing Prompts (set).
• Capital letters. Use a capital letter to start a sentence, for I, for names of people and places, days, months and holidays, for the important words in a title, for proper adjectives such as Canadian, and for languages and the names of historical periods, events and documents, and for the main words in the names of groups and companies, acronyms, titles and initials, and short forms of days, months and streets. Worksheets: Capital Letters.
• One- and two-syllable words. Count the syllables in a word by its vowel sounds, split two-syllable words such as rabbit and napkin into parts, and read each part. Worksheets: Syllables (set).
• Ending sounds. Hear and name the last sound in a spoken word, such as the t in cat, and find pictures that end with the same sound. Worksheets: Ending Sounds: t, n and r · Ending Sounds: l, x and t · Ending Sounds: k, n and l · Spelling Rules: ff, ll, ss, zz, and ck.
• Figurative language: similes, metaphors and idioms. Tell what a simile, a metaphor, an idiom or personification means, tell figurative words from literal ones, and say why a writer chose them. Worksheets: Onomatopoeia: Sound Words.
• Reading words with endings: -s, -es, -ed, -ing, -er, -est and plurals. Find the base word in a word with an ending (hopping is hop + ing), hear the three sounds of -ed, and read regular and irregular plurals. Worksheets: Words with Endings (set) · What Do -s, -ed and -ing Mean?.
• Hearing the first sound in a word. Say a word and hear the sound it starts with, then match that sound to its letter: ball and bed start with b, sun and sock with s. Worksheets: Write the First Letter: Consonants · Write the First Letter: Short Vowels.
• Conjunctions, conjunctive adverbs and interjections. Tell coordinating, subordinating and correlative conjunctions apart, use correlative pairs such as neither ... nor, tell conjunctions from prepositions and interjections, and use conjunctive adverbs such as however and therefore to show how two ideas connect. Worksheets: And, But, Or, So, and Because.
• Word choice: precise words and formal language. Choose the word that says exactly what you mean, such as a precise verb (tiptoe, not walk) or a precise word for a feeling (relieved, not happy), and tell formal language for school and letters from informal language for friends. In Years 7 to 9, tell a formal style from an informal one and keep a formal style to the end of a piece. Worksheets: Formal or Informal?.
• Sentences: types, fragments, run-ons, compound and complex. Tell statements, questions, commands and exclamations apart, find and fix fragments and run-ons, and join ideas into compound and complex sentences with words such as and, but, because and when. Worksheets: Compound Sentences: Joining Two Ideas.
• Concepts of print: words, spaces and sentences. Know how print works: read words from left to right and top to bottom, see that spaces separate words, tell a letter from a word and a word from a sentence, and find the first word, the capital letter and the end mark of a sentence. Worksheets: What Is a Sentence? (Year 1).

Trace the Letter A Years 1–2 · English ★ Trace the Letter B Years 1–2 · English ★ Trace the Letter C Years 1–2 · English ★ Trace the Letter D Years 1–2 · English ★

No worksheets yet for Talking and listening in class.

Topic names and descriptions are written by Stepsies in our own words. For the full text of the New Zealand Curriculum, read the official English document. Curriculum names are used only to describe the topics a worksheet covers. Stepsies is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or approved by any ministry, agency or school board. Check the official curriculum documents for what is required.