Second Grade Phonics Tips: Build Strong Word Skills

Children with strong reading comprehension skills usually know a lot about words—they can identify root words, prefixes, and words with multiple meanings. These skills help them understand new words as they read more challenging books.

Here’s how you can help at home:

Dig into root words: pick a simple word like jump and challenge your child to name related words like jumped, jumping, jump rope. Point out how each word’s meaning relates to the root word.

Talk about prefixes: Review prefixes your child is likely to know like un- (meaning not) and re- (meaning again). Ask your child to list words with those prefixes like undo, untangle, review, and rewrite. Challenge them to add new ones to the list. You can do this with other, more complex prefixes like tri- (meaning three) or mis- (meaning wrong or bad).

Play with homonyms: Homonyms are words that are spelled the same but have more than one meaning. Name a word with multiple meanings like bat, cool, or play and ask your child to tell you as many different meanings as they can.

Learning to think flexibly about words and word parts leads to stronger reading comprehension, ultimately increasing the joy of reading!