Back to School ELA Review for 2nd Grade | 20 Daily Lessons

Make the first month of school easier with this 2nd Grade Back to School ELA Review! Designed to revisit essential first grade reading, phonics, grammar, vocabulary, and writing skills, this comprehensive resource gives students 20 structured daily lessons plus 16 print-and-play literacy games. The predictable four-part routine helps second graders rebuild confidence, establish strong classroom routines, and prepare for Grade 2 learning.

Each daily lesson follows the same student-friendly structure: Read & Think, Language & Grammar, Word Work, and Write About It. Students read short fiction and nonfiction passages, answer comprehension questions, review foundational language skills, practice phonics and vocabulary, and complete a connected writing task. Skills gradually spiral from foundational review into more advanced comprehension, grammar, and word-study practice.

The resource includes 20 daily ELA review lessons, 40 pages of student practice, short fiction and nonfiction passages, reading comprehension questions, grammar and language review, phonics and word work, vocabulary activities, daily writing prompts with primary-ruled lines, a complete answer key, teacher guide, 20-day pacing overview, four-week planning guide, differentiation ideas, progress-monitoring tools, a family letter, student reflection, and a Reading Star Award.

Students revisit essential first grade skills including main idea, key details, character, setting, sequence, retelling, inference, cause and effect, compare and contrast, author’s purpose, text features, fact and opinion, point of view, context clues, making connections, and summarizing. Language practice includes complete sentences, nouns, verbs, adjectives, capitalization, punctuation, plural nouns, pronouns, past-tense verbs, subject-verb agreement, commas in a series, sentence types, common and proper nouns, comparative adjectives, apostrophes, sentence combining, sentence expansion, and editing.

Phonics, vocabulary, and word work progress from short vowels, digraphs, beginning blends, and long-vowel patterns into word families, compound words, contractions, prefixes, suffixes, syllables, synonyms, antonyms, multiple-meaning words, context clues, and shades of meaning. Daily writing tasks give students meaningful opportunities to practice complete sentences, sequencing, retelling, comparison writing, opinion writing, summaries, personal connections, creative continuation, and reflection.

The 16 included literacy games add engaging partner, small-group, and center practice. Students can reinforce key skills with Noun, Verb & Adjective Sort, Contraction Match, Rhyme & Family Match, Roll-a-Long-Vowel Word, Sight Word BINGO, Sight Word Roll & Read, Digraph Sort, Same & Opposite Match, Reading Road Race, Main Idea Baskets, End Mark Sort, Sentence Building Tiles, Fix-It Cards, Sequence Cards, Sight Word Four-in-a-Row, and Syllable Sort.

A built-in Game-to-Skill Quick Map makes it easy to match each activity to a specific learning need, including parts of speech, contractions, long vowels, sight-word fluency, digraphs, antonyms, main idea and details, sentence construction, editing, sequencing, and syllables. Games can be printed on cardstock, laminated, and stored for repeated literacy-center use throughout the year.

Use this resource for second grade morning work, back-to-school ELA review, first grade skills review, literacy warm-ups, reading comprehension practice, grammar review, phonics instruction, vocabulary practice, literacy centers, small groups, intervention, early finishers, formative assessment, homework, or home practice. Each lesson is designed for approximately 15–25 minutes, making the resource easy to fit into a busy classroom schedule.

Perfect for teachers looking for a structured first-month literacy routine, this 2nd Grade Back to School ELA Review combines 20 days of ready-to-use academic practice with 16 hands-on games. It helps students strengthen reading comprehension, grammar, phonics, vocabulary, and writing skills while building the confidence and independence they need for a successful start to second grade.