How I Put Together Language Arts for Second Grade (No All-in-One Workbook)

We do not use an all-in-one language arts workbook in our homeschool, but it’s still important to me that we are practicing the appropriate language arts skills through our homeschool lessons.

This is why I wrote Language Arts Simplified. I would describe myself as a rule-follower, and it’s important to me that if I’m going to toss the all-inclusive approach, I still need a plan and structure to follow.

Language Arts Simplified was the tool to help me do this. Using national standards as my guide, I created an easy-to-use free, digital resource to help plan language arts and feel confident about covering the multiple components that the subject includes.

Earlier this summer, I shared my language arts plans for each of my children. If you are interested in seeing how this is planned out, check out this video.

Language Arts is made up of four parts: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and Language. These four parts are what led me in my planning.

In this post, I want to show you how I put this together for my second grader. As a follow up to the planning videos I shared previously, I thought I’d share a closer look to see it all in action.

Since my 7-year-old is a fluent reader, we are not working on any curriculum that covers learning to read. Instead, I assign her one page a day in an Explode the Code workbook where she can consistently review phonics skills. I chose the level based on her abilities.

Explode the Code can feel a little monotonous at time, so I do like to try and mix it up some days when we have the time. Check out this video I made a while back where I share lots of unique ideas to add some fun to this workbook.

I have assigned 15 minutes of independent reading during our school day. I have a list of chapter books I made this summer that I felt would be a good fit for her. (See list below.) She chooses a book from the list and loves reading aloud to me, but some days she reads silently to herself. She also will read her own personal choice books before bed some days.

This independent reading is not only building her fluency, but it’s also growing her comprehension skills. She has enjoyed the books and loves coming to tell me about the chapters (narration). I also feel confident that this consistent routine of reading is building her grammar and vocabulary skills through exposure to the text as well.

We are in the early stages of writing. In my house, I do not use a writing curriculum. Instead, I build writing skills through narration. Starting with oral narration around age six, my children learn to tell me about what they’ve read on a regular basis.

At around age 9-10, this transitions into written narration. If you want to hear more about our experience with this, check out my latest narration video sharing the progress I’ve seen with my children using this process.

Even though we aren’t doing formal writing lessons, we are still working on writing skills in a variety of ways.

She completes a handwriting page daily and is occasionally assigned copy work. She also loves writing letters to friends and writing in her diary.

For our history lessons, she sees her older sisters writing narrations and wants to do the same. She isn’t quite ready to jump into this on her own. I have helped her write 1-2 sentences in a notebook about the lesson, teaching her about word spacing, capitalization, and punctuation in the process.

This category is very easy to meet, especially while practicing narration. The point of this skill in language arts is to be able to communicate with others about literature. We do this all the time in our home through natural conversation.

Through narration, she tells me about her independent books. We also have discussions about our family read aloud. A few evenings each week, I’ve been reading the Little House Series to the whole family. We have such fun and meaningful discussions about the characters and the time period. 

Each week we fill out a reading log. This log (pictured below) not only tracks her daily reading, but it also encourages discussion about books. At the end of the week, we are able to sit down and chat about specific about related to what she's reading.