When children are entering the third grade, they have two years of reading and basic math under their belts.  They should be ready to deal with more complex material such as science experiments, relating and determining the differences in countries and cultures, handle challenging math problems, and be ready to advance reading skills.

Second grade students should be able to read fluently to be ready for third grade. Beyond simply sounding words out, they should be able to comprehend grade level material to the point of being able to read with appropriate expression and predict outcomes.  A second grader ready to graduate should understand and be able to identify nouns, verbs, and adjectives. This students should read and write including cursive writing. They should be able to read and identify many words. They ought to have a working knowledge of consonants, spelling, sentence structure, language comprehension, alphabetizing, compound words, contractions, opposites, grammar, and synonyms and homonyms.

Children’s ability to read is often reflected in their interest in reading. Exposure to a variety non-fiction and fiction books should result in the student making independent reading decisions. This student ought to be able to use capitalization and punctuation correctly, write with paragraphs, be able to perform basic research, and edit grade level writing. Penmanship or printing should be legible by now.

Math skills for the prepared second grader include the ability to mentally add and subtract numbers up to two digits, tell time, identify place value up to the thousands, interpret data in a graph,  add and subtract three-digit numbers, and understand money values.  They should also understand regrouping, how to count by 2, 3, 5, 10, 25, and 50, identify even and odd numbers and fractions.

Science skills include identifying animal classifications, life cycles, land formations, and dinosaurs. Social Studies ability level includes being able to name historical people and events, discuss age appropriate current events, and locate places on a map and globe and name the oceans. US students should be capable of naming many of the 50 states and capitals.