South Dakota ELA 2.L.2.b

ELA2nd GradeLanguage

The Standard

2.L.2: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

Capitalize proper nouns.

South Dakota English Language Arts Standards (2025)

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students find names of specific people, places, days, and months in sentences. They use capital letters for those names, even in the middle of a sentence.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student writes, "We visited Mount Rushmore on Friday," with capitals on the place and day. They leave general words like "mountain" and "day" lowercase when those words are not at the start of a sentence.
Common Misconceptions: Some students capitalize general words like "teacher" and "park" wherever they appear. Others miss names in the middle of a sentence or write "Mount rushmore" with a lowercase second word.
How to Assess It: Exit ticket: Rewrite "on monday, maya went to mount rushmore with her teacher." Circle the words that name a particular day, person, or place.

Lesson moves

Give pairs cards reading "Maya," "girl," "Friday," and "day"; have them sort names from general words and write each in a sentence.
Ask why "Friday" needs a capital in "We leave Friday," but "day" does not in "We leave that day."
Play a correction race: teams fix "maya visits mount rushmore on friday" and explain each change before earning a point.
Hand out a school lunch calendar; students circle month and day names, then copy one line with the capitals intact.

Free download

A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 2.L.2.b, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.

PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.

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