• Typical Second Grade Characteristics

    (from the book Your Seven-Year Old by Ames & Haber of the

     Gesell Institute of Human Development at Yale University)

     student reading

    Your Seven-Year-Old

    1. The overall paranoia of the second grade:  thinking that the teacher is mean to him, that people will laugh at him, that people don’t like him.
    2. Overanxiety about being late for school.
    3. Extreme dependence on the teacher:  inability to start even simple tasks without a special personal word from the teacher.
    4. Difficulty in terminating an activity once it is begun.
    5. Apparent deafness when given a verbal command.
    6. Inability to combine board and desk work, i.e., to copy from the board.
    7. Proclivity for taking things-pencils, erasers, or even things that belong to other children-and the same thing, forgetting to take home things that are suppose to be taken home.
    8. Expressions of sudden and extreme fatigue.
    9. Desire to know the plan of the day-what is going to happen next.
    10. A tendency to be highly aware of any mistake he makes.  Usually a seven year old knows when he has failed and wants to do something about it.  This may be the reason he erases so much.  (A six year old just ignores mistakes or may mark right over them.)
    11.   An inability to behave well when the teacher is out of the room.