Alphabetical Order Worksheets for 2nd Grade
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Skill: Putting words in ABC order by the first and second letters
Teaching tips and what to try next
Second graders who know the alphabet song but still sing it to find a letter's place are the ideal audience. Laying out letter tiles or an alphabet strip and pointing to each first letter turns the task into a simple left-to-right search. For more word-level practice, try Compound Words or Prefixes and Suffixes.
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About this worksheet
Dictionaries, glossaries, class lists, and library shelves are all arranged in alphabetical order. Before children can look up a word, they need to put words in ABC order quickly and correctly. This second-grade worksheet practices alphabetizing in two steps.
In Part A, children see six groups of three short words, such as pig, cow, and hen, and rewrite each group on a line in ABC order. Every word in a group starts with a different letter, so children only need to compare first letters. In Part B, the four groups are harder: all three words start with the same letter, such as sock, sand, and sip, so children must look at the second letter to decide the order. The words are simple and familiar, so children can focus on the order instead of on reading.
How to use it: keep a printed alphabet strip on the table so your child can check where each letter falls. For each group, have your child find the word that comes first, write it, and cross it out, then repeat with the words that are left. In Part B, point to the second letter of each word and say the letters out loud, such as "a, i, o." A fun follow-up is to alphabetize the names of family members or favorite foods, or to look up one word together in a real dictionary.
The answer key shows each group in the correct order. For more word practice, try our Compound Words worksheet and our Syllables: Clap and Count worksheet.