PE Lessons
Our PE Days in Year 2 are Tuesday and Thursday. Please come in to school in your PE kit on these days
Information
Useful Links
Welcome to Year 2!
Welcome back to the new academic year. We are looking forward to working with you and your children in Year 2.
We encourage the pupils to be as independent at school as much possible, especially when organising their own belongings. Please help us and them to achieve this goal by ensuring everything you send to school is clearly named.
Just a few reminders of the things your child needs to have in school every day:-
- Book bag, with both reading and library books and their Year 2 Reading Record inside.
- A clearly named healthy snack of fruit or vegetables.
- A drink of water in a named bottle, which can be refilled throughout the day.
- Wellington boots for outdoor learning – these can be left in school for the whole year.
Topics in Year 2
Autumn 1 – Pesky Pirates
Autumn 2 – Celebrations around the world
Spring 1 – Great Fire of London
Spring 2 – Our Wonderful World
Summer 1 – Food Glorious Food
Summer 2 – Kingdoms and Castles
PE
We will be teaching PE on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Children will be required to wear their school PE kit to school on these days. It will not be necessary for them to change after PE so please do not send uniform in.
Home Learning
Home Learning will be sent our each week via the Home Learning book we will also publish this on google classroom – It will be a range of handwriting, maths and a creative activity.
Reading
Children will change their Reading books once a week. The children can also choose a book from the library, which they will change weekly if they need to. It is important for children to read regularly both to continue to build on their sight vocabulary whilst also fostering a love for reading. To encourage a love for regular reading at home we will be taking part in the whole school initiative of the Reading around the World where children earn tickets and receive certificates whilst ‘travelling around the world.’ We would like all children to read at home at least three times a week.
When helping your child to read, if you can, spend time discussing the book, asking a range of questions in order to deepen their understanding. For example:
– How is the character feeling? How do you know? What clues are there in the text? What might happen next? Why do you think that?
Handwriting
The children will be learning to write in joined cursive style in year two and we would appreciate any practice you can do of this at home. You could exclusively practice joining letters or you could encourage any writing at home to be done in their joined style. Quite often as children learn this skill, writing becomes messier before it is joined neatly but is part of the process. It is a national curriculum expectation that children in key stage two write in a joined handwriting style so introducing it in year 2 is crucial to their writing development.
Maths
This year, we will also develop our mathematical strategies including number bonds to 20, using place value and the formal and informal methods for addition and subtraction. To help your child please play fun games including counting and number skills. Your child has a NUMBOTS password in their Reading Record for an app that they will be able to access at home and at school to support quick mental arithmetic strategies.
More details about our curriculum are available on the Curriculum Page (link at the top of this page). We will try to update the page throughout the year so look out for photos, key dates and activities.
We value our partnership with you very much. If you have any queries or worries, please do come and see us at the beginning or end of the day.
Thank you for your continued support,
Thank you,
Miss Dyson & Mrs Lake
Pirate Experience Day
During our pirate experience day the children had a range of activities to complete.
- A drama session to learn about life on a pirate ship from jobs to living conditions.
- A pet parrot – the children used their DT skills to create their very own pet parrot.
- Science Investigation – looking closely at materials and the best material for repairing Captain Crabby’s ship. We talked about waterproof and not waterproof materials.
- Compass skills- the children completed compass skills to follow the North South East and West to unlock the code for the treasure.
- We also all made a hinge mechanism as part of our DT to create a working treasure chest.
We found treasure!
We found some exciting treasure in the new reading boat, which we think belongs to Captain Crabby! We think Captain Squid stole the treasure and pretended it was his! We are going to write letters to Captain Crabby next week to ask about his treasure!
Portholes
In DT, we learnt how to use and create a slider mechanism. We used these to design our very own portholes. It looks like the ship is sailing on the sea!
Positive Mindset in Maths
In our first week in year 2 we focused on a positive mindset in Maths. We focused on problem solving working on our perseverance, trial and error. We learnt that in maths we need to develop our brains to grow and learn therefore we will need to practice to improve. We also learnt that speed is not important in maths but we go slow to go fast.
Sketching
During our first week in school we completed some sketching. Learning how to sketch and looking closely at key features and measuring the facial features to make sure they were appropriately sized. We started with gentle sketching and added more for shading and feature points.
Spaghetti and Marshmallow Tower
During our week of positive mindset in maths we focused on working as a team and problem solving. First, we looked at a range of different buildings from around the world for inspiration for our design. We looked at the shapes and discuss how it needs to have a solid base. We then worked in pairs to problem solve to create our own structures.
