Year 2

Welcome to Year 2!
 

A warm welcome to our Year 2 page. If your child is in Year 2 please familiarise yourself with this page as it will let you know the various activities the class are currently involved in. Note that this page doesn't replace the school newsletters - those can be accessed here

For parents who were unable to make it to our recent 'Meet The Teacher' session, please find a link below to our Powerpoint presentation (in pdf format).

The classroom code is created together by the children and Year 2 teaching team. The children know that we need to keep to these rules so that we stay safe, happy and learning to our full potential.

• We are kind, respectful and encouraging to each other
• We listen actively when somebody else is talking
• We always try our best
• We work quietly when necessary
• We are all responsible for keeping our classroom and school clean and tidy

 

For the curriculum information sheet and our usual weekly timetable for this term, please see below.

For a short overview of the National Curriculum tests that are taking place at the end of this academic year, please visit the following website and watch the video entitled KS1 tests 2016.

Handwriting

We teach cursive handwriting in school, forming letters in the style that can be found below. Every lower case letter starts on the line, shown by a red dot.

If you wish to practise your handwriting at home, you can log in to the Letter-join website on your ipad, tablet, laptop or desktop computer. Home access instructions and a Home Guide can be found below.

Maths No Problem

We teach maths using Maths No Problem. There are videos created for parents by the Maths No Problem team to help explain their teaching techniques. Click below to find out more.

 

Reading

Please try to read with your child daily and record it in their reading record book. It is important to check that, as well as becoming more fluent, the children understand what they are reading, especially as they begin to read longer and more complex books. This can be done by discussing the book afterwards, or during reading. Talk about the characters, setting or main events. Encourage children to develop empathy by focusing on characters' emotions and motivations.

 

It is important that your child has their reading record in school every day as we are encouraging the children to keep a simple record of their reading and to talk to us about the reading they do at home. We have reading time every day, and during the course of the week, children will read independently, with a partner or group and with an adult. Children are welcome to bring their own reading book from home as long as it is of an appropriate level for them to read and enjoy independently. Children will be able to change their reading books to take home during class reading time. They are encouraged to do this independently

 

Spellings

Spellings will be sent home once a week, usually on a Friday, and be tested the following Friday. They are based on spelling patterns that we have investigated in class during phonics lessons and children should be encouraged to look at the way the pattern fits into the word to help them remember it.

 

Spellings are best worked on little and often: 5 or 10 minutes every day is more beneficial than one long session. It is also very helpful if you can encourage your child to apply the spellings in context by writing a few sentences using these words and, of course, using new or unfamiliar words in conversation.

 

Mental arithmetic

This term, in addition to times tables, we will be focusing on quick recall of number facts. The children should continue to:

• practise their times tables at home, beginning with 2, 5 and 10 times tables and then, once they are confident with these, learning their x3 and x4 tables and so on.
• practise number pairs to 10, 20   ... 100,

        e.g. (1)      4+6 = 10 ... 14+6 = 20.... 24+6 = 30  ...

        e.g. (2)       4+6 = 10 ... 40+60 = 100

•  practise doubles of numbers to 20 and halves of numbers to 30.
• practise counting forwards and backwards in 1's and 10's.
• practise counting forwards and backwards in 10's from any given number,                    (e.g. 7, 17, 27, 37 ....)
• practise counting in 2's, 5's and then 3's.

 

Home learning projects

The children will be receiving information about their home learning project early in each half term. Alongside their weekly reading and spelling homework they will be expected to complete one or more projects linked to our work in school, our topic: Who were the Ancient Greeks? or the wider curriculum. The children are required to spend time researching their chosen task and will be asked to present their work in class before the end of each half term. Please help your child to rehearse their presentation, which is also an important aspect of their home learning.

 

Here is a list of the activities that take the children outside the classroom this term

• PE with Premier Sport on Wednesday mornings and with Mrs Harrison on Friday afternoons. Please ensure your child has a PE kit in school on these days, including outdoor trainers.
• Harvest Festival at St Andrews Church
• We hope to spend some time learning in the Wild Wood. Please let Mrs Hartley or Mrs Harrison know if you can help to supervise the children on these visits

 

The children will be working hard this term on a range of activities across the curriculum. Where possible this will be based around our topics. If you have any books, information or relevant objects, children are most welcome to bring these in to support our learning.