Welcome to Year 2S!

Teacher: Miss Sweeney

Spring 2024

Hello Year 2!  I am so excited for the term and I can't wait to get started with our learning. We will be doing lots of fun learning activities as well as learning some new school and classroom routines. I know that we are going to have a great year together!

Literacy

Our literacy focus for Spring 1, will be Somebody Swallowed Stanley by Sarah Roberts. This thought-provoking picture book charts the eventful journey made by Stanley, a discarded plastic carrier bag, who is swept into the sea. As he drifts through the ocean waves, he is mistaken for a jellyfish and swallowed by a series of unsuspecting animals. During this unit, we will be exploring narrative writing and we will be discussing the features of writing our own story. Later in the half-term, we will be focussing on our learning of The Great Fire of London. We will be creating a non-chronological report to inform other people about everything we have learnt. During our lessons, we are going to focus on narrative writing and answering comprehension style questions, sequencing and discussing how we can improve our writing, using drama and speaking and listening skills. For our final piece, we will write our own letter using a range of Year 2 SPAG objectives. We will aim to include:

• Capital letters and full stops
• !?
• Finger spaces
• Phonics
• A range of sentence types
• Adjectives
• Adverbs
• Conjunctions
• Commas in a list
• Apostrophes for contractions

Maths

During our Maths lessons this half-term, we will be learning about Shape. We will be using lots of practical resources and using our learning to solve real life problems. To support us in our learning we will be using Base 10, place value charts, ten frames and part-whole models.  Below are the objectives we will be learning and the order that we will focus on them. 

Topic

Our topic for this half term is... The Great Fire of London.

We will have a geography and history focus and will be learning to...

• Discover events beyond living memory that are significant nationally: The Great Fire of London
• Know and can recount episodes from stories about the past.
• Describe significant people from the past.
• Pupils recognise dates are used to identify when events happened in the past.
• Sequence artefacts from similar time periods
• Match objects to people of different ages
• Use dates where appropriate to label a timeline of events
• Compare artefacts from different time periods
• Know the difference between past and present in pupils own and others' lives.
• Describe similarities and differences between Queens from the past and explain what made them significant.
• Explain why people did things and what happened as a result, giving reasons.
• Give more than one effect of an event with simple explanation.
• Communicate knowledge through: discussion, drawing and labelling pictures, writing, drama
• Pupils use words and phrases such as: a long time ago, recently, when my parents were children, years.

Science

In Science this half term we will learning about, Animals Including Humans. We will begin by looking at animal young and comparing them to their adults. We will look at how animals change as they grow up and be introduced to the life cycles of several varied common animals, including humans. We look in detail at how humans change as they grow older, drawing on their own observations. Children are introduced to the three basic needs of animals for survival (water, food and air). They will apply this knowledge, alongside research from secondary sources, to suggest ways to look after pets. The unit ends with children looking at healthy lifestyles, including the importance of exercise, healthy eating and hygiene. These healthy living lessons develop ‘working scientifically’ skills through investigating the impact of exercise on our bodies and how handwashing is essential for good hygiene.

We will learn to:

• notice that animals, including humans, have offspring which grow into adults
• find out about and describe the basic needs of animals, including humans, for survival (water, food and air)
• describe the importance for humans of exercise, eating the right amounts of different types of food, and hygiene.

Religion

In our RE lessons this half-term, we will be focusing on Lent. We will be learning to:

• learn about Ash Wednesday
• understand Lent as a time for opportunities
• understand why we celebrate Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday
• understand about and retell Good Friday story
• understand and retell the Easter Sunday story

PE

This half term you will need to come into school wearing your PE kit on our PE day which is a Monday. In PE you will be learning about invasion and team games  skills with Mr Berry outside and circuits skills in the hall. 

Homework

Reading – 10 minutes a night

Listening to your child read for 10 minutes a night makes a significant difference in their progress and attainment. It helps them practice key reading strategies and skills, develop their comprehension skills and supports their overall fluency and accuracy, which are vital skills they need for the future. Every Friday an eBook will be assigned to your child’s online account based upon the sounds they have learnt in phonics that week. The children will have practiced this book in their guided reading sessions so will be familiar with the text. The purpose of them practicing it again at home is to become more familiar with these sounds and fluent when reading them.

Your child will also choose a reading for pleasure book. This is a book that you can both read and enjoy together and encourage reading for pleasure. This will be a physical book that your child takes home and they will be given the opportunity to choose and change every Friday. As it is a reading for pleasure book, it is not necessarily aimed at your child’s reading level, therefore can be challenging, which is why we are asking for an adult to read this and your child to join in where possible. The reading for pleasure book is important as it is how we will help build a love of reading together.   Please ensure your child brings this back to school every Friday ready to change in our school Library.

Reading eggs – once a week      https://readingeggs.co.uk

Reading eggs makes learning to read interesting and engaging for kids, with great online reading games and activities. Children love the games, songs, golden eggs and other rewards which, along with feeling proud of their reading, really motivate children to keep exploring and learning.

My Maths and Mathseeds – once a week       https://mathseeds.co.uk/

Every Friday, your class teacher will set home learning for your child on MyMaths.co.uk. This will be based upon what they have learnt that week so your child can practice the skills taught at home to reinforce key strategies.  

Mathseeds is an online website that your child can use to develop pupils’ confidence and fluency in Maths and the interactive lessons provide step-by-step examples to break down learning into manageable chunks. The log in for this is the same one you use for reading eggs.

Phonics home learning – once a week

Every Friday, we will send home a phonics sheet in your child’s book bag for them to practice over the next week. The sheet will have the list of sounds your child has learnt that week, words and sentences for them to read and write with these sounds in and then a list of tricky words that the children need to know. These words will be familiar to them and ones they have practiced in phonics sessions.

You can then practice these sounds further on fastphonics (www.readingeggs.co.uk/fast-phonics-games), which is the same log in as reading eggs.

Learning logs – Autumn  2, Spring 2 and Summer 2

Last year we introduced our project-based home learning to replace the homework board we previously used. Pupil, parent and teacher voice all showed that project based home learning was the preferred style of home learning as it gave children more freedom to learn about real life world events, share personal experiences and it has helped motivate them to engage in home learning as it is child managed. It encourages the children to be more independent, inquisitive and provides more opportunities for outdoor learning together. This can be completed in your learning log, a scrap book of your choice or it can be uploaded onto Seesaw.

Instead of completing these every half term, we have reduced this to three half terms a year to make it more manageable. They will therefore be given out on the first Monday of Autumn 2 (31^st October), Spring 2 (27^th February) and Summer 2 (12^th June).  We ask that their project is brought into school on the last week of that half term to share and celebrate with their peers. You will be given a sheet of paper that will be stuck in your child’s learning log that will outline what the project is and ideas of activities you can do.

Please see below an overview of topics we will be studying this year:

KS1 Creative ideas: https://sway.office.com/izWF4eAOc7u0rCfS?ref=Link