Welcome to Year 2S!

Teacher: Miss Sweeney

Autumn 2023

Hello Year 2! My name is Miss Sweeney and I will be your teacher this year. I am so excited for the new school year 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 the start of the autumn term, will be The Bog Baby by Jeanne Willis. The Bog Baby is a children's picture book that contains words and illustrations of two small sisters who go fishing to the magic pond. They find something much better than a frog or a newt. They find a bog baby. Small and blue with wings like a dragon, the girls decide to make him their secret. However, the bog baby is a wild thing, and when he becomes poorly, the girls decide they must tell their mum. And she tells them the greatest lesson, if you really love something, you have to let it go. During this unit, we will be exploring narrative retell writing and we will be discussing the features of writing a descriptive, exciting story. Later in the half-term, we will be focussing on The Pirates Next Door. In this book we meet the Jolley-Rogers - a pirate family, who are moving to Dull-on-Sea, a quiet seaside town. Stopping to fix up their ship, this unusual family get the whole neighbourhood spreading rumours. Defying the grown-ups, Matilda from next door decides to become friends with the youngest pirate son. When the Jolley-Rogers leave, the town discovers they were wrong to assume the worst - the pirate clan have buried treasure in everyone's gardens. Matilda feels sad until she discovers her own treasure - an incredibly exciting new pen friend. During our lessons, we are going to focus on letter 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 Place Value and Addition and Subtraction. 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... 'Manchester - What makes a city?'

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

Science

In Science this half term we will be learning all about Living things and their habitat. They will start the unit of work looking at whether things are living, dead or have never been alive. They will then look at microhabitats and larger habitats identifying some animals that may live there. Children will then conduct an investigation to see which type of conditions woodlice prefer in their habitat. After that they will look at how living things are adapted to their environment. Finally they will look at food chains within habitats. We will learn to:

• Explore and compare the differences between things that are living, dead, and things that have never been alive
• Identify that most living things live in habitats to which they are suited and describe how different habitats provide for the basic needs of different kinds of animals and plants, and how they depend on each other
• Identify and name a variety of plants and animals in their habitats, including microhabitats
• Describe how animals obtain their food from plants and other animals, using the idea of a simple food chain, and identify and name different sources of food.
   

Religion

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

• explore the belief that God created the world and the universe around it.
• explore the belief that God created the world and the universe around it through the creation story.
• appreciate and be grateful for the Creation around me and all of its treasures.
• appreciate that beginnings and growth are an important part of creation.
• understand that we need to look out for others as they are just as precious a part of creation as we are.
• understand our role in creation.

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