Summer Term 2022
Our Learning Challenges this term are “Why would a dinosaur not make a good pet?” and “Are all lighthouses near the sea?”. During May, Year 2 will be taking part in their SATs but it is unlikely that your child will even realise that this is happening! If you do have any concerns around this, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at year2baw@welearn365.com We will also be taking part in various transition activities with our partner junior school, Bilton Junior School. More details about these will be coming soon- if your child will not be going to BJS please let us know if they will be attending any additional transition sessions at their new school.
During our dinosaurs topic, we will be finding out about Mary Anning, fossils and the science behind our dinosaur knowledge. We will also be reading and writing stories about going back in time to visit dinosaurs. Through our lighthouses topic, we will find out about Grace Darling, seaside holidays in the past and some traditional holiday destinations in the UK.
In the week beginning 23rd May, we will be celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with a special lunch and fun activities including decorating the classroom, drawing portraits of the Queen, making crowns and taking part in a whole school art activity.
As part of our Tudors Week, on Wednesday 29th June we will be visiting Rugby School as part of this year’s “Festival On The Close”. During our visit we will have the opportunity to have a hands-on exploration of an interactive STEAM Science Fair, complete with craft stations, science experiments, and even an AI robot! After lunch, we will be attending the outdoor theatre, to see “Horrible Histories Terrible Tudors Live on Stage”. This is part of the Horrible Histories nationwide tour and our opportunity to meet people from history in a fun, exciting and entertaining way. Horrible Histories will bring the Terrible Tudors to life, from the horrible Henries to the end of evil Elizabeth, we’ll hear the legends (and the lies!) about the torturing Tudors! More details to follow soon!
We will be taking part in Sky Arts Week during the week beginning 4th July. Sky Arts Channel is joining forces with leading artists and art organisations to help bring the arts to every child in every primary school across the UK and Ireland, for one fun-filled and jam-packed week of creativity. During this week on Monday 4th July, we will be visiting St Mark’s Church to sketch some of the key features and investigate the part that art plays in Christian worship. There will also be time for a picnic in the Church grounds.
The last week of term will be our Seaside Week. The children will be taking part in lots of fun activities including making and eating chips (made from the potatoes they planted many months ago!), taking part in traditional sports day activities (egg and spoon race, sack race etc.), making their own model boats, water play and a picnic style lunch. Children will only be required to wear school uniform on Monday and Tuesday. They should come to school in sports kit/non-uniform on Wednesday and Thursday. Their clothes should be suitable for sports and outdoor play (no fancy dress, open toed sandals or football kits please).
It feels like only yesterday that your children started their journey with us- it is amazing to think that they will soon be leaving and heading to their new schools! We hope that they will look back fondly at their time with us, despite the COVID restrictions and disruption!
Spring Term 2 2022
'How can we stay fit and healthy?'
We are looking forward to our topic this half-term “How can we stay fit and healthy?” This topic will include finding out about a balanced diet, exercise and the general requirements for humans and other animals to stay healthy. We will also find out about plants, the different parts of plants, ways to help them to grow and plants’ requirements for life.
We will explore our local grounds to look at the variety of plants growing in our local habitat. We are hoping that we may be able to get out for a walk in the local area and maybe even visit a local Church, this is only in the provisional stages of planning but we will share more details as we have them.
In art lessons, we will be creating still life art work of plants as well as comparing and contrasting the work of artists Andy Goldsworthy, William Morris and Edith Holden.
In maths, we will be supporting our science skills by recording results in a table, sorting seeds and plants and taking accurate measurements. We will also be completing a unit of work about simple fractions (halves, quarters, thirds), recognising, naming, finding and writing fractions of a length, shape or quantity.
Our geography work will see us finding out about maps, simple keys, routes showing features and aerial photographs.
This half-term our grammar focus will be on suffixes, contractions and punctuation. Throughout all our writing we will be encouraging the children to use noun phrases, conjunctions, accurate spelling and punctuation. We will continue to encourage the children to use a neatly joined cursive script for their writing and work towards gaining their pen licence.
Our PE days will continue to be Wednesdays and Fridays. If your child normally wears earrings (only small sleepers or studs are permitted in our uniform policy), please ensure they are either not worn on these days or that your child is able to remove them themselves. If this is not possible, please make sure they come to school with their earrings securely taped with appropriate medical tape.
Reading books should be returned on Mondays (please remind your child to take their books out of their bag) and will then be changed and handed out on Wednesdays.
Spring 1 2022
‘Why do we call earth the blue planet?’
This half-term has a geography focus as we travel around the world with Miranda the explorer. We will be learning to name and locate the world’s continents and oceans, and explore the physical and human features of different countries. We will find out about many countries as part of our whistle-stop tour including Russia and India. Whilst studying India, we will take part in an Indian Experience Day on Friday 21st January. We will be taking part in a dance workshop and finding out about the climate, dress, culture and animals that live there. If any parents have links to India and would like their children to bring artefacts in to show that would be great. We will also research Indian food, and make our own vegetarian curry. Later in the half term we begin to explore earth from space and learn about the moon landings and how we can look after our earth.
As a school we continue to work on developing the children’s vocabulary. Some of the vocabulary we hope the children will begin to use includes continent, ocean, country, atlas, globe, human feature, physical feature, North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Antarctica, Australasia (Oceania), Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, Arctic Ocean, Southern Ocean.
Our English work will focus on writing stories, letters and postcards inspired by our stories ‘The Great Explorer’ and ‘Man on the Moon’. The children will also be learning about different word types such as adjectives, adverbs, verbs, nouns, conjunctions and connectives. We will be looking at different word endings (suffixes) such as –ed and –ing. We will continue to encourage the children to use a neatly joined cursive script and to try and make their writing as exciting as possible. Whilst reading, the children will be encouraged to use expression and to ask about vocabulary they are unsure of. They will also be asked more challenging questions requiring them to use the skills of inference and deduction. This half-term our grammar focus will be on suffixes, contractions and punctuation. Throughout all our writing we will be encouraging the children to use noun phrases, conjunctions, accurate spelling and punctuation. We will also be encouraging the children to use a neatly joined cursive script for their writing.
Our calculation emphasis will be on the four operations with particular attention on multiplication and division and the links between them. Assignments will be set on Maths shed that match to the children’s lessons. We will be using mathematical vocabulary to describe position, direction and movement in our exploration of the earth and symmetry will be a focus when we look at some buildings in the countries.
Our PE days will continue to be Wednesdays and Fridays. If your child normally wears earrings, please ensure they are either not worn on these days or that your child is able to remove them or tape them up themselves.
Autumn 2 2021
'Was the fire of London really great?'
Year 2 Learning Challenge
Our learning challenge this half-term is “Was the fire of London really great?” and we have begun by exploring modern day London, thinking about famous London monuments and tourist attractions. During the topic we will find out about how the fire started and spread, and the historical sources that can be used to find out more about this. The children will learn about Samuel Pepys’ diary and have the chance to write their own diaries and newspaper articles about the fire. We will also think about materials and their properties, with the children being given the chance to carry out various investigations to find out the suitability of different materials for different tasks. During December we will move onto a unit of work based around the question “Why do Christians celebrate Christmas?” As well as exploring the Christmas story, we hope that the children will be able to take part in fun Christmas themed activities including making cards and decorations.
Reading Books
Reading books will continue to be issued on Wednesdays and must be returned to school on the following Monday. Please ensure that you keep to this pattern in order to give your child’s teacher time to change the book.
Spelling Logs/ EdShed
You should return your child’s spelling log to school on a Monday with their reading book. This will then be checked by their teacher and returned to you on the following Wednesday. Spelling Shed is updated every Monday with a new list of words for your child to learn. The children then use these words in class dictation exercises on a Friday. Tasks are set weekly for the children to complete on Maths Shed too. Please encourage your child to access these regularly throughout the week.
Shared Learning
In addition to daily reading, Spelling Shed and Maths Shed, shared learning tasks are now available on our learning platform, ‘Purple Mash’. Please remember you must access this via www.welearn365.com. Once your child is logged in to Purple Mash, their tasks can be found by clicking on the ‘Alerts’, ‘2Dos’ and ‘Work’ tabs. We would be thrilled to see your child’s work online.
PE Days
Our PE days continue to be Wednesdays and Fridays. Please ensure your child wears their school PE uniform on these days, and that any earrings have been removed.
Thank you for your continuing support. If you have any questions or anything you are not sure about, please do contact us at year2baw@welearn365.com.
Autumn 1 2021
Welcome to Year 2! Further to the welcome letter sent home at the end of term, we have tried to compile some further useful information for you. However, as we have said, if you do have any questions or anything you are not sure about, please do contact us at year2baw@welearn365.com. We hope your children enjoy their first half-term in Year 2.
Autumn 1 Topics
This year we began with an introductory topic entitled “Who am I?” The children thought about their own feelings and the feelings of those around them. This learning was based on “The Zones of Regulation”. This is a framework used to teach children self-regulation and self-control. It aims to help children to categorise their feelings, improving their ability to recognise and communicate how they're feeling in a safe, non-judgmental way. Emotions and feelings are grouped into four coloured zones categorising alertness and emotions. The framework emphasises the importance of letting the children know that it's fine to experience all of these emotions while they're at school. There is no bad zone, but that it is important to learn and use strategies that will help them get to their Green Zone. We have begun helping the children to use strategies or tools to move between zones.
During this unit of work we also delivered ‘The Taking Care Project’, Warwickshire’s protective behaviours scheme, details of which you will have received during your child’s time in their Reception class. We also thought about online safety. It is amazing how many of our children are accessing content aimed at a much older audience- we talked about why this is not a good idea and things they could do to ensure they stay safe online.
You will no doubt have heard about our Roald Dahl Party Day, Tri-Golf workshop and Scouting afternoons! The children loved finding out about hobbies and have thought of some new things they might like to try.
We have now moved on to our topic “Where did the Jolly Postman deliver his letters?”. This topic began with a mysterious parcel delivery (our book and a letter).
As part of our topic we will be reading traditional stories such as “Hansel and Gretel”, “Goldilocks” and “Red Riding Hood” and “Jack and the Beanstalk”. The children will begin to write short paragraphs including character descriptions, wanted posters and letters. We will also be working on our phonics skills. You can support this work by logging into ‘Espresso’ and accessing “Scrap’s Phonics”, “Polly’s Phonics” and “Kim’s Phonics”. Your child’s login remains unchanged however we will be reissuing these shortly for those of you who may no longer have this information.
We will also be making model vehicles with moving parts, designing a new uniform for the Jolly Postman and creating our own imaginary maps. We will be asking for some junk materials just before half-term.
For further detail about this half-term’s topics, please see the topic overview also available on our website.
PE Day
Our PE days are Wednesdays and Fridays. Please ensure your child wears sports kit to school on these days and that any earrings have been removed or covered with micro-pore tape as staff are unable to assist children with this.
Reading Books
Reading books will be issued on Wednesdays and should be returned to school on Mondays to allow us time to read your comments and change the books.
Shared Learning
Shared learning will be available on Purple Mash. We will be setting a range of activities and would like the children to complete a task each week if possible. We will then review and comment on their work online. Again, they can continue using the same login as last year.
There will also be tasks for the children to complete on Edshed (again they can continue using the same login as last year). Ideally children should be accessing this for a few minutes at least 5 times a week.
Year 2 Shared Learning
Reading
By the time children reach Year 2 most are fluent and accurate readers. The emphasis now changes to higher order skills talking about a text, using inference (hidden meaning and finding clues from the text) to answer questions about characters, settings or plots as well as discussing the authors choice and use of language.
The following questions may be useful when you are reading with your child, particularly if they are a fluent reader.
To deduce, infer or interpret information, events or ideas from text
To identify and comment on what a text looks like(layout)
To explain writers use of language
As a reader what do you think about the story
How does the text relate to you?