Autumn 1

Welcome to year 2! We hope you had a fabulous holiday, enjoyed the weather and had a relaxing break.  Below is an outline of the exciting learning opportunities the children will have this half term.

We’ll start the term with a learning focus ‘How do I feel?’ where we support the children to develop their ability to identify emotions in themselves and others, as well as build a toolkit of strategies to help them self-regulate. This short topic includes activities linking to the Zones of Regulation, Taking Care Project, Jigsaw Mindfulness PSHE, online safety and outdoor learning. We will enjoy some creative activities based around Chris Haughton’s ‘Don’t Worry Little Crab’ where we’ll be exploring different artists’ work and techniques such as printing and collage. We will also create stick puppets, dioramas and perform puppet shows which will be recorded using the iPads.

For the rest of this half term, our learning challenge is ‘Was the Fire of London really great?’ During the topic we’ll find out about how the fire started and spread, and the historical sources that can be used to find out about this. The children will learn about Samuel Pepys. We will also think about materials and their properties with the children; and carry out various investigations with the children to find out the suitability of different materials for different tasks.

In English lessons, we will be focusing on ‘The Adventures of Egg Box Dragon’ by Richard Adams. The children will be making their own egg box dragons and writing a set of instructions on how to do that; letters in role as the Queen and creating their own stories. We will also be learning and retelling the story of ‘Kassim and the Greedy Dragon’ as well as writing fire poems using a range of poetic devices.

In maths, children will be learning about the place value of each digit in 2-digit number (tens and ones). They will be representing these numbers using different equipment. They will then compare and order numbers from 0 up to 100, and then learn to use the signs: <, > and =. They will use their knowledge of place value to solve problems.
Towards the end of the half term, the children will learning about money and combining amounts to make a particular value and finding different combinations of coins that equal the same amount of money.

PE Days

Our PE days are Tuesdays and Fridays. Please ensure your child wears their PE uniform on those days. This includes black shorts, leggings or joggers, white PE T-shirt and a school sweatshirt/cardigan or plain black zip-up hoody. Footwear should be either black pumps or trainers of any colour. Please ensure that earrings have been removed or covered with micro-pore tape as members of staff are unable to assist 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. Please ensure you read with your child every week and record a comment in their reading diary.

Shared Learning

Shared learning will be shared with you in pink books. Please hand in pink shared learning books each Monday for us to mark and share the lovely work produced and we will return them on Wednesdays.

For further detail about this half term’s topics, please see the topic overview.

If you need to contact us with any questions or concerns, please use email us at year2baw@welearn365.com or we're available most nights after school.