Welcome to Year 2!

The class teachers in Year 2 are Mrs Marshall and Miss Dodds. Mrs O' Mahoney works with both Year 2 classes over the week. Mrs Tolley teaches Mrs Marshall's class Wednesday afternoons and all day Thursday.  Miss Cole teaches Miss Dodds' class on Thursday mornings.

Year 2 are supported all day by Mrs Chase and Mrs Griffiths.

Some of the Year 2 children still access support from our Nurture Group, Smarties.

PE

This term the children will all need  a PE kit in school for one session each week.

Mrs Marshall's class will have PE on Wednesday afternoon and a Thursday morning

Miss Dodds'class will have PE on Monday afternoon and a Thursday morning. 

Thursday sessions will be indoor and so the children will need a suitable indoor PE Kit, including black or blue shorts and a white t-shirt. 

Monday and Wednesday afternoon sessions will be outdoors. Children will need to bring trainers, wear jogging bottoms or leggings, a white t-shirt and a warm jumper. 

Our Day

Phonics and Spelling

Our children take part in daily Phonics and Spelling sessions. A small number of children still access Phase 2,3 and 4 of Letters and Sounds with our Year 1 children. Some children review and consolidate Phase 5 of Letters and Sounds. The others will work with the No Nonsense Spelling Programme. This looks at spelling patterns, prefixes, suffixes, plurals and so on.

We have subscribed to an online Spelling Programme called 'Spelling Shed'. The children will all have their own login details and will be able to access this from home as well as school. These log in details will be passed on to our families in the Autumn Term. 

The children will bring home a list of spellings to practise on Mondays. These relate to the Spelling Programme.

Reading

During the Spring Term there will be a focus on individual and guided reading. During these sessions the children will work on different skills. These include:

• retrieving information from a picture, video clip or text
• making inferences about how a character feels and what is happening
• thinking about why an author made certain choices
• looking a interesting and new vocabulary
• decoding unfamiliar words

We read a selection of fiction and non-fiction texts. The children can access the school library  weekly with their class and during some lunchtimes or after school on Wednesday with their grown ups.

All the children will have a home reader book. This is their choice and they have the responsibility for changing it when they need to. It really helps children to read at home as frequently as possible - it does make a difference!

Some children may take part in our Reading Champions programme. This works on the children's pace and fluency. They have three 20 minute sessions per week.

Maths

We follow planning from the 'White Rose Hub' and the 'National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics' (NCETM). 

In year 2 we focus on using concrete strategies such as Numicom and Base 10. The children will learn to use pictorial representations of problems. Both the concrete and pictorial strategies build towards the children using more abstract approaches.

We will be focussing on counting on in 2s, 5s and 10s from 0 and then from any given number. This will lead into learning the multiplication facts for x2, x5, x10. Some children will progress to x3 and x4. Children can also use their 'Spelling Shed' logins to access 'Maths Shed'. 

English

In year 2 we focus on writing to entertain and writing to inform others. This includes narratives, descriptions, letters and instructions.

The children will be using the 4 sentence types defined in the Year 2 Writing Assessment Framework.

• statements - The people stared across the rickety bridge.
• commands - Mix the ingredients together in the bowl.
• questions - Who had been there already?
• exclamatory sentences - What a surprising day it had been!

We also begin to introduce more of the Alan Peat Sentence types. 

Much of our writing develops from our Mantle work. We also use texts as inspiration for writing.

Mantle

During the Spring Term we will be having a geography focus to our class Mantle.

A responsible team of map makers who work for a variety of clients all around the world and beyond. There are four divisions: ‘Land and Sea’, ‘Long Ago’, ‘Mythical and Magical’ and ‘The ones we do not speak of’. Ongoing work behind door one includes creating town maps for town planners, transport routes for logistic and shipping companies and maps for travel companies including bus and tube operators. Behind door two are maps that require restoring on behalf of historians, researchers and museums. Behind door three these maps are created for publishers, authors and directors of films. The clients for door four often remain anonymous, or the commissions are top secret. A responsible team of map makers who work for a variety of clients all around the world and beyond. There are four divisions: ‘Land and Sea’, ‘Long Ago’, ‘Mythical and Magical’ and ‘The ones we do not speak of’. Ongoing work behind door one includes creating town maps for town planners, transport routes for logistic and shipping companies and maps for travel companies including bus and tube operators. Behind door two are maps that require restoring on behalf of historians, researchers and museums. Behind door three these maps are created for publishers, authors and directors of films. The clients for door four often remain anonymous, or the commissions are top secret.

As part of thus Mantle, the team may need to travel around the world. 

As part of the ICT curriculum we will be word processing text and learning how to bold, underline and highlight words to ensure our evidence is clearly labelled. In Art we will be using view finders to focus on specific pieces of evidence when recording and collecting evidence for our team.

PPA teachers will be teaching part of the DT and RE curriculum too. They will be looking at Jewish people and their celebrations alongside finding out how to make the best toast. 

Homework

Most children will have weekly spellings to learn. These are given out on a Monday and there will be a quiz on a Friday. There is usually a short weekly homework challenge for either spelling, Maths or Mantle. 

Extra Curricular Activities

Throughout the year there are opportunities to take part in a variety of after-school clubs. Information about these is sent out when necessary. 

Supporting your child at home

Reading: The children have the opportunity to change their reading book every day. We encourage their independence in selecting a book to share at home. 

Projects: We will often send out a project for children to do at home over holidays linked with our Mantle work. 

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