Year 2 2023 - 2024

Welcome to Y2!

Cormorant class teacher: Mrs Austwick | LSA: Mrs Williams.                           Kingfisher class teacher: Miss García | LSA: Mrs Sunderland

We are feeling very lucky to be teaching such a fabulous group of children.

Together we will be working hard to get each and every individual child in our class to reach their full potential.

We have a very fun and busy year ahead and we are excited to watch you all learn and grow.

Important Information

Our school day starts at 8:25am and finishes at 3pm. Children will enter and exit through the Fire Exit door. 

PE is on Fridays. Please come in school PE kit which is white t-shirt, black or navy leggings or joggers, trainers or plimsolls and a warm jacket for winter.

Children need to bring a water bottle every day these can be kept by our sink. Children have a piece of fruit daily and if you would like your child to have a carton of milk you can sign up for this on www.coolmilk.com (or ask at the office if you need help)

Reading books for all groups are sent home daily. Please read with your children at least 3 times a week and sign their reading record. This will be shown to their reading teacher and children will earn an achievement stamp for 3 reads. Some children will have weekly spellings depending on their reading group.

There will be online homework set on Purple Mash.

Summer 1

English

We will be reading the book TIDY by Emily Gravett. This is a great story about a badger who loves tidying. In fact, he takes it too far and begins to understand the consequences for everyone. We will be focusing on subordination (if, that), add -er and -est to adjectives, we will use homophones and apostrophes. 

Maths

We will finish the weight and capacity unit where we will also learnt how to read measures of temperature. Then, we will use our Year 1 knowledge about 2-D shapes to help us count vertices, sides and corners of 2-D and 3-D shapes. If we have time, we will also start to look at our money unit. We will continue to work on our 5s, 10s and 2s timetables using Times Table Rockstars.

Spring 2

Maths 

We will be starting length and height and then move on to weight and capacity. The children do Times Tables Rockstars three times a week and have extra mental maths practise on a Friday.

English

We will be reading the book "My name is not Refugee" by Kate Milner. This is a thought provoking story that helps shpw readers that children forced from their homes are not just refugees but children just like them. Our focus will be using the progressive form of verbs in the past and present tense, using subordination and use past and present tense correctly and consistently and finally to use apostrophes. 

Topic -

We will be continuing our Magnificent Monarchs topic, including having a full day visit from Queen Elizabeth who will be teaching us all about King Henry VIII, Queen Victoria and helping us make our own family crest. Keep a look out on twitter for photos!

Spring 1

Maths

We will continue with the multiplication and division unit. We will be finishing the unit with a focus on dividing by 2, 5 and 10. Children will also build on their knowledge of
dividing by 2 to explore what it means for a number to be even and odd. They will start to recognise when numbers are odd by considering the ones digit.

Fractions This unit will introduce children to fractions for the first time. It will build on their knowledge of equal parts and they will explore equal parts in a variety of contexts such as shapes, numbers and measurements. They will learn key vocabulary such as the numerator and denominator and will be able explain what each word means in context. First, we will focus on fractions where the numerator is always one. Then we will move on to non-unit fractions and learn about the equivalence between them.

English

Our text will be The Dragon Machine by Helen Ward. We will be mastering three concepts in this unit through different genres of writing and difference audiences.

1. Use punctuation correctly (exclamation and question marks)
2. Write sentences with different forms (statement, question, exclamation, command)
3. Use present and past tenses correctly and consistently

Topic - Spring 1 and Spring 2

We will have a big focus on our History during our topic - Magnificent Monarchs. During this topic, we will look at the past of our British Monarchy and how aspects of life has changed over time. We will look closely at Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror,  Henry VIII,  Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II. We will also sketch royal portraits and learn about the meaning of hierarchy, power and rule. 

Autumn 2

Maths

Addition and Subtraction This will include adding and subtracting two 2 digit numers using exchange. The children will be working using equipment (concrete) and then moving on to working more pictorally then abstract. We will be building in their problem solving and reasoning skills.

Multiplication and Division This unit builds on equal groups as the key idea in multiplication and division. Children will be introduced to the division sign (÷) and learn to distinguish the difference between the number of equal groups and the number in one group. They will use bar models and arrays to represent multiplication and division sentences. They will also look at facts and use the inverse to match sentences.

English

For our text this half term we are reading "The Owl who was afraid of the dark" by Jill Tomlinson. For our hook activity we read Owl Babies and made our own owls using pine cones (a good chance to read and follow instructions!) Our focus with this text is using co-ordinating conjunctions (but, or), adding -ly to turn adjectives into adverbs and using commas to separate items in a list. We have been making notes about owls and working hard on developing our vocabulary.

Topic

This half term we are looking at minibeasts in our topic Wriggle and Crawl. We launched the topic with an afternoon finding as many minibeasts as possible in our Forest School. We will be investigating worms and which habitats they prefer, looking at food chains and life cycles and sketching minibeasts using art skills developed in our last topic (see below!). This topic gives us a great opportunity to use our research skills and find out more in depth about various minibeasts.

Autumn 1

Maths

Place Value: This will include representing numbers to 100, ordering and comparing numbers, representing numbers on a place value grid and counting in 2's, 5's and 10's. We use a range of maths equipment to support our learning before moving our learning on to include more pictoral and abstract methods. We do a Maths Meeting 3 times a week where we cover a range of different areas of maths. 

Here are also some good websites we are enjoying ad a class, you may want to give them a go at home:

ictgames.com/sharkNumbers

 topmarks.co.uk (Daily 10: select Level 2, Partitioning)

English

By the end of the first unit, the children will be writing their own wishing tale. We will be sequencing and retelling the story of The Magic Paintbrush. We will remember to use capital letters and full stops and use different sentence types: Questioning and Exclamation sentences.

Troll Swap

We then read Troll Swap by Leigh Hodgkinson. Our focus was using punctuation correctly, using expanded noun phrases and also subordination (because) and coordination (and) in our writing. We really enjoyed the story of the troll, Timothy and a girl, Tabitha who decided to swap places. We did a lot of writing around the text including a letter and completing thought and speech bubbles.

Topic

We are excited to begin the year with Muck, Mess and Mixtures! This topic is fun filled with lots of art lessons. We will begin by experimenting and mixing colours using a colour wheel. Then we will focus on two artists, Henri Matisse and Kurt Schwitters and recreate some of their famous collages.

We are always on the door first thing in the morning and there will always be an adult there at the end of the day :)  Please do not hesitate to come and speak to us if you have any questions. Watch out for more updates on this page!

Mrs Austwick          Mrs Williams           Mrs Sunderland          Miss Garcia