Welcome Bear Cubs

How exciting! You're now in year 2, we have a wonderful year ahead, a new classroom with heaps of amazing learning to be explored. Each Bear cub will be able to build a rainbow through completing our enriching learning around the room challenges, these challenges will cover current learning, offer hands-on experiences and child-lead activities which they can choose. We use Tapestry Journal to share your child's achievements and keep you up to date, so try to check regularly. Similar to one of our stories - The Everywhere Bear by Julia Donaldson & Rebecca Cobb, we also have a new bear to take care of and share a weekend with, each child will have a turn at looking after our class bear and share with the class the fantastic adventures (everything is an adventure) they got up to.

English

We shall be enjoying lots of super stories in year 2,  using a range of text to expand our vocabulary, support our phonetic understanding and strengthen our writing. Weaving in sentence structuring with capital letters, finger spaces and the use of varied punctuation; to also include adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions and using direct speech. We shall be looking at character and setting descriptions, writing lists, instructions with bossy verbs, postcards and letters. Practising cursive handwriting techniques, spelling practices, daily phonics and introducing our Word of the Day to be included throughout our writing. Using role play and learning actions to a variety of text will also help develop and support our understanding whilst having fun too! Children will have the opportunity to enter Spelling Shed assignments at home to support their weekly spelling practice that will be covered in class. 

Reading

We have a calm woodland  ‘Book Nook’ where children throughout the week can snuggle down and enjoy reading a good book, comic/magazine or newspaper of their choice. We have a range of activities, focussing on reading comprehensions to draw on retrieval and inference skills, we have short burst texts such as poetry and fact finding, we have a range of resources to suit all genres and every child reads aloud to an adult to include phonics, blending and key elements of specific needs.

Children have a class reading book and a home reading book, these can be logged on BoomReader by the parent. Children will be reminded and encouraged to change their own books when reading at home. In class we celebrate the completion of books and all the wonderful reading at home, children collect dojos and bookmark stamps to gain a prize from Mrs Man.

Maths

We shall begin the year focussing on Place Value, Addition and Subtraction followed by Properties of Shapes.

For our Place Value block the children will be looking at understanding tens and ones, partitioning them, writing numbers in the worded form up to 100, identify numbers on a number line and think about ten more or less. We shall count in our 2s, 5s, 10s and then our 3s.

When learning our Addition and Subtraction unit we will be looking at number bonds to 10, 20, 100 and fact families. To add and subtract 1 and 2 digit numbers, use number sentences and to solve missing number problems.

For the block on Properties of Shapes we will cover 2D and 3D shapes, edges, faces, vertices and symmetry.

In addition to our maths lessons, the children will start the day with Math related early work, have the opportunity to be challenged in the Maths Area with hands-on problem solving and use I See reasoning and problem solving tasks to support and extend their understanding. We shall be using Super Movers and NumBots to support our understanding further whilst covering times tables, recall and fluency in mental addition and subtraction, so we move from counting to calculating. Both Super Movers and Numbots are free to access at home and would be beneficial for your child to enhance their understanding in class.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/supermovers/times-table-collection/z4vv6v4

play.numbots.com

Topmarks.co.uk

https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/569/Parachute-Number-Line

Science

Starting with Everyday Materials (and their uses) - How and why do materials work for us? We begin with a classroom hunt to gather an understanding and explore a variety of materials we have available and their purpose in our learning environment. We shall identify and compare the suitability of a variety of everyday materials, including wood, metal, plastic, glass, brick, rock, paper and cardboard and consider their uses. We will then find out how the shape of solid objects made from some materials can be changed by squashing, bending, twisting and stretching.

Next we move on to our Animals including Humans, Living Things & their habitats - What are the differences between animals/humans? What are the similarities? Exploring different habitats around our school - I wonder what animals we will be able to spot around the field, pond, playground and shrubs etc.  Identifying differences and making comparisons between things that are living, dead, and things that have never been alive and whilst using the idea of a simple food chain will be able to describe how animals obtain their food from plants and other animals and identify and name different sources of food. 

P.E

Our P.E lessons take place on Wednesdays, PE kit consists of a plain white top, black or blue shorts/joggers and either trainers or plimsolls. It is useful to keep P.E kits in school from Monday-Friday as the children regularly participate in additional PE and sports workshops. As a school we are committed to completing the Daily Mile, the children enjoy logging their steps and recording their activity with our school's Moki bands. 

Other subjects

Throughout our busy school year we also learn amazing subjects such as:-

Our Topic Work covering either a History or Geography focus using Kapow based lessons.

PSHE using JIGSAW to support our PSHE/RSE curriculum.

ICT using Purple Mash and covering a range of IT skills.

Music using Charanga lead lessons, covering a range of instruments and Music genres and styles. 

ART & DT developing skills, techniques and progression, recorded in a whole school journey artbook.

Homework

The most important thing children can do at home is to keep up with their reading. Please remember to log any reading on the BoomReader app so we can keep track and update the children’s bookmarks in school.

In addition, children are advised to keep practising their maths, you could try NumBots, Purple Mash, singing along to multiplication songs or trying out one of the fun dances on the BBC Supermovers site. 

Children can also log into Spelling Shed to play games and complete assignments linked to their spelling words for the week. All extra practice at home will help support your child with their learning journey. Passwords to our online resources will be issued in the first week but can be reissued if need be.

Mrs Lucas