Year 2

Welcome to Year 2

summer 1 2024

Year 2 summer 1 2024

Dear Parents,

Welcome back after the Easter holidays!  We hope you have all enjoyed some sunshine in amongst the rain and have had a lovely time with your family.  

We will continue working hard on following our school values of Respect, Good Manners, Patience, Perseverance and Honesty. Your child will earn dojo points for demonstrating our school values or working hard. If your child produces an outstanding piece of work or demonstrates one of our school values to a high standard, they will be placed on the golden crown.  If they stay on it for the rest of the week, they earn an extra 10 dojos.  Can your child get at least 100 this term to receive a certificate? Possibly even receive Gold or Platinum?

PSHE plays a key role in our school, this will take place through class and assembly sessions.  The topic for summer 1 is called 'Keeping Safe'.

The summer 1 topic is called 'Wind in the Willows'.

Attendance

Regular attendance helps your child build good habits, getting them used to the idea of getting up and ready for learning each day.  It helps your child build and sustain relationships with staff and make lasting friendships.  It can also help to ensure continuity of learning, with staff being more easily able to assess your child’s progress and identify next steps for them in accessing the curriculum.

Every moment in school counts, and missed school days add up quickly. The higher a pupil’s attendance, the more they are likely to learn, and the better they are likely to perform as they progress through school. 

Homework

Please encourage your child to complete their homework each week. Homework is given out on a Friday and is expected to be completed and returned no later than the following Wednesday. 

Your child's weekly homework tasks can be found in the spring 1 homework grid, which is glued into your child's homework book - a copy of which can also be found above in the important document section. 

An optional termly project is also sent home, a copy of which can be found in the important document section above, along with online optional homework available through Purple Mash, Reading Plus and TT Rockstars.

Daily reading is crucial, so please can you listen to your child read as much as possible at home to support their learning and also their understanding of different texts.

English

To begin with we will studying a fiction unit focusing on animal adventure stories, we will be concentrating on an extract from "Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame. We will do this through the use of the ‘Talk for Writing’ strategy of imitate, innovate and invent.  As well as this, we will be focusing on the skills needed to invent their own piece of writing and look at writing through other subject areas.  

Whole class reading will continue to take place every day, through which we encourage children to focus on new vocabulary in the text and the comprehension of the text.

To further support your child's skills in reading comprehension, please support your children in their reading of school books, at home for ten minutes every day.  We will also continue to encourage children to improve their oracy skills through continued application of Voice 21 strategies.

Mathematics 

Maths lessons will provide pupils with the opportunity to learn using concrete, pictorial and abstract models. They will then learn to apply this knowledge to reasoning and problem solving (QUACK - Please ask your children what this means).  We will start the new term with a focus on 3D shapes, before moving onto fractions and time.

Please encourage your child to practise their timetables at home, completing to achieve Bronze, Silver or Gold in counting in 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 8s and 10s. Please begin with the 2 times table, before leading to hopefully securing the 2,3,4,5,8 and 10 times tables.  In order to aid them with this, your child can use the online program 'Times Table Rockstars' or complete set activities on Purple Mash. 

Science

We will explore and compare the differences between things that are living, dead and things that have never been alive. We will identify that most living things live in habitats to which they are suited and describe how different habitats provide for the basic needs of different kinds of animals and plants, and how they depend on each other. We will describe how animals obtain their food from plants and other animals, using the idea of a simple food chain.  

In order to help your child remember the key knowledge, please encourage your child to learn their Knowledge Organisers.

Physical Education

In Year 2, P.E will take place every Wednesday so please make sure your children come to school in their full P.E kit - yellow P.E shirt with the school's logo, black joggers, shorts or leggings and their school green sweatshirt. In their P.E lessons (games) they will focus on learning how to catch a ball, to hold a bat and strike a ball accurately, leading up to using tactics in a game to outwit an opponent. 

Computing

In our computing this half term pupils will explore 2Paint A Picture on Purple Mash.  They will learn how to recreate different styles of art, including impressionist, pointillist and collage using a computer program. 

Geography

In our geography topic the children will learn our own town of Blackburn. Children will explore the human and physical features of Blackburn and locate it on a map. Children will name and describe each of the four seasons. Children will create and use their own maps of the school.

DT

In our DT project the children will create a puppet to engage younger children in retelling a nursery rhyme. To begin with we will explore existing puppets, discovering how they are made and the function of their different components. Before the children design and then create their own hand puppet. 

Oracy - Voice 21

As a school we are developing our Oracy, learning through talk and learning to talk.  In class, we will create discussion guidelines in order to aid meaningful discussions.  We encourage children to fully participate by taking on a range of roles and utilising sentence stems to articulate their ideas.  We will provide opportunities for discussion in all areas of the curriculum.

Important dates

There is a parents evening planned for this half term on Wednesday 24th April, 2024.  

Any queries feel free to talk to us in the morning or at the end of the day or arrange an appointment through the school office.

Thank you in advance for your continued support, it is much appreciated.

Mr G Owen (Year 2 Teacher and Lower School Leader)

Mrs S Ali (HLTA)

Mrs N Saleem (SSA)

Mrs Y Hussain (SSA)