Summer 1 - Living things and their habitats

Looking ahead to our new science unit this half term, it is going to be different, but we are embracing this time. We know learning is looking different at the moment, so we are rolling with it and we are moving on with our living things and their habitats unit. We have produced the knowledge organiser that gives all the information that is relevant, including some of the vocabulary we would be talking about. Perhaps children could read through it and then any tricky words they find or any words they are unsure of, they could ask a grown up, or send us an email. We are linking science to the core subjects this half term and we begin linking science and maths. It's time to go on a mini beast hunt! Can you identify the mini beasts you find? Maybe you could draw them. Remember how to create a tally chart and then can you transform that into a pictogram. 

Adding to this...we are keeping an eye on Active Learn, if you find you run out of books please let us know. Mathletics, Numbots and Times Table Rockstars has been popular. Remember we have a battle starting Monday 20th April. Our writing will also come in the form of creative writing. We hope the children are still practicing their fabulous handwriting. It will really help for when we return to school. 

Most of all we hope that you are looking after yourselves at this time. It is important to keep talking and keep smiling. We are all working through tricky times, and we miss everyone so much, but it's not forever. Looking forward to seeing what learning (school or home) that you have been doing. Email us at yeartwo@waterloo.owlcotesmat.org. We will continue to upload photographs into the gallery. 

Spring 2 - Significant People including explorers

During this half term we are excited to be learning about significant people. We have discussed with the children how this links to several parts of our curriculum. We are looking at important people in the past that links to history and then within that we are looking at parts of the world that they explored. 

Our adventurous explorers include: Sir Edmund Hillary, Neil Armstrong, Amelia Earhart and Christopher Columbus. 

The snow did not stop us starting off this week reading the book First to the Top all about Sir Edmund Hillary and his adventure to the summit of Everest. We learnt how he traveled the world and how his climb led him to be a significant person in history because he was the first person to reach the top.

We will be moving onto the other explorers throughout the half term and we are sure the children will enjoy learning all about them and their movements. We reminded ourselves about the continents today in both English and Maths.

In Maths we have moved on from multiplication and division to fractions. The children will be learning about equal and unequal parts, then moving onto halves, quarters and thirds. This includes fractions of a shape, a given amount of objects or numbers. We will then look at statistics, followed by measurement.  

Our PE will focus on skipping and the techniques we have been learning. Watch this space as some children will represent our school in the competition in March time. 

Keep checking our gallery for our journey through the half term. It promises to be an exciting and busy one. 

Spring 1 - Materials (Science) and The Great Fire of London

Welcome back after the break. We have seen the children bringing their excellent learning attitude back to school after the holidays. We also welcome Mrs Nessa to the year 2 teaching team for this half term. 

We are moving on with our learning this half term as we learn about The Great Fire of London. As part of English we are beginning the half term by looking at poetry and in particular The Sound Collector. During this week we have been learning more about nouns and verbs, while looking in detail at rhyme. To help at home please give your child a work that has several rhyming words and they know now to think about the sound that they are rhyming. This week we have done: white, jug, spoon, cone. We are looking forward to making a booklet of poems and sharing them with some of our year 6 friends. 

In Maths we are continuing with money and we will then be moving onto multiplication and division. If you want to support your child in Maths, please focus on the 2, 5 and 10 times tables as well as number bonds to 10, 20, 50 and 100. If children can handle money at home, they can practice adding and subtracting amounts. We have really been motoring forward with our Maths curriculum and children are so enthusiastic. 

In guided reading, we have been reading a selection of poems and we will then be focusing on different books that relate to the Great Fire of London. It will be good to keep reading little and often at home as this really supports the children's fluency. 

What an amazing start it has been! As always if there is anything you need or would like to talk about please do let a member of the teaching staff know.

Year 2 Team

Autumn 2 - science topic on materials - November 2019

The children have all settled into school after the half term break with a really positive attitude. It’s been great to hear about their holidays and see how refreshed they all look. This half term we will be exploring the properties of materials and we will add in cross curricular links to other subjects like art and DT. 

In maths this this half term we are continuing with addition and we are now adding two digit numbers to one digit numbers. This has been tricky maths, but the children have shown great resilience already. We will develop their fluency using the Malteser method before looking at how we apply this to subtraction, while also using our number lines to check our answers too. 

In English and guided reading we are focusing on the Julia Donaldson book Zog and Flying Doctors and the children have loved listening to the story. We have also learnt the talk for writing actions. Please let them show you as this certainly supports them to retell the story. We have also developed their writing by teaching statement, command, question and exclamation sentences. It has been a fun week giving commands and it is a good job the children and teachers are resilient as when we have done commands in class they have been just as bossy as Mrs Watson and Mrs Lock. 

Throughout this half term it promises to be a fun, yet busy, build up to the festive period, so please continue to check the website for updates as well as our school Twitter page. 

Please check our dates for your diary for Autumn 2 to keep up to date with everything. As ever if there is anything you need or feel you would like to talk to. Member of staff about then please let us know and we can either speak to you after school or make an appointment. 

Welcome back to year 2!

We begin this year with a science unit this half term, focusing on animals including humans. This is going to be an exciting unit as we learn all about animals and humans growing. This includes finding out about what young and adult animals are called, life cycles of animals and what animals and humans need to live. 

Last week we were lucky enough to have a visitor into school. Miss McElvogue brought her baby and little girl into school and the children were able to ask questions to increase their understanding on how a human starts in life and then grows into a toddler. 

Thinking about lifecycles...last week we also welcomed 5 new animals to the classrooms! We have 5 caterpillars in school now that we are observing over time. 

Keep checking our year 2 page and gallery for more about our learning!

English

To start the term off, with a super animal story, we are reading the fiction book ‘The selfish crocodile’. During this unit we are retelling the story before innovating it and making it our own. We began by using our talk for writing actions to retell the story orally, before remembering the sequence of the story. The story map helped children to absorb the story, concentrating on some of our story openers and story language. Our SWAG bag words are the vocabulary words that we focus on and the current words are: chattering, astonished, groaned and nibbled. We would then expect to see these in the children’s writing. 

Our initial focus has been to include expanded noun phrases in our writing. An example would be where children would extend the noun and make their writing more interesting using an adjective before the noun.

Examples -

The large, green crocodile was swimming down the river. 

There was a loud, deafening roar.

Maths 

The start of the year sees us returning to place value. The children have really boosted their knowledge of numbers up to 100 and in particular we have been focusing on making, representing and then partitioning numbers. This we did initially into tens and ones using a part whole model, then we looked at different ways we could partition the same number. To extend our learning we have then been writing number sentences. It would help the children to continue learning to count in 2s, 5s and 10s as it really does speed up their counting. 

Week 5 - We have now moved onto our Addition and Subtraction unit in mathematics.

Children we be using the skills they learnt in year 1 to build on making fact families and using the part whole / bar model work as above. If you wish to know more please check with your child's teacher and we will be happy to go over things with you.