Welcome to Year 2

Our teacher is Mrs Stephenson and our teaching assistants are Mrs Dunn and Miss Linstead.

Year 2 is an exciting and challenging year. The children are the oldest in Key Stage 1, therefore we are role models to the younger children in school and set good examples in work, play and behaviour.

In Year 2 we are given greater responsibility and independence during class activities.

Useful information

Our school day will begin at 8.30 am and finish at 3:00 pm.

Playtime: 10:15 - 10:30

Lunchtime: 11:45 - 12:45

Our topics this half term are:

· English—English is split into x1 Reading Comprehension lesson, x1 Grammar lesson, x2 Writing lessons and x1 Spelling and Handwriting a week. Our writing lessons will take inspiration from the Elmer story by David McKee and The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams.

· Maths—In Maths we are following a new scheme of work devised by Ark. Ark is more practical and hands on based. This half term we will be focussing on time and fractions.

· RE— Judaism - The Covenant

· PSHE— Keeping Healthy

· Science—Protecting the environment

This year our Ark and Kapow subjects are going to be blocked so this half term we will be covering DT.

·DT - the children will be learning a variety of skills over a range of topics which include textiles, cooking and model making.

· PE—Athletics

Our PE days are Tuesdays.

Your child is able to wear their PE kit on our PE day. Please ensure that your child is appropriately dressed for the weather conditions. Indoor kit is a white t-shirt and shorts. Outdoor is indoor kit underneath tracksuit bottoms and top.

Jewellery—earrings and watches must be removed before PE. If your child is unable to remove their jewellery then they will NOT be able to participate in PE.

If you have long hair then you must have it tied back.

Reading

Reading is very important in Y2. Please ensure that your child brings their x2 Read Write Inc reading books and record in everyday. On a Friday, children who have read 3 or more times in the week will be able to pick a prize from the prize box. They will also get to move around the continents. If they visit all 7 continents with their Fred Frog in the half term then they will get an extra special prize for completion.

Spelling

Spelling Test: Friday

Your child will be given appropriate spellings to practice each week. They will be tested on their spellings and given new spellings the same day. Spellings will link to either the Year 1 or Year 2 spelling objectives. Every 6 weeks your child will be tested on common exception words.

Remember to use Doodle and Times Tables Rockstar's. You child's log in details are in the front of their reading diary.

Read Write Inc.

Reading is important as it supports many areas of the curriculum and allows the children to become independent learners. As of September 2022, we at Shafton Primary Academy, follow the Read, Write Inc phonics programme.

Using RWI, the children learn to read effortlessly so that they can put all their energy into comprehending what they read.

When using RWI to read the children will:

learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letter/letter groups using simple picture prompts
learn to read words using Fred Talk
read lively stories featuring words they have learned to sound out
show that they comprehend the stories by answering questions.

When using RWI to write the children will:

learn to write the letters/letter groups which represent 44 sounds.
learn to write words by saying the sounds in Fred Talk
write simple sentences

Please click on the buttons below to find out more information about Read Write Inc.

What is Read Write Inc phonics?

Understanding phonics

How to say the sounds

Our Work

Easter Artwork

For our Easter artwork, we created bunny pictures. We created them by first doing a watercolour wash of green and blue to make the ground and sky. Next using a bunny stencil, paint and a sponge we added our bunny to our background. Once dry we added details such as whiskers using pipe cleaners, pink in the ears using pink felt, a tail using a cotton wool ball and a googly eye. To finish our pictures we used a flower paper puncher and added coloured flowers to our pictures. We are very proud of them.

Easter artwork video

Science - Our Wormery

For our Science this term we have been learning about habitats. As part of our topic, we had a wormery in our classroom. We used a wormery kit and first had to set it up with layers of soil and burying sand. We then went into the school grounds and found some worms to go into our wormery. We added some rotting leaves as food for our worms. Over the weeks, we observed the worms digging tunnels in our wormery. We were very responsible with the worms, checking them everyday and ensuring that the wormery was moist but not too wet.

wormery video

Elf run - Made with Clipchamp_1704282045131.mp4

Christmas party - Made with Clipchamp_1704282977618.mp4

Celebrating Christmas

In Y2 we really got into the Christmas spirit in many ways. We made Christmas cards and calendars, read Christmas stories, performed in our Christmas play, Christmas dinner day and our classroom was decorated with a Christmas tree, advent calendar and other Christmas decorations. Some of our highlights over this time was doing our Elf run in aid of Barnsley Hospice, having a special visit from Santa and having our Christmas party where we played pass the parcel, musical statues, musical bumps and sleeping lions.

Santa visit - Made with Clipchamp_1704284934226.mp4

Music - West African call and response

Here is one of our Music units we have learnt this half term. It is call and response, where 1 person or group calls and the other responds. We learnt a traditional west African call and response song with added actions. We thought about what safari animal noises we could make using the percussion instruments.

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We used the instruments to put a sound to the animal. We talked about the tempo (speed) and dynamics (volume) once each group performed.

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In pairs we created a call and response rhythm by one person asking a question and the other responding.

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We sang a tradional west African call and resonse song. We also added the actions to it.

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We clapped out a rhythm to describe what an African animal ight do to a piece of music

Remembrance Work

We have been learning about Remembrance Day and why it is important to commemorate it. We have produced some artwork by using watercolour paints to create our background. We added a solider and poppy by using a soldier and poppy template and acrylic paint. We have dressed up as soldiers and written acrostic poems.

Remembrance artwork.mp4

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Geography - Continents and Oceans

For our Geography topic, we have been learning about the continents and oceans. we enjoyed learning and singing the continents and oceans song and exploring the globes, atlas' and books finding the continents and oceans.

Autumn/Harvest

In Y2 we have been thinking about Harvest and autumn. We wrote poems and descriptions about what we thought autumn was and what harvest was. We also created artwork. Our first piece of artwork was finger painting leaves onto trees. We used red, orange and yellow. Our second piece of artwork was a leaf made from real leaves. WE collected lots of different leaves from around school and at home. We stuck our leaves onto double sided tape ensuring that we covered all the gaps. We then used a template to cut a leaf shape out and stick the rest of the coloured paper onto our leaves so we have could see the leaf shape. We are very pleased with our autumn artwork.

Harvest.mp4

Great fire of London.mp4

Great Fire of London

We learnt about the Great Fire of London. We learnt facts and information about how and where the fire started, how long it lasted and why the fire spread so quickly. We created our own Great Fire of London artwork using red, yellow and orange tissue paper for the background and black paper to make the silhouettes of the buildings. We went on a school visit to the Emergency Services Museum where we took part in a workshop about the Great Fire of London.

Great fire of London artwork.mp4

Our Classroom

Class jigsaw

On our transition day we each decorated our own jigsaw piece. The jigsaw pieces were put together to form a large jigsaw that is now on display to show that in our class we all fit together and work together.

Progress Wall

Here is our Progress Wall. It helps and reminds us on how we can become successful independent learners. It is at the front of the classroom so we can see it all the time.

History Area.

This is our History Area, it links with our first History topic of the Great Fire of London. There are books and information about what happened during the days of the Great Fire of London. There are also activities that we can do such as role playing people from the time and sorting modern London with London from the past.

Reading Area

This is our Reading area. Our theme in our Reading area is autumn as it links with the time of year. We have our tepee that we can sit in and read a book quietly to ourselves or with a toy or a puppet. In our tepee is a basket of books that are all the Reading River books that we read through KS1 for us to enjoy again and again!

Our book case is split into a fiction and non-fiction side. We have lots of picture books that we can enjoy and our books by particular authors (Julia Donaldson and Lynsey Dodd). Our our book case we have our reading challenges that we can complete and 60-second reads if we want to do some quick reading.

Continents Reading Race

This is our reading race. Everyone has their own Fred Frog (link to RWI) that they can move to each continent each week if they have read x3 times or more a week. If your Fred visits every continent in the half term then there is an extra special treat. It is continents themed to link with our Geography topic in Autumn 1.

ICT Area

Here is our ICT area. We can access our IPads and Chromebooks and useful information on keeping safe online. We use our ICT in a range of ways throughout our school day.

Science Area

This is our Science area. Our current topic is everyday materials. There are books linked to different materials and recycling. There are sorting activities for us to do and colouring and word searches.

RE Area

This is our RE area. Sofia our owl guides us through our RE lessons. We have books about Christianity and Judaism as these are the area we learn about over the year.

Calm Corner

This is our calm area where we can go if we are feeling overwhelmed and need a bit of space to reset ourselves. This year in our calm corner there are windows and mirrors reading books where we can look into other peoples lives and reflect on our own lives.

Maths Area

Here is our Maths area. There are resources that we can go and get to help us with our learning. This year we have moved to a new Maths scheme so there will be more coming to this area soon!

Vocabulary Tree

Here is our vocabilary tree. On our tree we add leaves of key vocabulary that we need to know linked to a specific topic. This half term our leaves will link to our History and Geography topics.

Our Previous Learning

Elephants work

We researched and created an information page about elephants. We found out lots of different facts about them. We worked with Mrs Craddock to create some watercolour and stencil print elephant artwork. We also created our own patchwork elephants using tissue paper and ascetate. We are very proud of our elephants work.

Handa's Surprise

This half term our book has been Handa's Surpise by Eileen Browne. The children enjoyed reading the story. We then produced some work around Handa's Surprise. We retold the story by ordering the pictures then writing about it. We did a book review about the story.

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