Term 2 

This fortnight in Literacy, we have been building our reading and writing skills. In Reading, we followed instructions by reading steps and drawing matching pictures. We also practised finding information in fiction and non-fiction texts and answering questions using clues from the text. In Writing, we focused on procedural texts. We learnt how to write clear, ordered steps using adverbs, command verbs, and transitional words. We finished by adding matching pictures to help others easily follow our procedures.

In Numeracy, we have been learning about money. We had to solve real life  money problems by calculating the total cost of items and working out the change left over from simple transactions. We learnt that to find the total cost, we have to use addition. We also learnt that to work out the change, we have to find the difference by using subtraction. We can confidently recognise different money amounts and record money values using the dollar symbol.  

In our Personal and Social learning, each Grade 2 class has been working on goals that are just right for us. Some of us have been learning how to be better listeners by keeping our eyes on the speaker, waiting our turn to talk, and using whole-body listening. Others have focused on taking turns, staying calm when things don’t go our way, or using strategies to ignore distractions and stay focused on our learning. We’ve talked a lot about what we can and can’t control, and how we can choose helpful ways to react, even when things feel tricky. Some of these lessons have included working with our Grade 6 Buddies, which was very helpful to learn from the older students and see how they would tackle some of these problems and behaviours.
These lessons are helping us become more respectful, focused, and resilient learners. We’re already noticing a big difference in how we work together and solve problems! 

This fortnight in CBL, we continued working on our action projects focused on leaving a positive footprint within our school community. We held a Gallery Walk within our classroom, where we showcased our work and explored each other’s projects. We used a ‘Log Off’ Sheet to record interesting facts and ideas we learnt from our peers’ actions. It was a fantastic opportunity to celebrate creativity, kindness, and the power of small changes. 

To finish the session, we reflected on two key questions:  

• What have you learned about how you can leave a positive footprint?

• What are you going to do to keep leaving a positive footprint?

We shared some thoughtful responses and are feeling empowered to make ongoing changes, both big and small to help our environment. To conclude our learning in CBL, we went to the Science Dome Incursion, where we learnt all about Earth, Space, the Moon and the Sun. It was so much fun and it felt like we were actually in outer space! 

We completed our infographics genre in week 7 and we concluded the genre by creating our own infographics to show our understanding. At the start of week 8, we refocused our learning to learn about pronouns and how we can use this part of speech to make our writing fluent. Week 9 saw us being introduced to another genre – procedural text. In this genre, we are learning the step-by-step rules of procedures such as tying shoelace, making fairy bread or planting a seed. We learnt the importance of following procedures in order to have desired results.

Over the past three weeks in Numeracy, Year 2 students have been busy learning how to tell the time on an analogue clock to the hour and half hour. They’ve also explored Australian coins and notes, discovering their features, values, and how they are used in everyday life. Students enjoyed hands-on activities to practise making different amounts using a combination of coins and notes. It’s been wonderful to see their confidence grow as they apply these important real-life skills! 

Over the past few weeks, Grade 2 students have been focusing on Personal and Social learning tailored to what each class needs most. The Grade 2 cohort , have been working on three important areas to help us grow into kind, resilient, and respectful learners. We’ve been learning how to be active listeners by showing whole-body listening eyes watching, ears listening, mouths quiet, and hands still. Following instructions the first time has been a big focus, and we’ve been practising this during group work, class discussions, and transitions. It’s helped us become more responsible and ready to learn!

Sometimes small things can feel really big. That’s why we’ve been learning how to name our worries and put them on a catastrophe scale from little glitches to big problems. This has helped us build resilience and work through tricky feelings in a calm, helpful way. We’re learning that not every problem is a “10,” and that we have strategies to feel better. We’ve also been playing teamwork games to practise being good partners and friends. These games help us take turns, share ideas, and solve problems together. Through play and reflection, we’re learning how to encourage others, speak kindly, and work through disagreements respectfully.

Each Grade 2 class has focused on what their students need most, and it’s been amazing to see the growth in confidence, friendships, and emotional strength across all classrooms. We’re proud of the progress we’ve made and will keep using these skills every day!

In class, the Year 2's have been learning about how to look after the planet by reducing, reusing, and recycling. They talked about Earth’s natural resources and how they can leave a positive footprint by making good choices for the environment.

The Year 2's have been very engaged and are now starting to plan an action project to put their learning into practice. Ideas include creating posters, setting up recycling stations, and finding ways to reduce waste at school.

They are very excited to see their ideas come to life!

We continued to learn and establish our understanding about nonfiction text. At the start of the fortnight, we explored some of the features of nonfiction text such as: heading, sub-heading, captions, bold words, diagrams, and glossaries. We also delved into summarising main facts using compound sentences. We were guided by sentence starter such as:

''This text is about…"

"The important facts are…"

"In one sentence, I can say.....

We also explored topics such as tornadoes, flood, and earthquakes. These explorations have helped us to research our own topics from weather to space science on Epic using our learnt sentence starter.

The second part of the fortnight saw us learning how to sort and categorise similar information on a topic from a text. We were able to use a given template to sort and categorise information on weather snow and spring. This helps us to identify similarities and differences. The peak of this genre led us to do a free writing on weather. We went out and observed the weather, and we came back to write basic facts on the weather.

We have been learning so many mathematical topics in the Maths. We began this fortnight with a bang by creating a monster using MAB blocks. This helps us to demonstrate our understanding of place values. 

We also learnt a strategy part-part-whole to solve additions. We used the strategy to solve missing addition numbers. 

In our Applied Maths, we have continued learning directions and using maps to locate places. We learnt how to give instruction and use appropriate transitional words such as first, after, then.

As we continue to explore in our CBL, we learnt how the earth rotates, the effects on the seasons and the cycles of the moon. We learnt how the moon orbits the earth and got to know that moon has 8 cycles. We learnt the effect of different seasons how it affects the hibernation and migration of animals. The seasons do not only affect animals but also affecting us humans. We used our knowledge we have gathered to  choose and draw a particular weather of our choice and wrote what it looked like and how it affects us.

Over the past week, students have been learning how to solve problems and manage tricky situations in positive ways. They took part in calming tool stations where they got to try things like deep breathing, using fidget toys, colouring, listening to relaxing music and doing some simple yoga moves. These activities helped students discover different ways to calm their bodies and minds when they’re feeling upset or overwhelmed. They had fun exploring which strategies worked best for them and shared their favourites with their classmates.

Students also worked in small groups to act out real-life scenarios, like having a disagreement with a friend or feeling left out. Together, they thought about what an unhelpful response might be, and then came up with two helpful solutions instead. They practised and performed these for the class, which helped everyone learn new ways to handle problems in a kind and respectful way. These lessons are helping students build confidence in asking for help, thinking through problems, and supporting one another.

This fortnight, we jumpstarted our literacy learning by being knowledge detectives. This activity allowed us to understand what the text is about, what the author was thinking, and also what different topic we can suggest to the author’s title. As we have been studying nonfiction, we learnt how to pull-out facts from what we have read and use this knowledge to write facts around different topics such as moon, sun, earthquake, weathers etc. We have been exploring different nonfiction text such as wind and solar systems. This genre has exposed us to real facts about these topics as demonstrated in our writing fluency. In our writing fluency, we kept on building our knowledge of sentences to write about solar system and using the appropriate vocabularies. The knowledge we have been building since the start of the term as led us to how to connect with all what we have been learning. We were introduced to text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world. This activity also helped us with formation of correct sentences. 

The highlight of our learning was the introduction of Popplet App. We learnt to use this app to form a brief and specific vocabularies for our chosen theme. 

In maths, this fortnight saw us learning about using strategies such as repeated addition and equal groups to solve multiplication. We transferred our knowledge of equal groups to solve division as well. In maths, this fortnight saw us learning about using strategies such repeated addition and equal groups to solve multiplication. We transferred our knowledge of equal groups to solve division as well. In our Maths fluency, we practised place values, skip counting in 2s, 3s, 10s starting from 3. We also transferred these skills also solve multiplication problems. We also built on our previous knowledge to establish the similarities and differences between column graphs and pictograph. We further learnt how to analyse and interpret different graphs.

We have just begun to learn about mapping and used our classroom as a starting point of developing this knowledge.

We have all emerged ourselves into learning about the space science. This fortnight we learnt about how the sun orbit to give us day and night. Above all, we learnt a new vocabulary – axis and know where it is in the space. We explored the earth science by transferring all what we now know about earth, a very important planet that we human beings live on.

In our personal and social, we are all focusing on what is specific to our personal growth and developments, and maintaining a safe space for everyone. Some of us are learning coping mechanisms to regulate ourselves while some of us are learning to understand what it means to take turn.

At the start of the term, we were introduced to infographics where we learnt a lot about how sketches, photos, pictures, diagrams, and or illustrations all add meaning to a topic of a text. Our infographics is linked to nonfiction genre which is only about facts. Therefore, we have been gradually developing our understanding on nonfiction as a fact-finding genre that cannot be debated as it is totally different from an opinion text based on an author’s views. The focus of our learning is across weather, season, and space. The fortnight has seen us to gather important facts about weather and seasons. Here, we used visuals to link the appropriate weather and season. We were encouraged to use our knowledge to draw up vocabulary that are relevant to images provided to us around weather and space.  We continued our learning by developing the knowledge to differentiate important facts from interesting facts. On our small white board, we have been practising during our writing fluency our understanding of what a fact is.

We have also begun to dig deep into the structures of nonfiction texts and how infographics are included. This will help us to understand and be able to include any form of infographics to our final piece. To be able to do this, we revisited compound sentences. We learnt about FANBOYS, A WHITE BUS - a complex compound acronym. 

The start of the term saw us revisiting place value, and we learnt different ways we can  use to rename a number value. We also learnt a method known as equal groups to help us understand division problems. Recognising and understanding pattern was also revisited, and this time to hundreds and thousand.

Furthermore, we were introduced to how to collect data and learnt different ways to show our data such as tally marks, picture graph, and column graph. In fact, we were encouraged to write our own survey questions. This allows us to collect data based on our survey questions from our peers. We used tally marks to show the data from our own survey question. We were also introduced to other methods to show data that include pictograph and column graph. We demonstrated these methods to answer a scenario about 5 friends.  

Our Big Idea this term is EXPLORE. By the name we will be exploring the galaxies that surrounding space and their characteristics. This will allow us to understand how each one of the galaxies rotate. However, this fortnight, we explored the weather, and we were encouraged to write what we know about what we learnt and what we wonder about the weather and seasons.

This start of the saw us to look deep into what makes a situation to be a problem. We worked together in a small group to read about possible scenario with problems. This scenario allow us to really think about the seriousness of a problem and what we can do if we are in that situation.  

Students working in groups to determine what is a problem? Why is a problem and how they can resolve the problem?