Welcome to the Autumn Term in Year 2. 

Class Teachers - Mrs Jury and Mrs Guy    Learning Support Officer - Mrs Hemming and Mrs Pooley

            Class Teachers - Miss Davies  Learning Support Officers - Miss Lewis and Mrs Lewis

• January - Determination and Perseverance

• February - Honesty and Trust 

• March - Learning and Effort

During this term, the children will use the story 'Ocean Meets Sky' by the Fan Brothers to improve and develop their writing skills. Children will be given a variety of meaningful writing opportunities throughout the sequence, such as creating a setting and character descriptions, labels, diary entries, postcards, captain’s log, instructions, and dialogues, and will gradually build up the skills to write an extended fantasy story of their own.

The next book that children will read is 'Dear Earth' by Isabel Otter and Clara Anganuzzi. As they read through the book, children will write setting descriptions of landscapes worldwide and turn these into poems about exploration. Children will then use all the skills and vocabulary covered to write their own extended informative leaflet about protecting the environment. 

In addition to literacy lessons, children will participate in whole-class reading sessions where they will be reading 'The Street Beneath My Feet' and 'There's a Ran-Tang in my Bedroom'. Children will use the skills of retrieval to extract the facts presented in these books,  predicting what happens using the front page and giving the children the opportunity to define specific vocabulary used.

Children will also receive weekly spelling sessions, focusing on a range of spelling patterns and high-frequency sight words. These spelling patterns will be revisited and consolidated as part of our weekly guided reading sessions.

Children will participate in daily Helpwr Heddiw sessions to develop their knowledge of using Welsh incidentally around the classroom and school. In addition, they will have opportunities to deepen their reading and writing skills in Welsh through focused tasks. Children will revisit question and answer patterns linked to 'Sut wyt ti? (How are you?), 'Beth sy'n bod?' (What's the matter?), 'Ble rwyt ti'n byw? (Where do you live?) and 'Faint ydy dy oed di?' (How old are you?) and develop their knowledge of discussing the weather 'sut mae'r tywydd heddiw?' ( what's the weather like today?) and 'Beth wyt ti eisiau gwisgo?' What do you want to wear?'

For their individual reading books, children will be reading books from the Oxford Reading Tree scheme and a choice of 'chapter books'. These will be sent home and need to be returned on your child's set reading day.

During the Spring Term, the children will be learning about money. They will reinforce recognising coins and notes and add to find totals and subtract amounts to calculate change. They will also explore 2-D shapes and symmetry as well as multiplication, division and fractions. They will find out about repeated addition, equal and unequal groups and arrays and then use these skills to solve word problems. They will learn how multiplication and division are linked and use the inverse to solve number sentences about these concepts as well as explore fractions in practical activities and recognise halves and quarters. They will look at the simple joining of fractions and simple equivalent fractions. All these concepts will be explored and consolidated through practical play sessions and teacher-led focused activities. 

Whilst studying the concepts above, the children will be challenged with activities to extend and improve their reasoning skills, using problem-solving tasks. They will work individually, in pairs, and in groups. 

We will continue to explore the school values, focusing on the topics listed above.  We will explore these values every morning as well as school assemblies. Children will also have the opportunity to explore further the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and what this means to them.

During our P.E sessions the children will revisit the British gymnastics shapes they learnt last term to extend their skills and incorporate them into apparatus work. They will also explore dance and learn a traditional Welsh dance to compete in our school Eisteddfod.

During our afternoon sessions children will be exploring various concepts through our unit of work 'Sunrise to Stardust'. This unit will focus on exploring the wonders of space, Earth, and human responsibility for the planet's well-being. The children will learn about the planets in the solar system, Day and Night, the Earth's rotation and the Moon's phases. They will also research different types of weather, including extreme weather and human impact on the Earth, e.g pollution.  Pupils will continue to use scientific language to form opinions and share ideas. They will also be encouraged to share their knowledge and understanding using Voice 21 oracy skills taught in class. 

PE is on a Tuesday for both classes. The children should wear the agreed PE kit to school, and we politely request that they do not wear jewellery. 

Please ensure all school uniform and water bottles are clearly labelled with your child's name.

Download our School App via the Play or App stores - The School App will provide you with up to date information about activities and events at Oldcastle Primary School.  Please look out for our weekly newsletter issued via The School App and available on our website on a Friday afternoon.  The newsletter contains all forthcoming diary dates for the school.