Welcome to Year 2

 

Children are always excited about moving to Year 2 especially as Year 1 and Year 2 work closely together during the year. This aids transition and means the children already know staff and routines quite well. Year 1 and Year 2 work together as Key Stage One and have playtimes and lunchtimes together. We also work on the Christmas performance together as well as outside projects as often as possible.

The learning is planned carefully covering a wide and varied curriculum outlined below.

 

English

 

Reading

  • We enjoy daily Jolly Phonics sessions, where children are expected to read and write using their phonics knowledge.
  • We read as a whole class during our reading lessons using a very structured system of modelled reading, echo reading, choral reading, partner reading and individual reading. This develops children’s confidence, fluency and expression.
  • We use VIPERS to answer questions about what we are reading (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Sequencing).
  • We read one-to-one with an adult.
  • We enjoy sharing books and texts at the end of the day as a class.
  • We develop our love of reading and choose books that interest us.

 

Speaking and Listening

  • We enjoy role play and story re-telling.
  • We develop our imagination and creative skills.
  • We learn poems by heart and learn to recite and/or perform them.

 

Writing

  • We develop our sentence writing from Year 1 to write longer more complicated sentences.
  • We learn how to extend our sentences with conjunctions (e.g. when, because, or, but).
  • We start to use different types of punctuation.
  • We learn to write more to form a story or non-fiction text.
  • We plan our own ideas for writing.

 

Maths 

  • We recap and extend our Year 1 learning but also start to use more mathematical symbols and vocabulary in our work.
  • In our number work, we look at the place value of numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and fractions.
  • In our measurement work, we look at money, length, height, time, mass, capacity and temperature.
  • In our geometry work, we look at 2D and 3D shape, position and direction.
  • We look at statistics, using things like tally charts, pictograms and block diagrams.

 

Science

  • We cover four key areas: Use of Everyday Materials, Living Things and their Habitats, Animals including Humans and Plants.
  • We explore and experiment and form our opinions about what will happen.
  • We ask and seek answers to questions. These can be our own questions or questions from our class work.

 

Art and Design

  • We study artists and designers like; Clarice Cliff, Emma Bridgewater, Henri Matisse, William Morris and Kandinsky.
  • We use 3D mediums like textiles and clay.
  • We learn about sketch book techniques like sketching and colour theory.
  • We learn to use our ideas and to also use the work of others to help us express our thoughts and artistic ideas.

 

Computing

  • We learn about the importance of e-safety, such as communicating online and information sharing.
  • We use programs on the computer to create, retrieve and organise information. E.g. word processing, images, slide shows.
  • We learn what algorithms are and how to program simple devices.

 

Design and Technology

We cover three main design and technology projects, making textile hand/ glove puppets, winding up mechanisms to create a toy which goes up and down and mechanisms to make a moving vehicle.

 

  • We always start by looking at existing products and evaluating them and their design.
  • We design, produce and evaluate our own unique products.
  • We develop skills like cutting, joining together, fastenings, finishing (making the product look good).

 

Geography

The study of our world

  • We start looking in our local area (Routes and Journeys), then move out to our country (UK Countries and Coasts) and then look further out at our world (Continents and Oceans).
  • We study human and physical features of the areas and look at how humans change the geography of our environment.
  • We also look at weather and climate of warm and cold areas of the world.
  • We learn to find places on maps and use the compass points North, South, East and West.

 

History

The study of the past

  • We look at 3 different points in history and place them on a timeline to understand when these things happened.
  • The Lives of Significant People in our Area: The Potteries 1899-today. We learn about what makes Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent special and how the pottery industry impacted our local area.
  • Events Beyond Living Memory: The Great Fire of London 1666. We study a particular event from the past in detail to gain a greater understanding of an historical event.
  • Exploring Our World: The Impact of Christopher Columbus 1451-1506. We look at one particular person from the past to try to understand the impact one person can have on the past.

 

MFL

  • We are able to welcome people using Spanish greetings.
  • We can count to ten.
  • We know some colours in Spanish.

 

Music

  • We are given the chance to carefully listen to different sounds and genres of music.
  • We develop our likes and dislikes in music.
  • We discuss the different instruments we hear in a piece of music and which family of instruments they belong to.
  • We get chance to compose, create and explore making our own music using a variety of tuned and untuned instruments.

 

Physical Education

  • We cover basic skills to enable game play by the end of KS1 (Catching, throwing, movement, defending, attacking).
  • We learn how our bodies work and react during exercise.
  • We learn body control through some dance and basic floor work.

 

Personal, Social and Health Education

  • We talk about our feelings and emotions to support our wellbeing.
  • We learn about feeling safe and being safe.
  • We discuss friendships and relationships and what we can do to make these healthy and positive.
  • We learn about staying happy and healthy.

 

Religious Education

  • The key focus for R.E in Year 2 is Hinduism
  • We also learn more about the main Christian festivals, such as the Christmas Story, Lent and the Easter story at appropriate points in the year
  • We learn about the Gods and Goddesses, symbols and the stories of Hinduism.
  • We compare Christianity and Hinduism and look for similarities and differences between the two religions