Year 2

Our Newsletters

Our Curriculum Newsletters provide parents with an overview of the half terms teaching and learning in year 2.

Autumn 1 - Knaresborough

Autumn 2 - Our School

Spring 1 - The Great Fire of London

Spring 2 - Continents and Oceans

Summer 1 - Significant Figures

Summer 2- Australia

In Year 2 our learning is organised through a mixture of focussed teaching input, group work and independent tasks. We have a range of provision areas which contain activities linked to our learning for that week which the children can access at various points during the week.

Our long term plan can be viewed here.

Take a Look Inside our Classrooms...

English

Reading

In Year 2 we enjoy reading at lots of different times of the day! Each half term we have a class novel which we read together and which we base a lot of our English work for that term around. The children have individual reading books, at a level appropriate to their ability, which they read at home and in school. We also do group guided reading sessions to develop children’s comprehension skills. Once a week we have an entire English lesson devoted to developing reading skills.

Writing

We continue to develop the children’s skills to write in different styles and for different purposes. The writing activities have a mission statement which allows the children to put their writing into a context and ensures that it is meaningful. We encourage the children to use joined handwriting in Year 2 and spend time teaching this skill in discreet lessons.

We also have a weekly grammar lesson which covers the Year 2 grammar curriculum including conjunctions, verbs, adjectives, and different types of sentences.

Spelling

We follow the Read Write Inc Spelling scheme which teaches the Year 2 spelling patterns in fun and interactive ways. For those children who are not ready to access this we continue to follow the Read Write Inc Phonics scheme which is used in Year 1. We also introduce weekly spellings tests using words that follow the spelling pattern that has been taught that week.

Maths

Maths is taught daily following the White Rose scheme, which builds on prior knowledge and skills. Maths lessons and activities are practical and hands on and begin with an oral/mental starter and recall of our Key Instant Recall Facts- please see the school Maths page for more information.

Lessons follow sequential steps to develop fluency, reasoning and problem-solving skills. After the formal teaching input children complete an activity linked to the same learning objective. They have the opportunity to choose a one-, two- or three-star challenge, depending on their confidence level. The classrooms are equipped with high quality, practical resources, which can be used during all Maths lessons and provision time.

Foundation Subjects

• We use Purple Mash for computing which can be accessed at home for all subjects
•  We use Charanga to teach music this can be accessed at home
• We use Jigsaw to teach PSHE
• We follow the North Yorkshire syllabus for RE. RE is sometimes taught in a block at the end of a term or may be taught weekly.  This year in RE we will cover:  What do Muslims, Christians and Jewish people believe?  Why do people celebrate sacred times?  What can we learn from sacred books?  And how should we care for others and the world and why does it matter?

Homework

In Year 2 the children continue to have reading books to read at home. In addition, most children have a spelling list to learn for a weekly test and all children will have a short Maths or English homework task to complete.