Year 2 - Elm
Welcome to Year 2 - Elm class
Class Teacher: Miss Bassnett
Trainee Teacher: Miss Boorman
Learning Support Assistant: Mrs Ellis
Contact email: elm@connectedlearningmat.co.uk
Elm class is made up of enthusiastic, creative and fun year 2 children. In class, we respect each other and are proud of everyone's achievements and we know that we learn through our marvellous mistakes! We never give up and value a growth mindset. We work together to create a warm and welcome atmosphere, where every class member feels valued, safe and listened to, with mutual respect at our core. We look forward to all the amazing learning that we will be doing throughout the year- please keep an eye on our school's FaceBook page for some snapshots of our learning!
Things to remember:
| Daily | Reading record and reading books to be brought into school daily- please ensure children are reading at home daily and quizzing their library books once they are finished. Please ensure the children also have a plastic water bottle, filled with water. |
PE- | MONDAYS are our PE day but always have your PE kit in school in case of last minute changes. |
| Friday | Homework is due on a Friday and then the children will receive new homework and spellings for the following Friday. Each week the homework will be visible from the classroom window to ensure parents are aware of that week's homework pages. Children have an opportunity to attend homework club on a Monday afternoon with Miss Bassnett should they wish. |
What will we do this Term?
Our Projects
- In Geography we will be looking at Coastlines.
- In History we are exploring the history of our Magnificent Monarchs!
- In Science we be continuing our unit on Human Survival before moving on to Plant Survival.
- In D&T we will be Cutting, Stitching and Joining to make our own bag tag!
- In Art we are analysing Portraits and Poses through the use of Monarch’s portraits before moving on to Still Life.
- In PE the children will be doing Dance and Ball Skills.
- In PHSE we are exploring Keeping Safe and Rights and Respect
- In RE we will be discussing and evaluating our key question – ‘How do Christians belong to their faith family?’
English
Reading/Phonics/Spellings:
All children will read daily with either their phonics or quiz book. As part of our reading curriculum we follow 'Little Wandle'. The children have daily phonics session in the morning, directly followed by their guided reading groups. The children are grouped based on their phonic ability. The children are also have a reading journal session that links to our English topic book where we focus on both fluency, comprehension, inference, prediction, summarising, skimming and scanning and many more skills that come with reading!
Please continue to practice the children's weekly spellings alongside the Y1/2 high frequency word list.
Writing:
Children will learn to write for a range of purposes including stories, poetry and real events. Grammar becomes even more important in Year 2. At Cherry Tree we follow 'Literacy Tree' for teaching writing. These also offer literacy seeds and literacy leaves to embed and support both reading and spelling skills. This terms writing and reading texts are:
Maths:
We will be teaching maths though White Rose. This is a research-based schemes of learning are designed to support a mastery approach to teaching and learning and are consistent with the aims and objectives of the National Curriculum. We are also following a national Mastery programme provided by NCETM where we have been consolidating our basic maths. We have finished our place value unit and are now moving on to money followed by multiplication and division. All homework will be embedding things they have been taught in class either this year or last.
How can I help my child in year 2?
Talking, listening and reading:
Continue to hear them read daily, practise counting in different ways (2s, 5s and 10s), help them with homework, talk to them about their day and encourage them to read by visiting the local library, bookshops or using eBooks online.
As reading comprehension is so important, checking your child’s understanding of the book they are reading is an excellent way to support them. Asking questions such as: ‘What might happen next? Why do you think the character is behaving this way? What sort of atmosphere is being created?’ will help them to engage with their reading on a deeper level.
You can also do this when you are reading to them, which is still so important at this age. Children learn a lot from the way we read aloud and we can encourage them to see how the author’s use of punctuation changes the way we read their work. Think about pointing out statements, commands, questions or exclamations when reading with your child. You might want to use a range of voices to show how types of sentences and punctuation can be read in different ways.
Accelerated Reader
The programme is designed to work out a reading level (or STAR reading level) for students at the start (by means of a STAR test, completed in English lessons). Students then read books within this level – all books in the library that are registered with AR have a coloured star label on the spine to help them recognise books within their ‘zone’. Students take a quiz on the website after reading each book to assess how well they understood it. Their STAR level is tested every term to see how they have progressed.
Real-life maths:
Any opportunity to use maths in a real-life context is really useful. For example, ask them to help you pay for goods or calculate change when shopping. This will help to develop their reasoning and problem solving skills. Learning to tell the time, using an analogue clock (not digital), to the nearest 15 minutes, is another great way to support your child’s learning at home; this also links neatly to their counting in 5s in the 5 times-table.
Times Table RockStars:
It is really important for the children to know their times tables. Here at Cherry Tree Academy we have found a fun way to learn our times table. Times Table Rockstars! Children can have their own rockstar name, they can listen to rock music as they learn their tables, even play tournaments! All the children have been given usernames and passwords- if you are unsure please ask the class teacher. Click the link below to start rocking out!!
Numbots:
NumBots is an online game and playing little and often will significantly improve your child’s recall and understanding of number bonds and addition and subtraction facts. These are critical foundations in maths so we are excited by the impact NumBots will have. Hit the Button is also a great online resource to help the children embed key maths skills.
https://play.numbots.com/#/account/school-login/19867
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button
