Year 2

Class Teachers: Mrs Hodgson and Miss Robinson

Teaching Partners: Mrs Weaver,  Miss Young,  Mrs Willis,  Mrs Landers 

Learning Support Assistants: Mrs Thurman, Mrs Dumont, Miss Wilkinson

Welcome to Year 2!

Our class page is your go-to place for all of the key information about our learning journey together this year. The team can't wait to support you in your progress and learning this year, where we will be exploring lots of exciting new concepts and skills!

Please do not hesitate to contact Mrs Hodgson or Miss Robinson with any questions or queries.

Our Timetable - Autumn Term

Please note that our PE day is on a Tuesday with Miss Robinson and the KS1 Team. Please come to school dressed in PE kit on these days. Earrings and other jewellery should be removed for PE and hair tied back where possible.

PE Kit includes:

• Red or dark PE hoodies,  black or grey tracksuit trousers or shorts (unbranded)

• Black, grey or white trainers

• Zip-up sports jackets are suitable for colder weather.

Curriculum Overview

Autumn Term 1:

• English: We will be writing our own fairy tales inspired by the story of Rapunzel to produce our own narrative writing. Our class book will be: Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl.
• Maths: Place Value: count, write, partition, compare numbers up to 100, counting in 2, 3, 5, 10 times tables. Addition and Subtraction: of numbers up to 100, including crossing 10 and missing number problems.
• Science: Habitats - Considering the life processes that all living things have in common, pupils classify objects into alive, was once alive or has never been alive. They name plants and animals in a range of habitats and recognise how living things depend on each other. Pupils create food chains to show the sequence that living things eat each other.​
• History: How did we learn to fly? The Wright Brothers: The children will learn about the work of significant individuals from the past, learning about events beyond living memory and changes within living memory through discovering the work of inventors The Wright Brothers.
• Art: Pupils will be introduced to the idea that artists are inspired by the world around them. Children are empowered to go out into the world, re-see, collect and re-present through drawing.​ Pupils will create wax-resist collage art inspired by Monet.
• Computing: Children will understand the importance of e-safety and recognise uses of ICT. Children will begin to be able to use software to create animations about the first successful flight and create digital art inspired by aeroplanes. (throughout Autumn Term)
• Music: Perform actions and movements to a steady pulse and play simple musical passing games. Explore pulse and rhythm, and investigate ways to play rhythms, varying timbre and dynamics. Learn to play a simple accompaniment to a song/poem. Create simple four-beat rhythms and represent these using graphic notations.
• Physical Education:
• Religious Education: Celebrating Harvest festival and visiting church. Learning about religious leaders and what makes people inspiring. Asking big questions about leaders, Jesus and God.
• Relationships, Sex and Health Education (including Economic Education): Learning what it means to be 'HeartSmart' by taking ownership of decisions, about our brilliant bodies (body image). Exploring where money comes from.

Autumn Term 2:

• English: We will unpick the features of information texts to write our own information booklets about Antartica and Meerkats. Our class book will be: Einstein the Penguin by Iona Rangeley.
• Maths: Continue with Addition and Subtraction block: of numbers up to 100, including crossing 10 and missing number problems. Shape: recognise, sort and identify properties of 2D and 3D shapes.
• Science: Microhabitats: Building on their knowledge of habitats, pupils discover that microhabitats provide what minibeasts need to survive. They learn that scientists use a range of skills to answer questions and plan and carry out an experiment to find out the conditions woodlice prefer.​
• Geography: Pupils will name and locate the 7 continents, locate North and South Poles and the Equator. They will describe similarities and differences between the UK and Kenya and investigate weather. Children will be able to recognise features of hot and cold places and locate some countries with hot/ cold climates.
• DT: Explore stability and methods to strengthen structures, to understand Baby Bear’s chair weaknesses and develop an improved solution for him to use.
• Music: Learning songs and performing in our Nativity play.
• Physical Education:
• Religious Education: Festivals of Light: Diwali, Hanukkah, Advent and The Nativity story. Learning about the significance of these festivals and their similarities. Finding out about the importance of Christmas.
• Relationships, Sex and Health Education (including Economic Education): Learning how we can grow in self-compassion, why it’s important to keep clean.​ Talking about how we can spend our money.​

Homework

Spellings:

We send home 10 words each week for the children to practise spelling. These words are taken from the list for their year group in the National Curriculum. Spellings will be tested on a Thursday.

Other homework may be sent home to practise a concept the children have learning in the week.

Reading

Please read with your child as often as possible, even if only for a few minutes. 

Mrs Hodgson will check the children's reading records each Friday, and for each Year 2 who has read 3 times or more to an adult outside of school during the week, they will be rewarded with a dip in the goodie bag! Please date and sign their reading record each time they read to an adult, and encourage them to read a range of text types. Useful documents including key questions to support with hearing your child read can be found below. These will also be sent home with the children at the start of the academic year.

Please note that we encourage the children in Year 2 to take responsibility for changing their own colour-banded books as they come into school each morning. Decodable (Phonics) books will be changed on a Friday by Mrs Hodgson. Please note that children are encouraged to read these books at least twice before being changed.

Key Dates

Parent-Teacher Meetings: 

We offer these termly, dates are included on our weekly newsletters.

Trips and Visits:

TBC

Communication

You can contact Mrs Hodgson or Miss Robinson via the below contact forms. Alternatively, please email teachers@archbishopcranmer.notts.sch.uk or the school office (office@archbishopcranmer.notts.sch.uk or schooladmin@archbishopcranmer.notts.sch.uk).