Year 2
What does learning in year two look like?
In year two, we are building upon the skills learnt in year one and building the
children’s stamina for learning. This involves changes to our timetable in which there will be shorter phonics lessons to allow longer sessions for reading, writing and maths. The activities set will gradually increase throughout the year to build the children stamina progressively. For example, in reading, the children will progress onto longer texts and more complex question types.
There is a big focus in year two on reading, writing and maths to support the children in meeting their end of key stages one objectives. Reading will take place in both guided groups with a text and reading comprehension activities. Our reading skills including retrieval, inference, prediction, word meaning and sequencing. In English, the children will explore a range of fiction and non-fiction genres. In year two, this includes instructions, traditional tales with a twist, classic poetry and much more! The children will learn cursive handwriting using kicks and flicks, moving onto joining their letters together when they are ready. In year two, phonics will take is a spelling focus looking at spelling patterns, common exception words and silent letters.
Our maths learning follows the concrete, pictorial, abstract approach. This means we start by using manipulatives and resources to support our learning and ensure that knowledge is secure. We then more on to pictorial representations and abstract questions such as a number sentence. The children will use dienes – tens and ones – to support them in many areas such as place value and addition and subtraction calculations. This involves physically moving the dienes and then using these pictorially by drawing these as well.
We enjoy a wide range of foundations subjects in year two. These include science, history, geography, RE, computing, French, music, art, design technology, PE and PSHE. Some subjects will alternate each half term such as history and geography, whilst others are taught each half term such as science and PSHE.
One of our highlights include designing, making healthy pizzas in design technology and of course trying them out! We also have design technology units on making hand puppets and vehicles. In history, the children really love learning about the history of the MSJ and our topic of the Great Fire of London. In geography, the children learning lots about human and physical geographical features which we use to compare Bournemouth with Edinburgh and New York. The children will also learn the names of the continents and oceans on the world map. In RE, our focus religions are Christianity and Islam. The children really enjoy learning about these two religions and how we can use these messages in our own lives such as kindness, peace and friendship. In science, the children have great fun taking part in experiments. Within these we are working scientifically, using the skills of observing closely, measuring and recording data. In Art, the children in year two really enjoy using collage to create their own portraits in the style of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The children in year two always love being active in PE, whether this is inside or outside. To find out more about our foundation learning in all subjects this term, look at our curriculum map!Why we enjoy learning in year two?
Isaac ‘I enjoy history because I liked learning about the Great Fire of London.’
Leah ‘I like learning English. You get to write a lot and you get to write lots of different things like stories and non-chronological reports.’
Emily ‘I enjoy art because you can get creative with things.’
Edward ‘I like science. I like it when we get to do a bunch of experiments!’
Felicity ‘I like DT because we make so much stuff that I like.’
Isabelle ‘I like history learning about the olden days at MSJ.’
Jude ‘I enjoy science. I like that we get can test things to see if one is better than the other.’
Curriculum Evening
year 2 curriculum evening powerpoint.pdf
Termly Curriculum Statement
Autumn Term Curriculum Statement
Half Termly Home Learning