One Family.

Little People, Big Dreams

Year 2

 

Believe you can and you will!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Welcome to Year 2! This year children will really begin to reap the rewards of the solid foundations created in EYFS and Year 1. Children will become much more independent in their learning and will acquire many new strategies that will support them as they make the transition into KS2. Our creative and engaging curriculum will hook children in and lead them on a journey of new knowledge, fun and academic progress!

 

Our motto

Believe you can and you will!

In Year 2 we teach children to always BELIEVE in themselves! We encourage children to try new things, take chances and persevere. We have created a positive growth mind-set where children are happy to share their ‘marvellous mistakes’ with others to drive forward learning.  Our teachers believe in us and we believe in us too!

 

D.A.R.T at the heart…

At Kader, we know that in order to make ideas ‘stick’ we have to revisit them repeatedly. Every day, within all of our lessons, we have Dedicated Active Recall Time (or D.A.R.T!) which involves us completing activities to revise prior learning. We know that we can actively make our brains grow by doing this and we love to see our knowledge-base expand as a result. Our knowledge organisers help us to recap learning across our topics and we are building a wealth of strategies to learn key facts, dates, words and methods of learning.

Books, books, books…

Like in other year groups across school, we LOVE it when we build on our previous learning and create those connections, making our learning purposeful and meaningful, creating vital links.  We need these links to develop a deeper understanding of the world around us and to use the knowledge we acquire.

 

Each topic we learn runs for a half-term and around this, we have built a Book Spine to help us strengthen our understanding of other curriculum areas. Our texts are carefully selected to give us a range of reading experiences, from a wealth of genres and authors. This helps us to embed our learning in other areas of the curriculum and develop our vocabulary bank, since the books we use are so rich in language. During our reading sessions, we use quality fiction, non-fiction and poetry to transport us to other worlds and to help us become proficient readers with a breadth of materials. Each day, we use carefully planned resources to help us to develop our reading skills as well as our fluency and stamina. Those of us still on our decoding journey use Read Write Inc, just like in Year 1, to help develop our phonemic awareness, as well as our comprehension skills. Those children, who did not pass their phonic screening test in Year 1, will retest in June. We operate our reading/ phonics lessons in small groups so that children are receiving the phonetic diet that they really need. We send home books that are carefully matched to children’s confidence in phonics and complete regular phonic assessments to keep a handle on progress and children’s needs. Children within Year 2 leave us with firm foundations ready for their next step in their reading journey!

 

We are all exposed to ambitious vocabulary within the books we meet and we love using drama and speaking and listening activities endorsed by the Royal Shakespeare Company and Power of Reading to get ‘language on its feet’. We find that no word is too challenging for us and the more we can ‘talk them’, the more we can write them; the more we can apply them, the more likely we are to have secured them for use in our everyday encounters both now and in later life.

 

See below a link to a teacher completing set 2 and 3 phonics lessons. Speak to your child’s class teacher if you are unsure what sound your child is up to.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=laura+suthers

 

Our maths vision…

Our mathematics’ vision is to promote curiosity, enjoyment and a love and thirst for challenge and learning. It is ambitious and creative, empowering us to become independent, resilient and successful mathematicians. We strive to develop a life-long love of learning mathematics and the skills to play an active, creative and responsible role in society.

 

In year 2, we still use many practical and active maths sessions to really embed key mathematics skills. We then begin to practise and learn new strategies to help us complete calculations mentally. The children really need to learn their 2, 5 and 10 times tables and to be successful they must be confident with them! When children have mastered these, they can try the 3 times table too! Children also need to have a sound understanding of number sequencing: this will help them with the ability to count on mentally. A secure knowledge of the 4 operations is also key! This is the estential groundwork our mathematicians need as they make their next steps into KS2.

SATS

Every year, Year 2 take part in the KS1 tests. These tests are statuary. Children take part in the tests in a relaxed and friendly environment. We do not want children to feel worried or nervous, as this is just a chance for them to demonstrate how amazing they are and how much they have learnt during their time in school so far. We understand that the children have missed a big chunk of learning and since their return in September; they have been working their socks off each and every day to catch up on missed learning! As they are starting to settle in, they are now beginning to realise that lots of old learning is starting to come flooding back and their smiles are great to see! The KS1 SATs for 2021 will, as usual, take place during May.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVlrdqh_J6Y

Writing

In Year 2, we are blossoming into super writers! We love nothing more than using drama to explore our ideas and we refine our sentences aloud before we try and write them down. Because our phonic knowledge is now embedded, and we are now exploring spelling rules, we are unafraid to tackle any of the new and amazing vocabulary we are exposed to in our stories! We love challenging ourselves to use these incredible words in our writing too so we can knock everyone’s socks off! We explore features of our writing genre so we know what we are aiming for when working independently and we are learning a range of sentence types to make our writing more precise, more clear and more interesting.

Year 2 Teachers

Miss Smith
Mrs Donkanha
Mrs Price
Miss Din
Miss Leadbitter

Maths, Literacy and science

 Take a look at our assessment grids for these subjects… it will help you see the level of expectation we have for our children.

Autumn Term

Muck Mess and Mixtures!

Lets get messy! Muck and mess is good, in fact, it’s mega-marvellous!

We will be having a messy morning where we will be getting our hands all sticky and covered in paint, playing with liquids and squishing some dough. Pouring, mixing, stirring and splatting! How does it feel to get your hands covered in variety of different materials?

Our focus text will be George’s Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl. Using this to inspire us, we will be writing our own set of instructions for a disgusting medicine for Grandma. There are so many wonderful words to describe this ghastly recipe!

Guiding us through the topic will be our science learning of materials – wood, metal, glass and many more! George has written to us, asking us to design him a lab coat. Which material will be the most suitable? What properties does it need to have?

Street detectives

Spring Term

 

Land Ahoy

The Scented Garden

Summer Term

 

Beachcombers

Towers, Tunnels and Turrets

Homework

Latest Year 2 News

Year 2 – What We Did This Week W/B 23/10/2023

Year 2 – What We Did This Week W/B 23/10/2023

We had a fabulous morning in Great Ayton this week visiting the Captain Cook Schoolroom Museum. We learned all about Captain Cook’s schooldays and how they compared to ours. Some of us also got to explore a little bit of Great Ayton.  ...

Year 2 – What We Did This Week W/B 02/10/2023

Year 2 – What We Did This Week W/B 02/10/2023

What we did this week… We had a lovely day exploring the Trincomalee, examining artefacts, diving under the sea and roleplaying historic battles! In Maths, we created our own clocks using PE equipment! We then challenged each other to show different times on our...