Welcome to Year 2 - Pine Class

Welcome back to the Summer Term! We hope you had a lovely Easter break! This is where you can find out about our learning in Year 2, our current topics and any useful websites to help you at home.

You can also see some pictures of our classroom and some of our activities. Don’t forget to follow the school instagram page to see more of what we get up to! 

Summer Term

This term we are exploring a project titled ‘Magnificent Monarchs’. In the Magnificent Monarchs project, your child will learn about the English and British monarchy from AD 871 to the present day. Using timelines, information about royal palaces, portraits and other historical sources, they build up an understanding of the monarchs and then research six of the most significant sovereigns. They will also use their observation and analysing skills to make inferences about a range of monarchs from different time periods. Alongside this topic, the children will be learning about Animal Survival (Science), Portraits and Poses (Art), Cut, Stitch and Join and Push and Pull (DT) and Jumu'ah (RE). 

In addition, we will be following the national curriculum requirements of English, Maths, Science, RHSE and R.E. 

In Literacy, we will be reading four different texts. These will be- The Dragon Machine, Toys in Space, Rosie Revere (engineer) and A Walk in London. Throughout The Dragon Machine, children will create a guide, exploring descriptive and positional language. They will also engage with the main character in the story’s thoughts and emotions through letter writing. Toys in Space provides an opportunity for children to hypothesise about where the toys could have come from and how they could help find their owners before creating ‘found’ posters to try to reunite them with their owners. Gradually, children build up the skills to create a cast of their own characters to write an extended fantasy story of their own. Rosie Revere, Engineer will have an extended piece of writing where children will be describing their own invention and explaining how it works. Children will look at the different wacky inventions in the book and write guides/instructions regarding how these could operate. Children will write a poster to advertise one of these wacky inventions. Finally A Walk in London focusses on the importance of walking and, after discovering a letter from the author, write posters persuading their community to walk more. Children also write instructions about how to best prepare for going on a long walk. After children use the book to write about a pretend day in London, they plan a walk around the landmarks of their local area. 

In Maths, we will be developing our understanding of fractions, focusing on 1/2, 1/4, 1/3 and 2/4. They will be investigating what these fractions present visually using objects as well as learning to find a fraction of a number. Year 2 will also be exploring reading time using analogue clocks and learning about how many hours in a day and minutes in an hour. They will also be learning about the position and direction of shapes, alongside statistics involving pictograms and tally charts. 

P.E. will take place on a Tuesday and Wednesday, where we will continue to wear our P.E kit to school. The kit consists of a sky blue polo, royal blue Oaklands jumper, royal blue cotton shorts, socks and suitable sports trainers. For health and safety reasons, earrings and watches should be removed for all P.E lessons and long hair must be tied up. This term they will be focusing on developing their rhythm and collaborative work in Dance as well as sending and receiving skills in sports such as Tennis. 

Computing - This term Year 2 will be learning about effective searching, creating pictures, making music and presenting ideas. We use Purple Mash for our computing lessons, which is a child-friendly site if you would like to access this at home for any extra practice. 

Music - In Music this term Year 2 will be learning two new songs - The Friendship Song and Reflect, rewind and replay. They will be using their composition and rhythm skills to practice learning different sections of the songs and accompanying their singing with a variety of instruments such as the xylophone, drums, rain shakers and maracas. 

Homework

Reading:  Every night (15 minutes – please comment on your child’s reading record). Reading books will be changed on a Friday and each pupil will take two books home depending on their level of reading ability. Please make sure children have their books available in school every day. 

Work from an area of the curriculum: This will be given out on a Friday and to be returned the following Wednesday in homework books. (Every other week) 

TTRS and Numbots: We have moved over to Times Table Rockstars and Numbots. They have completed the introductory lesson in school and should have their login details stuck into their reading records. Please practice on either of these apps to continue to improve their Maths fluency. 

If you have any concerns, or questions regarding your child, please contact the school office (admin@oaklands.herts.sch.uk) to arrange a meeting. 

Kind regards,

Miss Mason and the Year 2 team