Welcome to Year 2!

Welcome to Year 2!

Well Elm...what a peculiar but pleasing task I have of reintroducing myself to you as Year 2's class teacher, alongside Mr Hussain. 

For those of you who do not know, my name is Mr Toone, and having worked with your child's class previously in Year 1, I am extremely excited to learn and explore alongside you again this year in your final year of Key Stage 1! Mr Hussain joins us in his first year of teaching, having completed a successful stint here as a student teacher last term...he enjoyed it so much, he decided to stay!

It is personally very satisfying to see how the children have settled in and how they have already made a great start to the Spring term following Miss Hughes' departure on maternity leave. She will want you all to know that she and her little family are safe, very well and extremely happy together!

We have a very exciting term ahead with fun and exciting activities designed to hook the children's interest across the curriculum. I really want to see the children enjoying their learning even more so, so we have lots planned for the remainder of the school year.

Please use this webpage to find useful dates, links for homework and to see what we are learning about this term.  You can also find photos of what we have been getting up to and examples of wonderful work that will be uploaded throughout the year.

As always, please do not hesitate to make an appointment with either myself or another member of the Year 2 team if you have any queries about our learning. 

Mr Toone and Mr Hussain

Learning this Term - Summer

Text this half term

For Summer 1, the children in Elm will get their teeth stuck into Steven Butler's 'Nothing to see here hotel'. Frankie Banister and his family run the Nothing to See Here Hotel, which is cunningly hidden from human view by magic and lots of really, really bad TripAdvisor reviews. It’s not for humans, you see, and instead is the perfect getaway for magical creatures of all kinds – mermaids are welcomed through the sea door and stairs are rented to ghosts looking for a holiday from their usual haunts.

Learning this Term - Spring

English

This term, we will be reading 'The Owl who was afraid of the Dark', by Jill Tomlinson. It tells the story of a young, tentative owl, who learns to love the dark. The children will learn about the context for the story, empathizing with the owl, who at first is nervous and anxious to go out alone into unknown territory, as well as using it for inspiration for their writing.

We will also be studying 'The Hundred-mile-an-hour Dog' by by Jeremy Strong, another greatly enjoyable text.

These are two fantastic narratives, so be sure to ask the children about them. 

Maths

This term we will be covering a range of topics such as measuring mass and temperature to data and money.

The children are given the opportunity to apply these skills during practical lessons as you can see from the pictures below:

PE

This term in PE, they have been looking at different ways of moving around and creating sequences in dance. They have also been doing balancing in gymnastics as you can see below:

Humanities

In the first term of spring, we will be studying History of Nursing and focus particularly on 3 nurses that had major influences in the nursing industry: Florence Nightingale, Edith Cavil and Mary Seacole.

Here are some videos for you to start discovering who these nurses are!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zns9nrd

In the second term of spring, we will be moving our focus towards Maps and look into different types of maps, map features, how to use maps for our own uses to build to our ultimate goal and develop our own maps of our local area! How cool!

Here is a quick introduction of what we will cover this term!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/class-clips-video/geography-ks1-ks2-maps/zdwhpg8

Please see below the knowledge organisers for humanities throughout Year 2, detailing the knowledge and concepts, your child will be covering in his/her lessons.

Cross-curricular orienteering

We have been luckily enough to invest in a brand new programme called Cross-Curricular Orienteering which helps schools unlock an active learning world where children practice their skills in any subject area whilst being physically active.

Learning this Term - Autumn

English

Across school, we ensure reading is at the heart of everything we do. This term, we are studying several books. These books are listed below. We use these books during our reading sessions as well as in our English lessons, often basing some of our writing on these particular books. 

English Writing

We aim to prepare and equip our Year 2 children with the writing skills they need to become confident, independent writers, who are able to write effectively for a range of purposes and audiences. Through a balanced and broad curriculum, we provide regular opportunities for children to write from different perspectives and learn how to entertain the reader. 

Read some of our outstanding work below, inspired by the diary entries of Samuel Pepys: 

Maths

The children have all thrown themselves into 'Number recognition' and have had fun representing numbers up to 100 lots of different ways...and Mr Hussain loves his new Maths display board!

Humanities

This term, our focus is on learning about the Great Fire of 1666...

Science

This half term, our attentions in Science turn to materials, and how we can manipulate and use them.

Don't ask what we were up to in this experiment...as we were testing the levels of absorbency! 

Benjamin Zephaniah's 'Talking Turkeys' was a fantastic way for us to learn about a famous and influential black poet, whilst at the same time having fun with some performance poetry.

You can find the link to our class performance below...