Year 2 Blog 2024-2025
Welcome to Year 2!
Welcome to Year 2! Here you will be able to read all about this half-term's engaging curriculum and keep up-to-date with things that are happening in our weekly bulletin.
Staff
The teachers in year 2 are Mrs Ban, Mrs Grant and Mrs Fretwell. They are supported by assistant teachers: Mrs Halls, Mrs Rose, Mrs Appleby and Mrs Shooter.
PE days
Mrs Ban's class has PE sessions every Monday (outdoor) and Thursday (indoor).
Mrs Grant and Mrs Fretwell's class has PE sessions every Monday (outdoor) and Thursday (indoor).
Show and Tell - Share a book
Every Thursday the children are encouraged to bring a book from home to school that they would like to share and talk about to their class. At story time, we will have a Show and Tell to share the books. Please chat to your child about what they would like to say about their book so that they feel confident to speak about it in class. Your child does not have to bring a book every week.
Homework
Your child will have their own homework folder to take home. Each week there will be a Phonics task for children to complete. This will support their learning at school and will be sent home every Friday. Please return homework folders with completed sheets by Wednesday, ready for them to be marked and sent back home on Friday.
Reading, Phonics & Spellings
In Year 2 the children will move onto the last level of Phonics teaching: Level 6. They will be moving onto learning new spelling patterns as well as suffixes, homophones and grammar rules. They will continue to have phonics lessons for 20 minutes. Every Friday there will be a short spelling test, these words will be linked to the Phonics teaching your child will have taken part in the previous week. Please practise these words at home so they feel prepared for their spelling test.
Pupils will bring home at least one book per week; please keep their reading records and book in their bags to help us swap them. Please read daily with your child at home to continue to build their fluency and confidence. In Year 2, there is more of a focus on comprehension (understanding what they have read) so as you are listening to your child read, check their understanding by asking simple questions about the text.
CLIC
CLIC is our whole-school maths approach that prioritises basic mathematical skills to provide the foundations for wider maths. Year 2 pupils have daily CLIC sessions that usually last for 20-minutes, with roughly 5-minutes spent on each area:
- Counting
- Learn Its (simple sums that the children learn to recall instantly)
- It's Nothing New (applying previous learning in order to solve something else)
- Calculation
If you would like to support your child at home with CLIC, please use the resources below. These are the two CLIC tests that children complete each week. One is the Beat That challenge, the other the Learn Its challenge. Most children will be timed to do the Learn Its challenge, the idea being they have fast recall of their Learn Its. Beat That is not timed, but typically takes around 10-15 minutes to complete. The challenges below are at the expected year 2 level but some children may be on a lower or higher challenge.
Weekly Bulletin
Year 2 Blog
As part of our RE topic this term, we visited St Mary's church Ely to learn about how light is used in the festival of Christmas for Christians. The children had a chance to learn about advent wreaths, the Nativity story, Christingles, angels, stained glass windows and they sung some Christmas carols.
The children took part in a Diwali activity morning. They had a brilliant time and got involved in lots of different activities like printing, dressing up, decorating lanterns and rangoli patterns, writing fact files, making story puppets, playdough Diwali cookies, firework paintings, writing Diwali cards and making Diva lamps out of clay. The children even got to taste some yummy sweet rice!
In English this half term we are going to be learning about the story of Rama and Sita and Diwali. The children were able to touch and try on traditional Indian clothes. The saris were very popular, as were the beautiful sparkly shoes. Some children thought that they must belong to a prince or a princess.
Year 2 Visited the Library as part of our English topic. The children enjoyed looking at the books, listening to stories and exploring different fiction and non fiction books.
Today we made flatbreads in the allotment and the children could taste some with apricot jam, some plain and some with salt and herbs. The pupils will be writing instructions in their books about how to make a flat bread using time connectives, adverbs, adjectives and conjunctions.