Welcome to Year 2

Welcome to Year Two!

Hello everyone and welcome back to another fantastic year at Bedford Drive Primary school! We are so excited to see you all again and to start a wonderful year together in Year Two. We have lots of exciting learning opportunities planned for your children this half term. You can keep upto date with all of our learning by following us on Twiiter @bedfordyr_2ks1

Your Year Two team are:

Mrs Smith - Teacher

Miss Douch - Teacher

Mrs Bateman - Teaching Assistant

Mrs O’Toole - Teaching Assistant

Mrs Cooper - HLTA

Mrs Hyland - Teaching Assistant

Mrs Wagstaff - Teaching Assistant

Phonics and spelling

Some of the children in Year Two will continue to have a daily phonics lesson which is planned using the Little Wandle scheme. In these sessions, the children will be learning lots of new sounds and will have a go at reading these in words and spelling them too. Once the children have a good knowledge of all of the different phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (the ways to write each sound) they will then move on to a daily spelling lesson.

Learning to spell accurately is a fundamental skill for developing confident and competent writers. Spelling is taught in the following ways.

· Learning common spelling patterns

· Learning common prefixes and suffixes to words

· Learning how to spell high frequency words and common exception words

Once children have learnt a spelling rule they will look for words with similar patterns and will notice when the pattern has to be broken. Word definitions are explained and the children are asked to use each word in a sentence.

Big Cat Collins decodable books

We are continuing to use Big Cat Collins books which are appropriate to your individual child's reading ability. Every child reads every day to an adult. They will work on the same book for one week, with each day having a different focus. This book is then sent home with your child for them to read to you at home. The idea behind this is they consolidate their reading and develop their fluency at home. If you have any questions or queries regarding the book your child has been set, or how best to support your child with their reading, please don’t hesitate to ask your child’s class teacher.

Reading for pleasure

One of our favourite parts of the day is our whole class story time. Over this term we will be sharing lots of quality picture books such as Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne and longer texts such as The Hodgeheg by Dick King-Smith. The children also love reading books from our class library. We have chosen a number of ‘Reading for Pleasure’ books for our children to enjoy at home. Your child is not expected to read this on their own, it is an opportunity to cuddle up and read together.

Book Bags

Your child’s book bag will be sent home every Thursday and will contain

· a decodable phonics book, which your child will have already read several times in school

· a reading for pleasure book, which you can read to your child, perhaps as a bedtime story

· a reading record which we would ask you to make a comment in each week

· a homework book, which will have an activity in linked to something that we have been learning about in school

Book bags are to be brought into school every Wednesday.

Writing

In Year Two, we have a daily English lesson based upon the Literacy Counts Steps to Read scheme. Each unit starts with a ‘hook’ lesson and we then use a picture book to prompt and support our writing. The children have the opportunity to write most days. This half term the children will be writing a ‘Finding Narrative’ and a set of instructions.

Handwriting

Our daily handwriting lesson is a chance for the children in Year Two to learn how to form and join letters correctly. We will look at the position of each letter on the line, noting which letters have ascenders (are tall) and which letters have descenders (hang below the line).

Maths

In Year Two we base our daily maths lessons on a scheme called ‘Maths — No Problem!’ This is a mastery scheme that utilises a series of textbooks and workbooks written to meet the requirements of the National Curriculum. Each lesson begins with a ‘real-life’ problem which we will discuss together and ‘unpick’ as a class. We often find that there is more than one way to solve this problem and we love sharing all of our different ideas. Following this, the children have a chance to journal their ideas for answering the question. This gives the children an opportunity to explain their own individual thinking. We then move on to the ‘Guided Practice’ element which gives the children an opportunity to learn how best to solve problems of this nature. Each lesson then concludes with our ‘workbook’ session.

In addition to this, we also have a daily maths fluency session. This short session encourages the children to learn quick recall facts through fun games and activities and is linked to the ever popular ‘Numberblocks’ characters.

Wider curriculum

At Bedford Drive our Year Two children experience a broad and balanced curriculum designed to follow the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum. Our foundation curriculum has been written to meet the needs of our children and to ensure that all learning is relevant and progressive.

This half term in history, our theme is ‘Liverpool and The Beatles. We are sure the children will love sharing all of their new ‘sticky knowledge’ with you about this exciting topic!

In science, we will make links to our book ‘Bog Baby’ by learning all about different habitats and how the plants and animals have adapted to live there.

As artists, we will be creating work inspired by the local Liverpool artist Steph Dekker, otherwise known as Tula Moon.

Our weekly computing lessons will have a focus on computing systems and networks and will build on the work we did in Year One by thinking about our own uses of technology.

More information about each of these subjects, and the rest of our wider curriculum, can be found under the Curriculum tab on our website.

P.E

P.E will take place every Wednesday. Children’s P.E kits will be left in school and these will be washed on the premises. Children must provide their own footwear e.g. pumps, these can be kept in a pump bag on their peg. Please remember to remove all jewellery!

Outdoor Learning

Forest school will take place every Wednesday. This is led by our specialist P.E teacher Mr Fisher. Children will engage with nature in our outdoor classroom and will undertake fun, exciting and engaging activities in the outdoors.

Home Learning

The home learning packs available for use during the first lockdown in 2020 can be requested if your child has to isolate. These may provide useful activities alongside the remote learning offer currently in place.