Can you believe that February half term marks half way through the academic year? At least the nights are getting lighter and we will hopefully soon be able to spot some early signs of spring! 

Year 2 have continued to work hard throughout Spring 1 and are loving our new class motto: Practice Makes Progress! We have had a real focus on getting across the message that no-one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes and in fact we can learn so much from challenging ourselves and not always getting everything right first time. 

We continue to begin every day with quiet reading time, with opportunity to share and discuss reading books as well as complete Accelerated Reader online quizzes independently.  We then have a short daily handwriting session, focusing on letter formation, neatness, fluency and confidence. This is really starting to pay off- there is some beautiful presentation developing! 

We follow this session with phonics, spelling and guided reading, with children working in smaller groups to develop a range of reading and writing skills.  We continue to use the RWI programme to teach both phonics and spellings. 

English follows playtime, using high quality texts suggested by the scheme ‘Literacy Tree’ as a starting point for lessons.  We are currently enjoying a range of activities based on the brilliant ‘Tadpole’s Promise’ which links well with our Science topic: living things and their habitats.  We will soon move onto another gorgeous book called ‘The Journey Home’ by Frann Preston-Gannon which covers the themes of conservation, global warming and environmental protection.  

In Maths lessons so far, we have covered the topics: Place Value, Shape, Addition and Subtraction and Money. We are currently working through our Multiplication and Division unit, whilst continually revising previous concepts through our daily ‘basic skills’ questions.  We continue to follow the White Rose Maths Scheme which breaks learning up into manageable steps. By the end of the year the expectation is that children will be confident with their 2,5 and 10 times tables, also knowing the related division facts.   TT Rockstars and Prodigy Maths are great resources that children can access at home, they really do help with fluency and confidence!  We will also be covering Length and Height as well as Mass, Capacity & Temperature later in the term. 

Throughout Spring 1, our topic has been ‘Why don’t penguins need to fly?’ with a focus on developing our Geography skills. In Spring 2 we are back to History, asking the question: ‘How do our toys and games compare to those of children in the 1960s?’  Look out for questions about YOUR childhood as well as that of your older relatives! 

This half term also sees a move from Art back to DT, focusing on ‘Mechanisms’. Children will learn how to design, plan, build and evaluate their own fairground wheels, with the aim of building a stable structure with a wheel that can rotate.  The children continue to enjoy weekly PE lessons with our PE coach as well as computing with Miss Finch and singing with Mr Martin and Mrs Higson.   Having spent the last few weeks learning about Islam in RE, our focus will now switch back to Christianity, building up an understanding of the significance of the Easter story for Christians. 

Please continue to monitor Class Dojo for updates and remember you can contact us via this app if you have any questions or queries. 

Thank you as always for your support and cooperation, 

Mrs Smith, Miss Finch and all the team.