Year 2

Autumn 2023

What a busy start to the year! The year 2s have all settled really well and made a great start.

Our topic this term is The Great Fire of London - we will be investigating the question, " How did the spark from a fire destroy London?" We have begun by finding out about London in 1666, comparing it to present day London, and will continue by finding out how events unfolded and how we know about it. We will be reading the book Toby and the Great Fire of London to help us, and are also fortunate to have a session with the National Archives service to find out more.

Our English will cover a range of genres including narrative based on The Smeds and the Smoos and non-chronological reports, based on events of The Great Fire of London. Nearer to Christmas, we will be learning about letter writing - I wonder who we could write to? We will also be getting started on lots of spelling and grammar work including expanded noun phrases, using texts such as The Smartest Giant in Town and Horrid Henry as a stimulus.

Maths this term will cover place value of numbers to 100, understanding 2-digit numbers as tens and ones and partitioning them. We will also be revising counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and learning to count in 3s. After that, we will be moving on to addition and subtraction, learning different strategies to add and subtract 1 and 2-digit numbers within 100. We are also doing lots of work on mental arithmetic strategies and knowing number facts by heart. Our last unit will be 2D and 3D shape and knowing their properties and learning about symmetry.

In science, we are learning about Living Things which includes habitats and micro-habitats. We are hoping for some good weather to take our science outside to see what is living in the school grounds! After half term, we will be learning about animals and humans. This will include knowing what humans need to survive and keep healthy, including healthy eating, exercise and hygiene. We will also be learning about animals' off-spring and their basic needs.

There will be lots of other exciting things happening in the foundation subjects including music making, art related to Jan Griffier and The Great Fire of London, and DT practising cutting, grating & peeling skills to make fruit deserts - yum!

Summer 2023

We can’t believe it’s the last term already. This year is flying by! Still lots to look forward to though!

Our topic this half term is geography based and its question title is ‘Why can’t polar bears live in the desert?’ We will begin by learning about the continents and oceans of the world, then start to think about hot and cold places by looking for clues on images of Earth for where the hot and cold places are.  We will study the human and physical features of hot and cold places and compare and where we live to a contrasting country.

In Science, we will be learning about plants, focusing on seeds and bulbs. We will be observing different plants that grow where we live and investigate the best conditions for plants to grow so we can grow our own successfully. In the second part of the term we will complete our second unit this year on animals and learn more about living things and their habitats.

Our Art topic follows the plant theme as we will be studying William Morris and his representation of plants and flowers. We will be drawing flowers and leaves and using them in repeating patterns. We will also be learning how to work with clay and make clay leaf dishes.

Our D&T unit this term focuses on moving parts. We will be learning about mechanisms used in books with moving parts and create our own!

In English we will be starting the half term by exploring non-fiction books and texts, leading to a focus on non-chronological reports. After writing a non-chronological report on foxes, we will start a book study on Roald Dahl’s ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’. Our next unit will be poetry, which will include learning and reciting poems.

In Maths, we will start the term by learning about telling the time and how to describe position and direction. Our final maths topics will include money, statistics, weight and capacity. We will also keep developing our mental maths skills and problem solving. 

A full outline of the learning this term can be found here.

Spring 2023

Following a fantastic first term here in Year 2, we can’t wait to get stuck into a new one with a brand new topic!

This term we will be learning about and comparing significant people from history to help us consider the question, ‘What makes someone great?’. We will be looking at nurses (Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole), explorers (Christopher Columbus and Neil Armstrong) and monarchs (Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II). As we learn about the monarchs, we will also be finding out about castles and we will get to experience some of castle life ourselves on our trip to Manor Lodge.

As we learn about important figures in Topic, we will use our Art lessons to study their portraits and learn how to draw our own. We will also look at how different artists, such as Picasso, have explored colour, shape and position in their portraits.

In English, we will start the term by reading Roald Dahl’s, ‘The Twits’. We will read this book as a whole class and use the characters and events to create our own character descriptions, instructions (on how to play a trick!) and create our own stories. In the second part of the term we will be writing poems, non-chronological reports and recounts of our class trip.

Maths this term will start with multiplication and division and how to measure length and height. We will also cover fractions of shapes and amounts. We will then use our knowledge of fractions to help us describe position and direction (which we will cover both in Maths and PE!) and to tell the time.

In Science, we will be exploring the uses of everyday materials. We will identify and compare the suitability of a variety of everyday materials (including wood, metal, plastic, glass, brick, rock, paper and cardboard) for particular uses and find out how the shapes of solid objects made from some materials can be changed by squashing, bending, twisting and stretching. More information about the learning taking place this term can be found here.