Our Year 2 Curriculum
Reading
We will continue to make the children's experience with reading and books very exciting and we will draw their attention towards the many places and different times books can make us travel to!
Your child will have new reading books every week and they will be getting a library book which will be changed every fortnight.
They will also have other opportunities to read different genres and levels of books at school daily.
Please ensure that the reading books and the reading diary is sent in your child's book bags everyday . It would be really appreciated if you could leave a comment when you have read with your child and let us know how they got on. If you wish to just sign in the diary that will also support us with monitoring how many times the children are reading at home.
If you need any support please do not hesitate to ask any of the year 2 team.
How to support
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Children love to share books with each other and with you.
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Retell using drama/role play.
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Take trips to the library to choose books.
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Plays are great ways of interacting through a book as each person can play a different character.
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Share comics/magazines and so on – it doesn’t always have to be a book!
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Look for and share books on topics that you know your child is interested in – e.g. insects, cookery or sport.
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Revisit familiar books
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Share the reading!
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Take turns to read a sentence or a page each
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Agree with your child that you will read each sentence and they will read the final word.
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Get your child to read the parts for certain characters, or speech bubbles/labels etc and you read the rest of the text
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Be explicit about how you work out unfamiliar words
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Lots of praise – try not to overcorrect
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Questioning and talking about words in the environment
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Pointing out print in the environment such as Morrison’s, Tesco’s etc
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Help with the shopping – e.g. I need a tin of beans, can you find them for me?
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Make your own books about topics your child is interested in
Top Ten Strategies for Independent Reading
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Using the pictures for clues
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Sounding out words and blending them back together ensuring you understand the meaning of words.
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Looking for smaller words inside bigger words - breaking words down into smaller ‘chunks'
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Reading for meaning/sense – drawing on previous experiences and using own words to explain
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Predict what the text might be about prior to reading it, using the front cover for instance.
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Make good guesses where appropriate and ensure you understand what helped you make the predictions.
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Read forwards/backwards
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Look at the first/last letters, try to find different sounds you learnt
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Look at clusters of letters
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Make use of punctuation cues
Writing
The list below shows the ten key points about how we approach writing for year 2 children at school, many of which you can support with at home too!
INTERESTING THEM!
Make writing relevant for children – write about real experiences or link to a topic they are interested in. Bookmaking is super!
READING
Read lots of high quality texts in a range of genre e.g. fiction, instructions, explanations, information, diary, poetry, letters, reports and recounts. They will replicate some of the super features in their own writing.
SPEAKING AND LISTENING
Speaking and listening is key, at school we use many drama techniques and talk partners to support the development of ideas.
VCOP – enhance writing by focusing on these elements:
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Vocabulary (WOW words/phrases)
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Punctuation (A . , ! ? “ ”…
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Openers (Exciting ways to start sentences)
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Connectives (Words to join sentences/ideas e.g. first, next, then, and, but, so, because etc)
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SPELLING
Spellings – using phonics knowledge and patterns as well as high frequency words, only pick up on a few at a time (we use a maximum of 3) and start with words children will use more regularly. Games and investigating spelling patterns, as well as lots of exposure to key words will help embed spellings, rather than learning lists by rote.
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HANDWRITING
Practise in many exciting ways e.g. outside in chalk or sand, using paint
In Key Stage 1, children should be forming letters correctly, sizing them appropriately and placing letters correctly on lines (decenders e.g. g, y have tails below the line). We use the cursive letter formation, starting in Year 1, to aid with the joining process in Year 2 – an objective on the new National Curriculum
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TARGETS.
It is important that children know what their targets are and how they can improve their writing. Next step responses from the children are usually very important to ensure that they have no misconceptions and to ensure that they undersand why they made mistakes.
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SELF ASSESSMENT
Children need to be able to check, edit and improve their own writing. We always encourage children to take ownership of self assessmennt and learn from young age how to evaluate their work and peers work.
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Adult modelling
We support children with writing by building up to longer writing through many smaller activities. We model each activity to children and do shared writing that gives them ideas and confidence before writing on their own. We scaffold children in many ways, using sentence starters, picture cues, word banks, drama and so on, so that they do not feel worried when writing on their own.
It is important children see adults undertaking the writing process too!
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CONFIDENCE AND INDEPENDENCE
Encourage them to be as independent as possible – not to be afraid of making mistakes.
Praise, Praise, Praise! Encourage and praise children as much as possible for any writing they do. Encourage them to share their writing with others to give them a greater sense of purpose. Display their writing to celebrate their successes.
Mathematics
Maths: Mastery Maths
Children learn Maths by attempting to explain their answers, prove them correct and use them in different ways. The approach to Maths allows all the children to try the same problems and learn in the ways that suit them and their learning styles better.
Collaborative learning is key to our children and we continue to allow them to use their own creative thinking to solve problems and share different ideas regardless of the outcomes. Children grow in confidence to feel that they are able to achieve no matter how hard the learning is.
There are four main parts to our Maths lessons: Discover, Share, Think Together which are completing working together with the children, We end the session with an independent task for children to apply what they have learnt.
Children attempt all aspects of solving problems beginning with CONCRETE objects and moving on to using PICTORIAL representations and ending with ABSTRACT recording and working out!