Year 2 News
Autumn 1 Term
Welcome to the Autumn term latest news. Year 2 have settled brilliantly into their new classes, trying their best to follow all the school values and new (and some of the same) routines. They been taking their roles and responsibilities very seriously and diligently.
In English, we have completed three learning journeys. We started the term with ‘How to wash a woolly mammouth’ where we wrote some instructions of our own. We then read ‘Leaf’ and the tradition tale ‘The lion and the mouse.’ For both of these learning journeys we wrote descriptions of the characters from the book. In order to be able to complete these pieces of writing, we have worked hard on writing simple and compound sentences, using the correct punctuation (full stops, capital letters, question marks and exclamation marks.) We have also started to learn a new letter formation using entry and exit strokes.
In Maths, we have been working hard building our confidence with numbers! We started by exploring number and place value, before moving on to addition and subtraction. We then enjoyed exploring measures and applying our mathematical skills in different ways. We are now developing our understanding of multiplication and division, using practical activities and different methods to help us solve problems. Next, we will be moving on to geometry, where we will explore shapes.
In Art, we have been learning about paint and mixed media. We explored primary and secondary colours, colouring mixing techniques and then we used these skills to paint an abstract picture, inspired by the artist Gillian Ayres.
In Geography, have been busy developing our geography skills! We have been learning to name and locate the seven continents on a world map and we are getting really good at finding and remembering where they are. We have also been learning about the North and South Poles and their position in relation to the Equator. The children are becoming more confident using maps and geographical vocabulary to describe where places are in our wonderful world.
In RE we learnt about the concept of ‘special’ and related this to special books. We learnt how the Bible is special to Christians and the Torah is special to Jews.
In PE we have worked on two dances. In the secret garden we remembered, repeated and linked actions to tell a dance story, exploring how the different movements can show ideas and feelings, using counts of 8 to stay in time to the music. For The circus dance we explored pathways and levels, trying to show expression and our character.
Lastly, in Music, we have been learning about dynamics (loud and quiet or forte and piano) and tempo (fast and slow). We worked in groups to compose our piece of dragon music using percussion instruments to represent what the dragon looks like, how it moves and what it is like.
We have worked so hard and are now very much looking forward to a rest in half term.