Year 2 - Miss Morris (2 Oak)

Email - lmorris@st-peters.wakefield.sch.uk

You can find out what we are currently learning on our Curriculum Newsletter.

Welcome back to school and to year 2, I am so excited to be working with you and your child for the following year. Every day, you will be greeted with a big smile from a caring team. Throughout the year, I want to communicate with parents the best I can, so I will update the website as often as possible to show you what exciting things we have been up to. If you have a message for us, then please have a brief chat on a morning, or you can write a note in the reading record, which will come home with your child every evening.

In year 2, we encourage the children to be organised and prepared for each school day. Year 2 is an important milestone because of how much your child will grow, mature and become more independent over the course of the year. We appreciate your continued support in every aspect of your child’s learning.

About our class

In 2 Oak, we are a team! We work together, with the support and guidance of the adults, to be the best we can be. We support and celebrate each other’s achievements and we are proud when we accomplish something new. We follow our St Peter’s & Clifton SPIRIT in all we do and we will be recognised and celebrated when showing these school values.

Homework expectations

• Reading daily for at least 10 minutes
• ED SHED - At least 10 rounds over the week
• Spellings - practise writing them on the sheet provided. Set Thursday to be returned by the following Thursday.
• Mathletics - 3 x tasks over the week. Set Tuesday to be completed by the following Tuesday.
• TT rockstars - for 20 minutes over the week

Maths

Mathletics is a fantastic online resource for children to develop their mathematical understanding in a fun and accessible way. All the activities are differentiated for your child’s needs- meaning they provide just the right level of challenge according to their level and depth of mathematical understanding. If that wasn’t exciting enough, using Mathletics frequently earns your child points, which go towards bronze, silver and gold certificates. The more children in our class who use Mathletics will hopefully earn us enough points to win the weekly Mathletics trophy in Friday’s celebration assembly!

As a school we are taking part in the ‘Times Tables Rock!’ challenge. By the end of Year 4, all children should know up to 12x12; however, in Year 2, we focus on knowing the multiplication and division facts for the 2s, 5s, 10s and the 3’s and 4’s. We complete a time table challenge as part of our morning work- we may send a sheet home if we think anyone needs a little more practice. Please support your child with this.

Every child also has a tt rockstars log in and can practice getting quicker on line, how cool is that!

Reading

Reading is extremely important to children of all ages, but during Year 2, you will notice significant changes in your child’s reading fluency and comprehension as they become more independent. There are numerous things we as a school do to support children’s reading and coupled with support from home, their progress accelerates momentously.

• Reading raffle- 1 ticket for every 5 times read at home, having had their reading records signed by an adult.
• I would love every child to read for at least 10 minutes every day- reading is so important
• We have an amazing reading garden in our classroom where we can chose to read, we even read outside quite a lot.
• Guided reading- all children participate in a mixture of guided or whole-class reading every day in Year 2. Children will also have the opportunity to read individually with an adult at school too.
• Phonics- we will be consolidating phase 3 - 5 sounds in the autumn term, then begin to work on Phase 6 for the rest of the year. All children will sit a phonics check within autumn 2, to ensure all sounds are consolidated from year 1.

Physical Education

Our PE days are Tuesday and Wednesday. The children should bring their PE kit in a bag and will get changed for PE at school on these days. Both at the moment, will require an outdoor kit

Kit required for P.E:

Boys - White T-shirt and black shorts and trainers for outdoor games during summer and winter months. Warm navy/black tracksuit and trainers for outdoor games during the winter months.

Girls - White T-shirt, black shorts or cycling shorts (not nylon or lycra) and trainers for outdoor games during summer and winter months. Warm navy/black tracksuit and trainers for outdoor games during the winter months.

Please note earrings must be removed for PE or covered by tape provided by the parent.

Behaviour

We follow the ‘good to be green’ behaviour management system. Every child starts the day on the green lily pad; if they make bad choices (e.g. shouting out, not listening etc.) they will move down the chart onto the yellow warning fish or red consequence fish. However, they can rectify this with good choices and move back onto the green lily pad. Exceptional behaviour is rewarded by moving up to the rainbow.

If your child arrives home on Friday without their good to be green sticker, it means that at some point in the week they received a yellow warning or red consequence fish; it may be worth a gentle discussion with your child about how they need to make things better for the following week.

We love rewarding good choices and hard work; we offer certificates for Writer, Reader, Mathematician and Spirit Star of the week.  

Thank you for your ongoing support and I look forward to a brilliant year,

Miss Morris and Mrs Bird

In RE we made a Sukkah which is a temporary hut constructed for use during the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot. We showed our St. Peters value of 'creation' and our SPIRIT 'inquisitiveness' when learning about, designing and creating our Sukkah. 

We have been inquisitive in 2 Oak when conducting an experiment. The aim was to find out the impact of sugar on your teeth. The pupils came up with lots of predictions and questions including; Will the sugary drinks impact the eggs more than the less sugary drinks?

For World Book Day 2024, we created our own book. We drew the front cover, the back and chose a double page from the book to copy. 

On Monday year 2 competed against 5 other schools in a bench ball competition. We had so much fun and improved our teamwork, passing and catching skills. 

On Friday, we visited the church to understand 'What is a Christian?' and 'Who created the world?' We learnt about this through lots of different activities including building a wall with sugar cubes and creating objects with playdough. 

In our maths lessons we have been learning all about money. We played some exciting money games to help us understand this topic more. 

Last week, we were asked to bring in a special item which linked to our RE topic 'Judaism'. We noted how they were special to us which then helped us to understand how the 'Mezuzah' is important to Jewish people.

Our walk around Horbury was a very interesting and educational one. We learnt lots of interesting facts from the Historians including- Horbury use to be called Orburie because it was very dirty. We were very inquisitive and asked lots of questions.

This week in year 2, we have shown our school SPIRIT by being Inquisitive in our Mathematics lessons. We used the hundred square carpet to 'skip, skip, step' to help us to remember how to count in threes. It was lots of fun and helped us to be active in our learning. 

This week in our writing lessons, we have been developing our fine motor skills within our Jack and the beanstalk topic. We have used cotton wool buds to carefully dot paint onto a template and have used pegs to strengthen our fine motor control whilst ordering letters. 
 

This week in computing, we have learnt how to log on a computer. We have also investigated some very important E-safety scenario's and have agreed that we must always be safe online. 

In our PE lessons, we have been focussing on our fundamental skills. Last week, it was throwing and catching. The pupils excelled at this and loved working collaboratively to complete challenges.

This week in Science, we have planted two types of seeds and placed them in different temperatures (in the fridge, classroom and direct sunlight). We also made a prediction about which seed will germinate the quickest. The pupils said 'I predict that the seeds in the direct sunlight will germinate the quickest because it it sunny and the warmest'. We can't wait to find out if our prediction is correct. 

During our first week in 2 Oak, we showed Miss Morris what we already know in English and Mathematics. We focussed on number and letter formation (which is very important) through a range of fun activities.