Year 2 - Mrs Gallagher

jegallagher@st-peters.wakefield.sch.uk

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

About our class

In 2YEW, 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

PE

PE will take place on a Wednesday and Thursday this half term. The children will be taking part in FitBeat on a Wednesday which is a really fun and engaging mix of music and PE. On a Thursday they will be working with Mrs Gallagher and a specialist tennis coach to improve their tennis skills. 

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 Wednesday & Thursday. 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 blue fish, or 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 sunshine initially and then the rainbow.

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,

Mrs Gallagher, Mrs Pap and Miss Wingate.  

In our computing lessons this half term, we have been using last term’s knowledge of African animals to create PowerPoint presentations! We have learned to add new slides, text boxes, images and change the font and design of the slides. 

Please meet our class jigsaw pieces this year- Jo and Jerry 

We have loved getting excited today for our first World Cup game!! Come on England!! 

Today in maths we have worked on the concrete aspect when adding up 2 numbers. These numbers have gone over the next ten, so we had to exchange our 10 ones for a ten stick. 

Please ask us to show you at home! 

We had a great day at the Sculpture Park. You can view all our photos here.

This week we have loved chanting our times tables!! We have practiced 2's, 5's, 10's and even 3's! We have used our number squares to help us! We have also been chanting them out side when playing! Please keep doing this whenever and wherever you can! 

Today in our science lesson, we dissected a seed so that we could find the seed coat, the baby plant and understand the food store. We really enjoyed this activity and it was great getting hands on and doing it ourselves. We now understand how our bean plants have germinated. 

In our topic about special books, we started by looking at our own special books. This week, each table had a special gift wrapped up on their table. This gift was the bible, the special book for Christian's. We learnt that there are many versions of the bible, but the stories and the same and they all have an important message. We also learnt what holy and sacred mean. 

We have loved using the i-pads today to practice our spellings on Ed-Shed. We practiced logging in by ourselves and had so much fun whilst improving our spellings. Please ensure children complete this every week at home, they should do 10 rounds at least. There is also a written sheet in a yellow folder in their bags so they can practice writing them down too! Thank you for your support with this. 

What a great start to year 2 we have had! We have been learning about a local artist David Hockney and we have produced one of his famous tree pictures. We used oil pastels, scrunched up tissue paper and finger paints to create this look! Take a look at our amazing display that we created in school.