St. Joseph's Catholic Primary School

Class 2

If you wish to know further information relating to the curriculum in Class 2 please do not hesitate to speak to Mrs Honeyman or Miss Naylor, the class teachers.

English 

 We start the year with ‘The Tiger who came to Tea’ –the classic children’s book by Judith Kerr. This will provide our inspiration as the children develop their sentence-writing skills; using finger spaces, capital letters and full stops. Our Year 2 children will take their sentence writing further- adding interest with a wider range of punctuation and vocabulary.

Maths

We will be working hard with our numbers including counting, place value, addition and subtraction. We will find different pairs that make 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. We will compare numbers, talking about more and less. We will compare, recognise and know the values of different coins. We will also be learning all about 2D and 3D shapes through some fun and creative activities!

Religious Education 

Our first topic is ‘God’s Great Plan’- designed to develop the children’s knowledge and understanding of God’s beautiful world. We encourage the children to appreciate that God created them because he loves them and that we should thank Him and help to look after the world. After half term our thoughts will turn to the Christmas Story. Our PHSE scheme ‘A Journey in Love’ will focus on how we meet God’s love in our family.

Science 

In Science the children will be finding out about the basic needs of humans and the importance of exercise, eating the right amounts of different types of food, and hygiene. We will also begin our on-going ‘Seasonal Changes’ topic- getting out for an Autumn walk and observing and recording the changes in the nature around us.

Geography

In Geography we will be learning all about the weather in the UK- describing how it changes daily and seasonally.

Art/DT

Our Art activities will be linked to our Geography topic. We will use a variety of media and will practise painting, drawing, cutting, sticking and other making skills to create weather-based artwork.

ICT

 This term the children will develop familiarity with the keyboard – spacebar, backspace, shift, enter. They will make changes and save and retrieve their work.

P.E. 

Our PE lessons will focus on developing travelling skills including running, hopping, skipping and balancing. We will practise moving an object in different ways by throwing, rolling and passing. We will put these skills together when we play invasion games. Indoor PE kits are left in school for the half-term. They are sent home for washing at each holiday and should be brought back into school on the first day back after any holidays please.

Music 

Children will listen to music from South Africa as a starting point for understanding the key musical concepts of pulse, rhythm and pitch. We will also develop our repertoire of songs- I’m sure we can find plenty to do with the weather!

Homework

In addition to daily reading and weekly spellings; Year 2 children will get a piece of Maths homework - this is usually given out on a Wednesday for the following week.  All the children have a half-termly homework grid to take home too. This provides a variety of creative and fun curriculum-linked activities for your children to enjoy at home. Your child can choose to do as few or as many as they like, whenever they like, and bring in completed tasks for our homework display board- sometimes they might just like to come and tell the class about what they have done during our occasional ‘Homework Celebration’ sessions.

Spelling

 Year 1 children will receive a new list of spellings each Friday to bring home and learn for a spelling test the following Friday.

As part of our ‘No-Nonsense spelling’ programme, Year 2 children will also get a spelling list on a Friday with words to look at and practise. These will be usually be assessed the following Friday but rarely in the form of a formal spelling test- we might just pick out a couple and ask them orally or include a few of them in a dictation exercise. 

You can help your child by testing them orally and encouraging them to copy out and learn their spellings at home. Suggest creative ways to do this; painting each word in different colours; making an illustrated poster of them or even writing them in spaghetti at the dinner table!

Reading 

We love books and reading in Class 2!  Please support us at home by listening to your child read every day. When you have listened, sign their Reading Record and add any comments you wish to make. Books and Reading Records should be brought into school every day and will be changed on Mondays and Thursdays. This system allows for your child to read and re-read four books a week. Re-reading is vital at this stage to develop fluency and confidence. The children have daily phonics lessons and home reading is when they practise and apply their new skills.

Reading TO your child is really important too; this is how they learn about language and develop a love of stories; information and imaginary worlds. If English is their second language remember that reading stories in your home language is equally important. Choose books that you both enjoy; fiction or non-fiction; short stories or a chapter a night from a longer novel.

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SATS

Our Year 2s will be doing their SATs in the middle of May. The children will be tested on their Maths and English skills. Please be reassured that we deliver these tests in such a way as to ensure it is not stressful for the children; you can find information and a short video about the SATs under the ‘Parents’ tab of our website.

Pirates

As part of our  English project based on the book The Pirates Next Door, Class 2 visited Barnoldswick library where we listened to stories and songs about pirates. 

Dolphin Day

The children in Class 2 organised a bake sale to raise money to adopt a dolphin after learning about threats to dolphin survival in their recent topic. 

Long Term Planning

Planning

Please find below an outline of the topics covered in your child's class. We are currently in Year B of the two year cycle.

If you wish to know further information relating to the curriculum in Class 2 please do not hesitate to speak to Mrs Honeyman or Miss Naylor, the class teachers.