Spring Newsletter, Year 2      

Happy New Year and welcome back to school.  May we all thank you for your generous Christmas wishes and gifts; they are much appreciated and most kind.  We hope you have had a restful and festive Christmas break and that you are looking forward, with us, to a busy Spring term.

We outline below the children’s planned learning for the term.

English

Writing skills will continue to be developed this term with an ongoing focus on basic punctuation (capital letters, full stops and question marks and commas in lists) as well as encouraging the children to extend their sentences with greater description and conjunctions such as ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘so’.  We will be learning together to check our own work for accuracy and sense, with a view to making the children pro-active critics of their own writing.  We will be reading a range of stories with a fox theme (linked to our class name, Fox Class) including Fantastic Mr Fox, which will form part of a Roald Dahl author study.  We will also be looking at non-chronological reports (information texts) and writing instructions, increasing the children’s confidence to use the conventions of a range of text types.

We would encourage you to continue listening to your child read, discussing their understanding of the texts they are reading.  The children will read daily in class, either with support or independently, with regular handwriting, grammar and spelling activities.

Maths

The children have made a good start with developing their independence and their presentation in maths.  We will continue to build on these skills this term as well as developing the children’s times tables. They will also start to multiply by 3 and 4 by arranging objects into arrays (groups) and make links between grouping and multiplication by showing division using the division sign.  The children will continue to focus on place value, using this to help them add and subtract two digit numbers and will use a number line and counting on to help them find the difference between two numbers as well as ordering and rounding 2-digit numbers to the nearest 10.  The children will also be finding change from 10p and 20p and from £10 and £20 as well as learning to recognise and know the value of all coins, using them to make amounts.  Towards the end of term, the children will learn to identify to properties of 3D shapes and to tell the time to the nearest five minute on analogue and digital clocks and understand the relationship between seconds, minutes and hours.

Geography/History

Our topic work this term will have a geography focus, looking at weather conditions locally before moving to a broader study of marine life, comparing the North Sea with warmer waters.  This exciting topic will support our non-fiction writing in English and will provide further links with our Art work as well as broadening the children’s geographical knowledge of the world beyond Europe.  Thank you to Mrs Heald for arranging for us to use weather station equipment in the school grounds, which will help support the children’s learning with practical field work and data collection.

Science

In the first half term, the children will explore the useful properties of materials with a range of investigations involving absorbency and flexibility. They will discover which type of kitchen towel or cloth is most effective at mopping up spills; consider why building materials must be absorbent and which ones fit the bill; create artwork by exploring the textures of materials and learn all about wax and how to re-mould it. In the second half term, the class will explore a range of materials through investigations and explorations.  They will work on ways to test materials for elasticity and flexibility and find out which paper is the strongest. Working in small groups, they will also design and make a paper bridge to hold a toy car. The children will be involved in lots of practical investigations to develop skills in planning and organising fair tests.  We will be making cross-curricular links with Maths when recording data.

Art and DT

In art this term we will be using a range of techniques to create weather paintings and will be studying the work of a range of artists, in particular Hokusai, leading to our own paintings of ‘great waves’.  We will also look at observation of detail in sketches and paintings of birds as part of RSPB Birdwatch.

Our DT learning will link with our geography and science, considering the properties of different materials and choosing the most appropriate materials to make wind streamers that will be robust and waterproof in outdoor conditions.

RE and PSHE

In RE, we will be studying Islam and the life and teachings of Mohammed as well as Jesus’ parables.  We will also look at the Easter story.

The themes for the children’s work in PSHE will be ‘relationships’ and ‘keeping safe’, including knowing who to turn to for help when necessary.

Music

Our music will link with our PE dance unit this term; the children will learn to play a range of tuned and untuned instruments, experimenting with combining sounds and using rhythms for musical effect.

PE

Having now completed their term swimming, the children will need their PE kits in school for PE on Wednesday afternoons and on Fridays.  Mr Dyce will be working on gymnastics and on a Friday we will be developing skills in creative dance.  Each child will need trainers suitable for use on the field as well as the playground and warm outer layers to be worn over PE shorts and T-shirts.

Thank you for your continued support with homework and spellings.

Best wishes.

Mrs Rudkin and Mrs Hall