Class 2 News Letter

September 2011

Dear Parents of Year 2 Children,

Welcome back! I hope you all had a good holiday. The children have settled well into year 2 and are enjoying being the oldest children in key stage one and the responsibilities that go with this! This letter aims to give you an outline of the main areas of the curriculum your children will be covering this term and provide you with information about set routines.

This is an important year for your children as they prepare for Key Stage 2 and complete the National Standard Assessment Tasks and Tests (SATs). However, I must assure you that despite the heavy demands of the curriculum, we will endeavour to have as much fun as possible!

Topic

Over the next weeks those of us in class 2 will be following a unit of work on a theme which focuses on Our World. During this unit we will be looking at art, geography, ICT, music, science and technology.

In art, we’ll be

Looking at paintings of different environments
Making our own pictures of storms, deserts and mountains
Finding out about colour

In geography we’ll be

Finding out about the local environment
Finding out about plants and animals that live in the school ground
Finding out about the effects of any changes to the environment

In ICT we’ll be

Using CD-ROMs and the internet to find out about our world and pollution
Using word processing to write about changes to the environment

In music we’ll be

Composing music about the weather
Singing songs about the weather

In science, we’ll be

Creating different environments
Finding out about insects and birds and using the school grounds
Growing plants from seed

In technology, we’ll be

Making model gardens and environments.

Literacy

Long vowel phonemes (eg ‘ee’, ‘ai’ and ‘oo’)
Common spelling patterns
Homophones (words which sound the same but have a different spelling)
Re-drafting and checking work
Capital letters
Story themes, poetry and instructional writing

Numeracy

Counting and writing numbers to 100 (including recognising patterns)
Addition, subtraction and ordering numbers
Place value
Length (introducing standard measures)
3D shapes
Angles
Money (including paying and giving change)
An introduction to multiplication and fractions.

Reading

Your child will be bringing their reading books home to share with you. Please could you record what you have read in the reading journal to help us when we monitor how regularly the children are reading. It would also be helpful if you could discuss the content of the book with them, asking questions and discussing the storyline. This will help develop their comprehension skills in preparation for the SATs reading tasks and tests.

Spelling

We are currently undertaking initial assessments and from this we will be making changes to our spelling system. Your child will be given words from the different phases of Letters and Sounds phonic scheme. You may find that your child is given words they have had before - at this age children find it hard to retain the spellings over the long summer holiday! Spelling tests will take place on a Wednesday with Mrs Brandwood. Further details will follow.

P.E

PE kits need to be in school everyday, with plimsolls or trainers.

Children wearing earrings on a PE day will not be able to participate unless they are able to remove the earrings by themselves or they are able to be covered by tape. PE for Class 2 will take place on a Monday and on Tuesday.

PPA Cover

On a Wednesday the children will be taught by Mrs Brandwood and Mrs Solomon as this is when my PPA time is. I will however still be around school unless on a training course.

SATs

Finally I would just like to take this opportunity to reassure any of you who are worried about this process. I know it may seem early to be talking about it, but I personally believe that SATs should be as stress free a process as possible for children of such a young age. Therefore the term ‘SATs’ will NOT be mentioned in class and as far as possible the children will not be aware they are doing them when they actually do them.

I look forward to a happy and productive year!

Nicola Lawrence

Class 2 Teacher