Welcome to Year 2!

Your child has now entered an important stage of their primary school experience: this is the year of the Key Stage 1 (KS1) end of year attainment tests known as SATS which mark the end of their KS1 journey. While you do need to be mindful of the end goal for this year, it is also important to see it for the wonderful year that it is.

The final year of KS1 will see your child being encouraged to work more independently. At this age, most children will have improved their ability to coordinate movement and their language/speech will be increasingly complex and grammatically correct, so it’s an exciting year for children, parents and teachers. Throughout the year we will help you to understand what your child will be learning and suggest helpful ways in which you can support them at home.

Our topics in Year 2:

Autumn term 1 Wriggle and Crawl and Scented Garden

Autumn term 2 Land Ahoy!

Spring term 1 Towers, Tunnels and Turrets

Spring term 2 Street Detectives

Summer term 1 Muck, Mess and Mixtures

Summer term 2 Beachcombers

Our PE sessions are on Mondays and Fridays and our library books will be changed every Wednesday. 

What will my child do in Year 2?

Developing literacy skills

In English, the children will continue to work on the phonics they have learned in Year 1, aiming to read words by sight without having to sound them out individually. They will learn further spelling patterns and rules, and begin to apply those in their writing. They will look at the possessive apostrophe, homophones and near homophones and suffixes.

There will be a more detailed focus on handwriting, with children encouraged to form their letters correctly, learn which letters are to be joined and make letters a consistent size. Children will learn to write for a range of purposes including stories, poetry and real events.

Grammar

Grammar is a hot topic in Year 2! Children this age are expected to understand the following terms, to be able to spot them in their reading and apply them in their writing:

Noun, adjective, adverb, suffix, subordination, noun phrase, past tense, present tense, statement, question, exclamation, command, capital letter, full stop, question mark, exclamation mark, compound sentence and expanded noun phrase.

Maths

Pupils will be expected to know the number bonds to 20 and be precise in using and understanding place value. They will learn to add and subtract with numbers up to 1000. They will learn multiplication and division facts for the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 times-tables. In fractions, they will find 1/3, 1/4 1/2 and 3/4 of a shape or a quantity of objects. They will study measures, including weight, capacity and length, and they will learn to tell the time to five minutes. They will also study properties of 2D and 3D shapes, as well as a range of data-handling methods such as bar charts and pictograms. The new curriculum ‘mastery’ style of teaching concentrates on breadth of knowledge and children will be encouraged to use their understanding of the new concepts to solve challenges to deepen their understanding.

Science

Science in Year 2 is engaging and fun. Expect your child to learn about living things and their habitats, plants, animals (including humans) and uses of everyday materials. They will also learn how to work scientifically, how to observe closely, and how to record their observations.

How can I help my child in Year 2?

Help them understand what they read

Hear your child read often, daily if possible, but also remember it is just as important for your child for you to model reading to them. Children learn a lot from the way we read aloud and we can encourage them to see how the author's use of punctuation changes the way we read their work. Think about pointing out statements, commands, questions or exclamations when reading with your child. You might want to use a range of voices to show how types of sentences and punctuation can be read in different ways.As reading comprehension is so important this year, checking your child's understanding of the book they are reading is an excellent way to support them. Asking questions about the plot such as: 'What might happen next? Why do you think the boy is feeling sad? What sort of mood is being created?' will help them to engage with their reading on a deeper level.

Practise spellings with them

Your child will bring home a list of spellings on Monday that we are focussing on in class for that week, it would be useful to talk through the words with them, which sounds are in them? Do they know what they mean? Can they say they them in the context of a sentence? You could display them in a space where they will look at them everyday such as on a fridge or a bedroom wall.

Real-life maths

Any opportunity to use maths in a real-life context is really useful. For example, ask them to help you pay for goods or calculate change when shopping. This will help to develop their reasoning and problem solving skills. Learning to tell the time, especially to five minutes, is another great way to support your child's learning at home; this also links neatly to their counting in 5s in the 5 times-table.

Perhaps most importantly for maths, you can help your child at home by practising their times tables (2,3,4 5 and 10) regularly. There are many different ways you can do this, but it is beneficial if your child can use and apply this knowledge — for example, not just knowing that 10 x 2 is 20, but also realising that 20 divided by 2 is 10. You could use journey time to school to give your child fun times table challenges. You can also make up word problems relating times-tables facts to real life

Encouraging independence

Finally, you can develop their independence at home by encouraging your child to get ready for school on their own, giving them some responsibilities such as feeding/taking care of pets, tidying up or organising their belongings more independently. This will help enormously as they move up through the school!