YEAR TWO

 Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Primary School provides a range of holistic learning experiences to enable students to:

• Participate in the life and mission of the school.
• Deepen their knowledge and engagement with the Catholic faith and tradition.
• Build the capacity to continuously reason, reflectively, logically and critically.
• Embrace interdependence of human existence as global citizens, who are responsible to and for themselves and others.
• Engage in learning in a multitude of ways, through personalised and self-paced learning.

Religious Education

2.1 Images of God

This unit introduces and explores a variety of biblical images of God that tell something of what God is like. The unit also introduces and explores the Genesis account of human beings made in the image of God. The final section focuses on prayer as a means of nourishing the Spirit of God in our lives. It reflects on the ‘Our Father’ prayer.

2.2 Lent and Holy Week 

This unit focuses on the season of Lent and introduces the Lenten practices of this season. The story of Zacchaeus explores the idea of repentance. The Widow’s Offering explores the practice of ‘giving’. We also look closely at the events of Jesus’ life that are celebrated during Holy Week.

English

This term the students in Year Two will be implementing the new NSW K-2 English syllabus. The students will experience opportunities to engage with informative, narrative, persuasive and poetry texts including, but not confined to, Welcome to Country by Aunty Joy, Sophie Scott Goes South and Peggy by Anna Walker. Students will explore the purpose and importance of an Acknowledgement of Country and the Welcome to Country while making connections to their context and that of Aboriginal communities across NSW. 

Students will continue to display their knowledge and understanding in the areas of:

• Oral language and communication
• Vocabulary
• Phonological awareness
• Print conventions
• Phonic knowledge
• Reading fluency
• Reading comprehension
• Creating written texts
• Spelling
• Handwriting
• Understanding and responding to literature

Mathematics

This term, Year 2 students will be engaged in tasks designed with increasing complexity and challenge, open-ended high ceiling, differentiated success criteria and enabling and extending prompts. They will be explicitly taught concepts from the new NSW Mathematics K-2 Syllabus with a focus on problem solving, communication, reasoning and understanding. All activities are differentiated to cater to all student needs and abilities. 

The topics taught in Term 1 are Chance & Time, Combining & Separating Quantities, Geometric Measure, 2D Spatial Structure, and Forming Groups.

Science and Technology

In Semester One, students will be learning about Earth and Space. They will observe changes in the sky and landscape as well as explore how the Earth’s resources are used. Students will also investigate how digital systems display data.

Geography

Through inquiry based learning, students will focus on places within Australia and Australia’s location in the world. They will describe the connections people, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, have with places, both locally and globally. The students will also identify factors affecting people’s accessibility to places.

Personal Development, Health and Physical Education

For sport this term, students will continue developing their Fundamental Movement Skills and build confidence in various sports and physical activities. These FMS include balancing, running, jumping, catching, throwing, skipping and dancing. Students will practise and apply these skills through various activities and games. These games are encouraged to build teamwork, communication, game sense and resilience. Students will also be encouraged to understand different rules and strategies in various sports.  

Open Parachute will be implemented in K-6. Open Parachute aims to provide practical support on mental health to students. The program aims to reduce stigma and generate authentic dialogue in classrooms about the real issues students face. The psychological skills-building exercises aim to increase empathy, self-compassion, self-awareness, mental health literacy, and self-efficacy in students.

Amadeus Music Program

Students will continue their participation in the Amadeus Music Education program, introduced by Sydney Catholic Schools to our school this year.

Students will participate in activities in listening, performing and organising sound (Kindergarten to Year 6), within their regular Classroom Music lessons. Within these lessons, students will:

• Sing in unison and parts
• Play tuned and untuned percussion instruments
• Play available instruments such as Ukulele, Guitar and Keyboard

Creative Arts

In Visual Arts, the students will be developing their skills in drawing portraits and silhouettes based on the English texts they will be studying.

This year students will be involved in a Music Program, providing students with high quality music lessons. The students will focus on different musical genres through singing, moving and composition. They will also focus on duration with songs that provide a constant beat and will have opportunities to develop that beat through movement and percussion. 

Mandarin

Our students continue to enjoy participating in the Chinese language program called the Meg Language Program. The Meg Curriculum is written by the co-author of the Australian Curriculum. All students and teachers will participate in the digital learning platform via Zoom weekly sessions with educators in China.

Homework 

It is recommended that Year 2 students spend up to a duration of 20-30 minutes of homework per day. This includes 10 minutes of reading every night. Homework consists of daily reading, spelling, online Soundwaves activities and Mathematics activities. These activities are to be completed weekly. Homework is due each Thursday and will be brought home every Friday. 

Homework will commence in Week 3, however daily reading is essential.

Please record and sign your child’s daily reading log. An encouraging comment is always welcome! It is very important that you are reading with your child each night to ensure they are using their reading strategies, fluency, expression and self correcting at an error. Asking comprehension questions at the end is also essential. 

A Maths Plus mentals and homework book will be provided to all students. A weekly task will be set and we ask that this be returned each Thursday. Maths Plus follows a graded and spiralling approach, allowing for revision of concepts throughout the year. It will provide students with opportunities to sequentially develop, practise and master their skills and knowledge.

We look forward to continuing to work with you and your child this term. If you have any concerns, please do not hesitate to contact your child’s teacher via email, a written note or by an appointment through the office. 

2B - Mrs Katrina Hedges

2G - Mrs Lauren Govers

2W - Mrs Alison Bofinger and Mrs Carly Beaven

Important Dates for Year Two

Sport Days are:

2Blue - Tuesday and Friday

2Gold - Tuesday and Friday

2White - Tuesday and Friday

Students are to wear their sports uniform on these days. 

Library 

Each week, students will have the opportunity to borrow books from our school library. Please ensure your child brings their Library Bag to school on their allocated day. 

2Blue - Tuesday

2Gold - Tuesday

2White - Tuesday

2024 - School Term 1

 Parent calendar available at this link