Grade 2

Literacy 

In Literacy, students have been learning about past tense verbs. This includes both past tense verbs with the suffix ‘_ed’ (e.g. played, walked and danced), as well as past tense verbs that do not use the suffix ‘_ed’ (e.g. slept, ran, fell). 

Students read the text ‘Archie the Orphan Wombat’ and completed a range of comprehension questions to demonstrate their understanding. Over the past few weeks, students have also completed WARP and WARL assessments to demonstrate their fluency in reading short texts in a set time. These assessments have given valuable insights into their progress over the term. 

In Spelling, we have been learning to apply the consonant and ‘le’ spelling pattern (e.g. table, title, cradle). We have also looked at adding the suffix ‘_es’ to make nouns plural (e.g. torches, dishes), as well as adding the suffix ‘_es’ to verbs (eg. smashes, fixes). Students have practised reading, writing and sharing sentences about our tricky words: around, could, couldn’t, favourite, should and shouldn’t. 

Writing

This week in Grade 2 Writing, we explored the wonderful world of trees through the book Gentle Genius of Trees. Students investigated the key things trees need to grow, explored the many important things that can be made from or used from trees, and discussed why trees are so important for our environment. We are now developing our paragraph-writing skills by learning how to write an interesting topic sentence that clearly tells the reader what the paragraph is about. We are also learning to select appropriate supporting details that strengthen our ideas and to write a concluding sentence that brings our paragraph to a clear close. Students are applying the ideas and skills they have practised to create their own informative and engaging writing. 

Maths

Over the past fortnight, we have been developing our problem-solving skills by solving a range of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division word problems. We have used bar models to help us understand addition and subtraction problems, including ‘combine’ problems. Students have been learning that if the whole is unknown, we add, and if a part is unknown, we subtract. 

We have also explored equal group problems involving multiplication and division, using arrays to represent and solve problems. Students have learned that if the number of groups is unknown, we divide, and if the total is unknown, we multiply. These strategies have helped students identify the type of problem, choose an appropriate operation and explain their mathematical thinking.