Year 2 News 

It’s fun being in Year 2! 

We are now in week 6 of the term and all our students have settled into our daily routines. We have all our programs fully operational, and we are pleased with how the students have adapted and how they are learning to be more independent.  

Literacy 

There was a buzz of excitement in the Year 2 rooms on Monday as we told the students that they would be assigned a pen pal from Black Rock Primary School. This is an initiative we started a number of years ago when we wrote letters to Beaumaris Primary School.  

On Monday the students were given their pen pal’s name and they wrote a rough copy of a letter to them. We discussed the types of things they could say and gave examples of the types of questions they could ask. The students wrote excellent letters asking several questions about, pets, hobbies, sporting teams and siblings.  

On Tuesday we completed our good copies and decorated the envelopes. Mr Bray will be dropping the letters into Black Rock Primary School this week. Our students can’t wait to receive a letter back from their pen pals. Hopefully we will have an opportunity later in the year to meet up with our pen pals in person.  

Literacy Rotations 

This week in our Literacy Rotations we focused on the comprehension strategy of Check for understanding; monitor and self-correct.  This is an important strategy that ensures students are monitoring their reading and reading for meaning rather than, ‘barking at print’. (Barking at print refers to engaging in decoding with little to no comprehension of what the text means on a global level, although the meaning of individual words or even groups of words may be comprehended.) 

In our work on writing time, the students continued their Magic Key Writing. All the students were provided with a picture of 10 ‘Magic Keys’.  

Each week the students choose a different Magic Key and write a brief paragraph or story explaining what their Magic Key opens or the adventure the key can take them on. The students had the opportunity to work on our Daily 5 reading behaviours of ‘Read to Self’ and ‘Read to Someone’. We have continued to revise the use of capital letters and full stops. 

This week in SMART Spelling we learnt the trigraph ‘dge’ making the sound ‘j’ as in bridge. Please remind your children to write their spelling words under the correct day on the weekly spelling sheet and complete at least two spelling activities.  

During our handwriting session this week we looked at the formation of the upper and lowercase Gg. Each week we have handwriting chant to help the students learn the letter formation. Start at 1 o’clock. Across the top, down the side, crisp turn, up, down, down, flat tail. 

Manga High

This week our students were introduced to the online numeracy application – Mangahigh.  Mangahigh is an adaptive program that meets the specific need of the students wherever they are at any moment. A combination of engaging A.I. based tasks and supporting games help the students to reach new levels of numerical understanding. Next week we will begin assigned specific tasks to best support the current numeracy focus.   

Wellbeing

This week the students were asked to reflect on the various strategies and support structures that best allow them to learn effectively. Some of the questions they were asked to think about were: 

How do I learn best? 

What helps my learning 

What are my strengths? 

What am I proud of? 

This proved to be a very beneficial activity which helped not only the students but their teachers as well. 

The Resilience Project 

This week in the Resilience Project we looked at what it means to ‘Bounce Back’. 

We discovered that when someone tells us something that we don’t like, or who acts in a way that is not what was expected there are 3 ways we can react: 

A helpful reaction 

An unhelpful reaction 

A Bounce Back reaction 

The students enjoyed role-playing various scenarios and discovering together how powerful it can be to respond with a Bounce Back attitude. 

Inquiry

'How We Express Ourselves'  

Communication is influenced by feelings and emotions.

Over the past couple of weeks Year 2 have been getting to know the emotions, Anger and Fear.  

We discussed things that can make us angry, like not getting our way, or if we’re annoyed by a friend or family member and especially when we are tired. 

We came up with a long list of things we could do when we’re angry. For example, we could listen to music, take a time-out in our room or scream into our pillow. At the end of the week we drew some fantastic pictures of the character Anger. 

After Anger, we moved on to Fear. Nightmares, spiders and strange sounds topped the list of the things that scared Year 2. But the students also had a great list of things that they could do to regulate when they feel fear. We can go to a trusted adult, sibling or friend, cuddle a special toy or just try and think about something else. 

Next week we’ll be investigating Disgust. Yucko!