Grade 2 News
Important Reminders
Sun Smart
As per our school's SunSmart policy, all students are required to wear hats till the end of April 2024.
Library Bags
If you haven’t done so already, please make sure you send a named library bag to school with your child.
Writing Seed Photos
The students have begun adding seeds (writing ideas) to their Writer's Notebooks. If you have photos of your child over the holidays, please send them to school with your child. They will stick these photos into their books and annotate them to use as inspiration for their narrative writing this term.
Weekly Timetable
Learning in Action
Head Start
What a wonderful start to the year our Grade Two students have had with all children settling in so well. It has been a lot of fun getting to know each other, our classmates and our new classrooms. Over the past fortnight, students have been engaging in our ‘Head Start’ program, which focuses on understanding how to be good learners. This involves setting up expectations and routines for our reading and writing workshops and for our maths lessons.
In Literacy, we have revised what good readers and writers do, with students participating in reading stamina and Writer’s Notebook lessons. The students have started practising their handwriting and have continued to practise their independent reading using their levelled decodable texts. In Maths, we have been learning how to have a positive mindset and what this looks like, sounds like and feels like. We have also started our measurement unit where the students have been measuring the length and mass of different objects using informal uniform objects.
Head Start also incorporates Wellbeing. Each class goes through our school values (Curiosity, Acceptance, Respect, Resilience and Integrity) and our whole school rules and behaviour management approach. We explored how to use our growth mindset to help us persist when something is challenging, or when we feel like we’re in the learning pit. We revised the LPS Learner Profile traits (work independently, collaborate, create, accept challenges, persist, think and reflect) and students engaged in activities that link to these traits. Some of these include accepting the challenge to play a new maths game they haven’t played before, or reflecting on a piece of writing by reading it back and revising to improve.
Preview for learning
Literacy: Next week we will introduce students to our Term 1 narrative unit of learning, whereby students will learn to create their own narratives with a focus on character and plot. Students will begin to practice their reading and writing goals, which is something you might choose to discuss with your child at home. Students will be referring back to the various accuracy strategies they have learnt in previous years as they are exposed to a range of texts in the classroom. We will continue using our ‘Writer’s Notebooks’, using the writing seeds/prompts students have brought in from home.
Maths: Throughout Term 1, the Grade Two students will be focusing on the concept of whole numbers. Students will learn a variety of counting strategies, use a range of concrete materials to represent numbers and will focus on counting forwards and backwards by ones, tens and hundreds. We will investigate the concepts of length and mass and will compare different objects in the classroom. Students will begin to practise their number fluency goal through our Maths Masters Program.
Wellbeing
Over the coming weeks, the Grade Two students will be learning about help-seeking in our Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships program. This includes how they can help their friends and how they can ask for help from someone else. In Friendology, the students will explore the importance of having a positive mindset. This includes turning a 'Grey Day' into a 'Yay Day'.
Other Information
Mathematics Hub Information
https://www.mathematicshub.edu.au/media/o5xnpxsl/year2_mathshub_flyer.pdf
Dr Justin Coulson - Breaking Point Information
https://happyfamiliesfamilyeducation.ac-page.com/breaking-point-with-dr-justin-coulson
Lex Fisher, Taryn Bailey, Catia Anson, Rachel Manning and Kelly Reynolds.
Grade 2 Teachers