Year Two

English in Year Two

In Year Two, we have been taking a deep dive into the author Bob Graham. We have been reading A Bus Called Heaven, How to Heal a Broken Wing and Jigsaw: A Puzzle in the Post.

We have been exploring the plot and important events, selecting well-written sentences, transforming them and rewriting them using our own story ideas. We can’t wait to share our students’ stories at the end of this cycle! 

After reading A Bus Called Heaven, we discussed the important events throughout the story and created freeze-frames. The class then tried to guess which scene was being acted out. This was both fun and tricky!

Once we were familiar with the story, we began to brainstorm our own stories with a similar plot. Instead of a bus appearing in the street and bringing a community together, our class created ideas about a mysterious book appearing on someone’s doorstep and bringing joy and excitement to their everyday lives. Students then created their own stories with different characters and different objects appearing in special places.

Once we had our story ideas, we looked closely at how Bob Graham writes and selected some of our favourite sentences. We explored parts of speech (noun groups, adjectives, adverbs and conjunctions) and discussed how strong sentences are created. We acted like coders! After shuffling around Bob Graham’s sentences and trying to transform them, we found some new ways to say the same sentence and also realised what a great author he is! 

To support students with their own writing, they copied the sentence patterns and structure used by Bob Graham and changed them to match their own story ideas. We have been doing some wonderful thinking and writing in literacy and are excited to share our finished stories.

The Year Two Team

Skye Bailey, Fiona O’Reilly, Molly Todd and Nicola Veneris