Grade 2

Welcome back to term 4! We have some very exciting things happening this term. Here are some important dates for you to mark in your calendars.

Important dates:

Science Dome Discovery incursion – 27th of October.

·        We are having a Science Discovery company come to our school with their portable planetarium, to provide an immersive experience covering Earth and Space science.

Curriculum Day (no school) – 6th of November

Melbourne Cup Day (no school) – 7th of November

Swimming Program - Wed 8th, Thur 9th, Fri 10th, Tue 14th, Wed 15th of November

·        The grade 2’s are participating in the first swimming program for Grayling Primary. We will be getting on a bus and going to Splash Swimming School in Clyde North. We ask parents to please LABEL all items of clothing! If you require further information, please see Compass.

Funtopia excursion – 30th of November

·        To celebrate our students’ achievements this year, we have organised an end of year excursion to Funtopia in Carrum Downs. Students will be able to participate in all of the activities at Funtopia, including rock climbing, jumping, sliding and crawling.

Christmas concert – 14th of December

Last day of school – 18th of December

Reading

In reading, students have been exploring two different mentor texts titled ‘Rainforest Adventure’ and ‘Missing Out’. We created a poster at the beginning of each week and continued to add our collaborative thoughts and conclusions to the poster throughout the remainder of the week. The children also identified some interesting words and once we defined them and understood their meanings, we noted them down on the vocabulary section of our weekly reading poster.

This term, we have started a new strategy with our grade 2 students to promote and encourage fluency when reading. What is fluency? Fluency is reading expressively with accuracy and at a good pace. Some of the children know this as the ‘flow’ of their reading voices. Each student has been paired up with another student in their class and they are known as their fluency pair. Every reading lesson, each pair takes turns to read a targeted passage over and over until the 4 minute timer goes off.

Writing

In writing, we have been learning the structure of narrative writing and the different variations in how we can plan to write a story. Students have focused on the following structure the last two weeks:

·        Orientation – Introducing WHO the story is about, WHERE the story takes place, WHEN the story takes place and WHAT the story will be about.  

·        Build-up – Start to write what is happening in the beginning of the story and introduce the first small problem.

·        Complication – What is the problem and what has gone wrong?

·        Resolution – How is the problem fixed and how the characters might have worked together to solve what went wrong.

·        Ending – Bring everything in the story to an end and make sure the problem has been fixed. How do the characters feel.

We have also introduced to students the Seven Sensational Story Starters, to encourage some more exciting opening sentences to their narrative writing. These are: Action, description of a setting, description of a character, dialogue, rhetorical question, statement and onomatopoeia.

Maths

In maths, we have been learning to solve multiplication problems using a number of different strategies such as; skip counting, drawing groups of, repeated addition and arrays. Students have also explored multiplication equations that have the same totals, multiplication equations with a missing number and solving multiplication equations written as a worded problem.

Give your child a multiplication equation at home and see which strategy they choose to solve it!

Humanities

In humanities, students have started learning about space. We began by learning about the sun and how it is important to us, followed by ordering the planets in our solar system. The grade 2’s are currently working on making a craft just like the one in this picture. We can’t wait for you to see them!

Wellbeing

In wellbeing, student’s have continued to participate in team building activities which promote and encourage our school values PERFORMANCE, RESPECT, OPEN-MINDED, UNITED and DARING. The grade 2 teachers feel these wellbeing sessions are providing our students time to consolidate their existing relationships, provide opportunities for students to create new friendships and allows students to develop their resilience skills.