Year 2 News 

Reading

Students in Year 2 have been learning how to summarise  by using the 5 W’s — Who, What, When, Where, and Why. During Foundation and Year 1 students built their skills to retell a story. They are now taking it a step further and giving a summary. When they summarise, students share the most important parts of the story in their own words. Students have been practising summarising during reading sessions by reading a text, and sharing in their own words, the most important part to a peer. They have also been recording their summaries in their reading journals. 

“Who is the characters in the text, mostly the main characters” - Harry 2B

“When you summarise, you are also retelling what happened” - Alyssa 2B

‘In reading we have been summarising stories. We had to read a book then we had to retell it.’ - Mya 2A

Writing

Students have been working on writing information reports by creating factual sentences.They used their school bags as a prompt, writing facts. This was a valuable exercise because they could look at them closely and describe what they looked like on the inside and outside. Students were also able to write about what was stored inside their bags.

It’s been wonderful to see students applying capital letters at the beginning of sentences and full stops at the end. The consistency in this area has improved across the cohort. These are important writing skills that the Year 2 students will continue to practise throughout the year. We are working towards students completing these tasks automatically, every time they write, during any learning area.

“My school bag is blue with the CPS logo on the front’. - Hunter 2B

“I have a satchel in my bag, for my home reader”- Charlotte 2B

“I have a beanie in my school bag for winter” - Niyara 2B

‘In Writing we wrote about our bags. I am up to publishing on the laptop. Some people are still writing them in their books.’ - Mya 2A

Maths 

The Year 2 students have been working on addition and subtraction strategies. They revisited the friends of ten, doubling and partitioning strategies, learned in previous weeks. Students worked on solving worded problems. The students found that it was important to read the question carefully and identify if the question was a subtraction or an addition problem. Words to look out for were ‘more, altogether and left’. The Year 2’s worked on solving problems involving money. The students used play money to identify various coins and notes and complete addition and subtraction problems. In all instances, students were able to access the hands on learning resources from the classroom maths trolley.

‘We solved worded problems. I learned how to do vertical addition.’ - Mya 2A

‘We used counters and we used teddy bears to count. Then we wrote the numbers.’ - Maggie 2A

Inquiry

During inquiry students have been learning about the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling!

They watched mini clips about what happens when we don’t take care of Earth’s resources such as air, water and trees. The Year 2 cohort will continue to participate in discussions and hands-on activities in this area. They are having so much fun learning about reducing waste, reusing materials and recycling items at school and at home. 

“You can save water by showering for 4 minutes only” - Niyara 2B

“Trees are cut down every day to make paper and stuff”- Alex 2B

“We can recycle paper in a special bin just for paper” - Ahri 2B

Social and Emotional Learning

Help seeking has been the social and emotional learning focus for all Year 2 students over the past 2 weeks. They thought about and discussed the different people they could ask for help from at school, home and in the community. Students traced around their hands and wrote down the names of the people that they can go and talk to when they need help. Everyone wrote one name on each finger and one on the thumb. In the following lesson they wrote down who they helped and how they helped them. 

‘In SEL we traced our hands and wrote down people who could help. This week we did people we could help.’ - Mya 2A

‘I liked writing about the people we can get help from and I liked writing about the people we could help. We traced our hands.’ - Raff 2A

Special Event

Water Watchers Incursion

To complement the Term 2 Inquiry topic, Earth and its natural resources, teachers organised a free incursion offered by Yarra Valley Water to take place on Friday 6th of June. Students thoroughly enjoyed participating in a 45 minute session where they learned about where water comes from, how it is consumed and how to save it. Students engaged in role playing, solving puzzles and collaborating with their peers. 

‘In the incursion we learned about saving water. They gave us cute little aliens and a little note to give to our mums.’- Mya 2A

‘In the incursion I held the shampoo and we got cute little aliens. I listened to how to save water.’- Raff 2A

‘We learned how to take care of our water.’ - Tyron 2A