Grade 2 News
Important Reminders
Monday 9th June - Monarch’s Birthday Public Holiday (no school)
Thursday 3rd July - Cultural Day
Friday 4th July - Last Day of Term 2 (2:30pm dismissal)
Production dates:
Tuesday 2nd September
Wednesday 3rd September
Weekly Timetable
Learning in action
Literacy
This fortnight we have started a new Literature unit, focused on ‘Connection to Country.’ Using rich mentor texts including, ‘The Lost Girl,’ ‘My Country- Ezekiel,’ ‘The Outback,’ and ‘My Country,’ students have explored the Aboriginal belief of Country, defining it as a deep spiritual connection to the earth and nature around us. We looked into how Country provides for us and how we can not only protect Country, but also enjoy it. Today students analysed the poem ‘My Country’ by Dorethea Mackellar.
Next week students will be doing a poetry reading to the class, completing a self-assessment afterwards.
We will be focusing on the following things:
- Emotion and voice
- Pace and structure
- Volume and fluency
Feel free to practise at home as well!
In Sentence Level Writing, students have continued working with subordinating conjunctions. They are confident in creating sentences using conjunctions including before, after, if and when. This week students have been independently applying all their learning from the semester, covering topics such as:
- Developing questions
- Coordinating and subordinating conjunctions
- Adjectives
- Adverbial phrases
Preview - Students will apply their knowledge of sentence structure, identifying parts of sentences and unscrambling sentences.
Word Work:
Maths:
Throughout the past 2 weeks in Maths, the students have continued to explore and learn various addition strategies to solve problems. The students have been provided time to work on their maths goals through the rotations of working with their teacher, fluency practise and solving worded problems. Our whole class maths sessions have included a focus on worded problems, by supporting students to decide what parts of the question are relevant and creating a number sentence to solve the problem. Over the past fortnight the students have been introduced to our ‘Mild, Hot and Spicy’ questions. The students are able to choose which questions they want to answer, with the students encouraged to pick questions that suit their needs whilst also challenging themselves.
This week the students also completed a “prove it sheet”, that allows the students to show their learning with questions related to each of the goals and strategies they have been working on so far this term.
In our applied unit, the students have been exploring Location through positional and directional language. The students have been learning about the difference between left and right and clockwise and anti-clockwise. The students have been able to further explore this understanding through following directions to move objects on a grid.
Preview - Over the next few weeks the students will be exploring subtraction, by exploring different strategies to solve equations. The students will also be completing additional assessment tasks to show their learning throughout the first semester of Grade 2.
Knowledge Rich:
Our Knowledge Rich unit has come to an end, however the Grade 2s have walked away with so much knowledge about this amazing rock. During the last two lessons we focused on positive and negative effects of tourism on Uluru and why we should protect the environment around Uluru.
Some positive impacts on tourism are:
- Tourism creates jobs and makes money
- Tourism enables visitors to learn more about the indigenous culture and history of the Anangu people and the importance of respecting the environment
Some negative impacts on tourism are:
- Lots of tourists can harm the desert ecosystem around Uluru
- Tourists can hurt the feelings of the Anangu people if we are not respectful
- Climbing Uluru was leading towards erosion and damage to the rock’s surface
As part of the topic students were then asked to create a drawing/painting of Uluru as seen in the pictures below. The dot painting represented the sun and sky and students then added their own drawing of Uluru underneath and any flora (plants) and fauna (animals) they wanted. We then wrote facts about Uluru and what we had learnt over the unit. We have placed all of our work up in the main corridor outside 2D.
Preview - Our next Knowledge Rich unit is called ‘Growing Colonies’ and we look forward to teaching you about what the students have learnt.
Wellbeing:
During our wellbeing lessons we have continued to focus on 4Rs and are now looking at stress management. This week, we looked at calmer classrooms and how we can reduce the stress on ourselves when the class is getting too loud. To begin with we had to play a game of follow the leader with a twist. The leader had to move in slow motion and all the students had to follow and mirror the same actions. This led into a discussion about how to have a calmer classroom and what can we do as a class.
Some ideas were:
- Mindfulness
- Finger tracing (when they use their pointer finger to trace around their fingers on the other hand
- Breathing exercises
We finished this lesson off with some great quotes about respect and kindness from our friendology program and used this as a mindfulness colouring activity.
The students were definitely a lot calmer by the end.
Preview - Over the next few weeks we will continue to look closer at this topic and unpacking ‘What is stress?’ further.
Grade 2 Homework options
Grade 2 Teachers
Bronte Darvidis, Mikayla Harvey and Taryn Bailey
Updates from around the school
Green Team News:
Under the guidance of Mrs Stokol and Mrs Alexander, the Green Team met for the first time this week. What a meeting it was! All up across years 3-5 we have close to 50 very excited and passionate students wanting to do their part. Whether it’s helping to keep the school free of rubbish, looking after and developing the plants gardens, educating the school community about sustainability, there was a buzz in the air as students shared their ideas and signed up for roles. A new initiative we’ve introduced this term is the collection of 10c containers. The special lunch day during last term raised $21. We look forward to saving these containers on a daily basis from going to landfill and turning them into cash. Money raised will be invested back into Green Team initiatives.
Involvement in the Green Team is all inclusive. It’s not too late for your child to get involved should they wish.