Year Two

History, Mathematics and Mother’s Day in Year Two

In Year Two we have started exploring our history unit. We began by looking at how places in our community have changed over time, and plotting these using timelines. We looked at the centenary video created when the school turned 100 in 2020. It was amazing to see a tiny little school surrounded by farmland and few houses. This week we had a guest speaker from the Essendon Historical Society come to talk about the changes that have happened in the local area that have resulted in the Essendon North we know today.

To prepare for our next section of the history unit where we will explore the impact that technology has had on parts of our daily lives, we interviewed our mothers and mother figures at the VIP afternoon last week. We asked about how they got to school, what kind of games and toys they played with, and the television shows they liked to watch. It was fun seeing the amazement that some of the games played today are games that were played when their parents were little. The conversations also elicited some curiosity about the games they hadn’t heard of.

Once the interview was complete, students had the opportunity to teach their VIP some of the maths games we have been playing to promote number fluency. These games included Go Fish, Mastermind, Five Moves to 100, and Doubles Dominoes. These games assist with building quick recall of pairs to ten and doubles facts, while also building an understanding of place value. 

A copy of these games is included here should you wish to use them at home for a fun family games night with a maths focus.

As always it was a pleasure to host the afternoon and to see students engaged in such fun and positive conversations about their learning with their VIP. Thank you!

The Year Two Team

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