Level 2

Inquiry

This term we have started our new inquiry unit on Space. The students have been incredibly engaged by this topic and have created lots of research questions that they would like to learn about. Our students are demonstrating deep thinking skills in questioning why certain events in the sky occur. So far, we have learned about how orbits work, constellations, the lunar cycle and the planets in our solar system. This topic has been integrated across our Literacy program as well, allowing students more opportunities for learning and self-directed research on what parts of the topic interest them.

Writing

As part of our Persuasive topic, the students have been working on travel brochures advertising a planet in our solar system for people to visit. They completed online research to find facts about their planets and then converted these facts into arguments that would convince people to go there. For example, if they learned that "Venus is the hottest planet", their argument has become "if you love hot weather, visit Venus!". The students have drafted this piece and then published it as a physical brochure, complete with paragraphs, headings and images.

Reading

To complement the students' work on Persuasive writing, last week we read the text "Can I Be Your Dog?" where a dog tries to convince different people to be its owner. We identified the text's purpose (to persuade) and cited examples that supported this interpretation. They also examined persuasive techniques used in the text such as rhetorical questions and emotive language.

Maths

Our focus for Number & Algebra has been addition. Now that the students are learning to add higher numbers, we have practised a variety of strategies to add these numbers effectively. These have included: partitioning numbers into their place value parts (tens and ones), adding on a number line and breaking numbers to "complete the ten" by relating to known calculations. For our Measurement focus, the students' have practiced rotations of shapes and objects, learning the meaning of half, quarter, three-quarter and full turns as well as the language of clockwise and anti-clockwise.

Fun Day

A friendly reminder that our Year 2 Fun Day will take place on November 6th. Please see Compass for all the relevant details.