Year 2 News 

Year 2 Wrap Up!!!! 

It has been another busy two weeks in Year 2. We hope you enjoy reading what we’ve been up to.  

Numeracy 

The year 2 children have continued to develop their understanding of place value. We have looked at the extended notation of a number in both standard form eg 345 is 300 + 40 + 5 and nonstandard form such as 200 + 140 + 5. We used number expanders to show given numbers in different ways and completed a worksheet to put this into practise. 

We played a fun game of Snakes and Ladders where the children had to write the number they landed on in extended notation. We also made place value houses where the children selected a number, showed it in MAB, wrote the standard form for it, e.g. 345, extended form and in words.  

The year 2 children were given a challenging task as a whole class, to use their knowledge of special events/dates to put a jigsaw calendar back together. They worked as a team to complete this and experienced great success when they did as it was quite tricky!!  

We have also continued to develop our Number fluency and estimation skills by activities such as estimystery where the children are shown a picture with objects in it and they have to narrow down the range of numbers it could be, by the clues provided. We discuss why it can’t be certain numbers and if they have changed their guesses and why.   

Today the students started investigating clocks. We made a giant clock on the floor using a hula hoop and various cut our numbers and clock words. The students had to construct the clock using various clues. We then tried to identify several times on the clock.   

Each week the children complete Mangahigh activities set by the teacher and worked on lessons to improve their maths understanding.  

 Literacy 

During our writing session this week we completed a lesson called ‘Stay on Topic’. This lesson taught the students how to keep their writing on one topic the entire time. The students enjoyed reading several pieces of writing and highlighting the section where the writer went off topic. 

The students had the chance to write two short pieces of writing. One about themselves and one on a topic of their choice.  

During Literacy Groups the students looked at the CAFE comprehension strategy of ‘Back Up and Re read’  

Our spelling focus for this week was the graph /a/ making the sound “ar” as in class. The students completed a spelling grid which asks them to analyse their words into sound, letters and tricky parts. It is an excellent activity to ensure the students understand the weekly focus.  

The students had the opportunity to explore Literacy Planet during Literacy groups. They completed an activity on common nouns and a reading comprehension at their reading level. They also had fun identifying all the common nouns in a beach picture.  

They had the opportunity to continue another Magic Key Narrative writing. Students have had their Magic Keys opening up many interesting imaginary lands.  

Finally, the students shared some time ‘Reading to Someone’ which is one of the elements of the Daily 5.  

The Resilience Project 

Last week during our resilience lesson the students focused on identifying emotions. The lesson began with the students acting out various emotions while the class tried to guess the emotions. There was lots of laughter during this activity. The students then created their own cartoon on a particular emotion with speech bubbles included.  

This week our resilience lesson was about ‘It’s ok to be alone. The students sat and brainstormed several ideas about what they could do if the found themselves alone in the playground. We created a fabulous list that we will stick on the door of our learning space, so the students can read it during play breaks.

During the second half of the session the students drew three pictures of things they could do in the yard if they were alone.  

Cultural and Neurodiversity Week 

Last week saw BNPS celebrate their first Cultural and Neurodiversity week. We began the week viewing two PowerPoints, ‘It’s Ok to be Different’ and ‘BNPS Diversity Superheroes’. 

The students were amazed at all the famous people that were neurodiverse. From Waltz Disney who was Dyslexic to the creator of Pokémon who is autistic. We then discussed our own superpowers. 

It was heart-warming to listen to the Year 2 students openly discuss their own challenges which were their superpowers or their positive traits such as kindness and being caring. The students all created their own superhero cut outs and wrote their superpower on the cape. 

The culmination of the week was a whole school picnic where the students planted their superheroes in the grass on the oval. Several students then shared their whole school about their super power.