Year 2 News
It’s fun being here with you in Year 2!
The Year 2 students have had a great start to the year. It was wonderful to see all the smiling faces come through the classroom doors on day 1.
The students were grateful to be back in their learning spaces rather than on a screen. We have spent the first few weeks learning our classroom routines and introducing the various aspects of our Literacy and Numeracy programs. The students have been working hard and we are looking forward to the coming weeks and the exciting activities we have planned.
Literacy
The students have been working hard during our Literacy sessions and have enjoyed the various activities we have completed so far.
The students have been reintroduced to the Daily 5.
Read to self
Read to someone
Listen to reading
Work on writing
Work with words
Daily 5 is a literacy framework that instils behaviors of independence, creates a classroom of highly engaged readers, writers, and learners, and provides teachers with the time and structure to meet diverse student needs.
The students have been participating in several activities practicing the Daily 5 and are learning to exhibit the correct behaviours.
During our writing sessions we have been learning about the 6 + 1 Traits of writing. This week we have looked at, Ideas, Organisation, Word Choice and Sentence Fluency.
During our Ideas session the students laughed at Mrs Purton’s hat with the lightbulb on top. This was indicating that we have lots of ideas that pop into our head that we can write about.
The students were able to choose their own topic to write about in their Writer’s notebook. There were so many topics written about from cats, to basketball, to snakes and birthdays.
During our Organisation lesson the students wrote about how they get organised for school each morning. We highlighted the importance of organising your writing into a sequential order. Our Word Choice lesson saw the students learning about ‘precise words’ and ‘bullseye words’. The students choose a topic and wrote as many words as they could related to their topic of choice.
The students were excited to learn that they would be matched with a Year 4 pen pal at our school. They spent time brainstorming with their teachers the type of questions they could ask their pen pal and how to set out a letter correctly. Each student was given their pen pal’s name and wrote a first draft of their letters.
We are now in the final stage of our letter writing and adding the finishing touches. The Year 2s can’t wait to meet their pen pals and spend some time completing some activities with them.
Maths
The students have been thoroughly enjoying our maths activities both inside and outside the classroom. It has been pleasing to see their level of engagement.
The students have been introduced to the Daily 3 in Numeracy, which are: Maths on my
Own, Maths with Someone and Writing about Maths. These skills should be practised every day. The teachers modelled positive and negative behaviours for each of the Daily 3 and what is expected during these times. The students enjoyed selecting activities and games to practise their maths skills. They also completed a poster about the Daily 3 for Numeracy.
Prior to commencing our Maths lessons each day, the students have been developing their maths fluency and number facts by engaging in a variety of activities where they are required to share their reasoning and strategies.
The students have been exploring place value through a variety of hands on activities such as the whole year level ordering numbers, ordering the teacher’s number plates from lowest to highest number, spotting mistakes in the hundreds chart and giving reasons as to why they were wrong.
The students also completed a mixed up 100 puzzle. They have played lots of place value games with someone such as adding or subtracting 1, 10, 100 or 1000 to a given number and number sequence tic tac toe where they aimed to get three of their numbers in a row, column or diagonal. The students also played Place Value Snakes and Ladders, where they had to identify the value of the underlined number in a 3 digit number and Place Value Number Path, where they rolled a dice 2 times to create a 2 digit number (or 3 digit number) and had to put their number on the number path where it would belong!
Inquiry
The Year 2 students have been exploring their emotions for our first Unit of Inquiry, Who We Are. During this unit, students are introduced to the Inside Out Characters: Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger and Fear. Each week students come up with a definition of the emotion and we talk about times we’ve felt that emotion. We talk about things that students do to feel Joyful, for example, or strategies that students can put in place to stop feeling angry.
Finally, students really get to know each emotion by drawing that emotion with the help of Art Hub. So far Year 2 have really enjoyed investigating Joy and Sadness. At the end of the unit students will get to dress up as their favourite emotion and we’ll watch the movie.
Wellbeing Week- Respect
This week at BNPS our wellbeing week has focused on Respect. Each Year 2 class came up with their own definition of respect.
2A- We think Respect means to show appreciation of others and to treat yourself, others and objects with care. It means being polite to everyone by using manners and listening to what people have to say.
2B- Respect is when you are kind to one another, treat people, our environment, classroom and belongings with care. Respect is when you listen to others when they are talking and show manners. Respect is when you show integrity. Everybody should look out for one another and our World.
2C- Respect means to look after your planet and take care of it. You need to be kind to everyone and make sure everyone is included. When you look after each other you don’t say hurtful things and you help each other. When you respect someone, you care about how they feel. When you respect your teacher, you listen during learning time and show good manners.
2D- When you are showing respect, you listen to people while they are talking. You are kind to each other and treat everyone the way that you would like to be treated. You can show respect in the classroom by looking after your belongings.
When the teacher is talking don’t go walking!! SHOW RESPECT!!
The students spent time creating posters about Respect and enjoyed learning a song tilted Respect.
Please enjoy the video of the Year 2s singing along.