Year 2

Mrs Taylor and Mrs Elkins

 Miss Velzian

Woodland: Miss Cox, Mrs Boothman and Mrs Edgar

Welcome to the Sycamore class page! Here you will find lots of information about what we are doing this term as well as information about our routines, PE days and our weekly 'Star of the Week'! Firstly, let me give you some information about myself:

Teacher Bio

Mrs Taylor 

I am now going into my 17th year of teaching and am very excited for the year ahead. I have three daughters, a husband and a guinea pig at home which keeps me quite busy! When I have a bit of time to myself, I love to visit my family, bake cakes or go running. I really appreciated some of you cheering me on when I ran the Bracknell half marathon recently. I have always loved reading. When I was younger my favourite author was Dick-King Smith and I really loved his 'Sophie' books. 

Home, Sweet Home

This term, we will be discovering what makes a really good map and we will use this geography knowledge to create our own maps of familiar or imaginary places. In History, we will find out what Bracknell was like 100 years ago and how it has changed. We will learn how to use a timeline to place key events in chronological order. For the keen artists, there will be many opportunities to develop our self-portrait skills and we will learn about the work of some famous portrait artists. In DT we will learn how to create a template and then how to join fabrics using running stitch. We are hoping to make simple pencil cases!

Home, Sweet Home 

English: In English, we will work on writing to entertain in our first unit based around the story 'Frog and the Stranger'. in this unit we will consolidate learning from year one about basic sentence construction as well as exploring how to use conjunctions to join ideas together. We will then move onto writing instructions about how to make friends with a ghost! In Autumn 2, we will use the book 'Last Stop on Market street' to inspire some more narrative writing before building on our letter writing skills from year one. 

Maths: We will focus on place value for numbers to 100 to ensure every child has really secure foundations for the calculations we will learn later in the year. We will use all sorts of different practical resources like tens and ones, bead strings, tens frames, counters, coins and more. In Autumn 2, we will move onto the skills of addition and subtraction. 

Science: We will find out all about what plants need to survive and their life cycles. We would be very grateful for any donations of plants for planting in our outside space. In Autumn 2, we will find out about materials and their properties which will help us consider the suitability of different materials. 

Geography: We will be busy reading and creating our own maps in Autumn 1, before moving on and looking at maps of where The Great Fire of London burned in Autumn 2. 

History:  During Autumn 1, we will find out about how Bracknell has changed over the last 100 years. In Autumn 2, we will travel all the way back to 1666 to find out about the key events and people in The Great Fire of London.

Art: We will work on drawing and portrait skills in Autumn 1 before looking at colour mixing skills in Autumn 2. 

DT: We will focus on textiles in Autumn 1 and we will learn how to sew a simple pouch. In Autumn 2 we will explore methods of joining in order to create our own Tudor houses, just like the ones that burned down in The Great Fire of London. 

PE: In our PE lessons we will be focusing on dodging and simple dance and then ball skills and gymnastics. 

PSHE: Our sessions this term will focus on 'Me and My Relationships' and 'Valuing Difference'.  

Computing: In computing we will learn how to log in to Purple mash independently before starting our computing with some internet safety work. We will move onto working on simple coding. 

RE: We will consider the questions 'how do some religions demonstrate that everyone is special?' and 'why are religious celebrations important to some people and not to others?'. 

Homework

Our expectations for homework are as follows: 

Weekly

Reading: Reading aloud with an adult progressing to more independent reading as often as possible. 

Maths: Daily practise on Numbots or TTRS.  

End-of-Year

Spellings: Children should be able to spell all words on the Statutory Word Lists for year 1/2.  

Times Tables: Children should be able to count in 2s, 5s, 10s, 3s. they will begin to learn 2, 5, 10x tables by heart.

Recommended Websites:

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button - quickfire number games to help children learn basic number facts 

http://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/ - Number games to reinforce the concept of place value

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/supermovers/ks1-collection/zbr4scw - Fun songs with actions to teach many learning concepts in English, Maths and other subjects. This is my new favourite resource!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/ks1-english/z67ncqt - Loads of story telling, poetry and punctuation short films to watch.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/ks1-maths/zhng7nb - Useful Maths short films to watch. Fractions and telling the time would be particularly good ones to try. 

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/5-7-years/addition-and-subtraction - Games from any of the Maths categories will really help your child practise skills they have learnt at school.

http://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/spookySpellings/index.html - great game for learning common exception words.