Sycamore
Year 2
Mrs Taylor and Mrs Drury
Miss Velzian and Mrs Boothman
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 16th 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.
Hot and Cold Places
This term we will be learning all about hot and cold places around the world. We will have a heavy focus on geography knowledge about the equator, Northern and Southern Hemispheres and some of the climate zones around the world. This links well to our learning in Science about animals including humans and and living things and their habitats. In art, we will develop a range of printing skills and in DT, we will learn how to use mechanisms to make a moving fairground ride.
Our Learning
Class Routines
School gates open at 8:40 and the day finishes at 3:10. Our main classroom door for the start and end of the school day is Sycamore class door, inside the KS1 outside area.
Our regular PE lessons are as follows: Thursday
On these days, children should come to school wearing their PE kit. We will also be doing a daily run and engaging with outdoor play in our self-led learning. Please send in wellies for pupils to keep at school for outdoor learning.
We will change reading books on Mondays and Thursdays. Please make sure your child has their reading book in school every day.
Meet the Teacher Presentation
Hot and Cold Places
English: In English, we will be writing a short narrative to entertain. We will work on writing simple sentences and then extending these using conjunctions. We will also experiment with using a range of sentence types to make our writing more exciting.
Maths: We will focus on addition and subtraction skills before moving onto learning about multiplication.
Science: We will think in detail about animals including humans and what they need to survive. This will lead into learning about living things and their habitats.
Geography: We will find out about the equator and Northern and Southern Hemispheres. We will investigate some different climate zones around the world as well as keeping our daily class record of weather.
History:
Art: We will learn about different methods of creating artwork using printing and repeating patterns, including the technique of frottage and the work of Max Ernst.
DT: We will learn how to create mechanisms that can be used in the construction of a moving fairground wheel.
PE: In our PE lessons with Mr O'Keefe we will be focusing on gymnastics - pathways.
PSHE: Our sessions this term will focus on keeping safe.
Computing: We will be learning how to safely search, share and communicate online using Purple mash as the platform for this. We will then learn how to use simple spreadsheets.
RE: We will consider the question ' does everyone believe the same things about God?'
Knowledge Organiser
Year 2 Common Exception Words
Homework
Our expectations for homework are as follows:
Weekly
Reading: Reading aloud with an adult progressing to more independent reading as often as possible.
Home Learning Activity: Complete the weekly Maths, Spelling and Reading activity. This will be handed out on a Friday and will be due the next Thursday.
The following link has videos which will help you to support your child with the maths tasks: https://whiteroseeducation.com/parent-pupil-resources/maths/home-learning?year=year-2-new
Half-Termly
Project: Each half term, children are expected to complete a project that is linked to their current topic.
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.