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General Information
Reading:
We will continue to make the children's experience with reading and books very exciting and we will draw their attention towards the many places and different times books can make us travel to!
Your child will have new reading books every week and they will be getting a library book which will be changed every fortnight.
They will also have other opportunities to read different genres and levels of books at school daily.
Please ensure that the reading books and the reading diary is sent in your child's book bags everyday . It would be really appreciated if you could leave a comment when you have read with your child and let us know how they got on. If you wish to just sign in the diary that will also support us with monitoring how many times the children are reading at home.
If you need any support please do not hesitate to ask any of the year 2 team.
How to support
Top Ten Strategies for Independent Reading
Writing
The list below shows the ten key points about how we approach writing for year 2 children at school, many of which you can support with at home too!
INTERESTING THEM!
Make writing relevant for children – write about real experiences or link to a topic they are interested in. Bookmaking is super!
READING
Read lots of high quality texts in a range of genre e.g. fiction, instructions, explanations, information, diary, poetry, letters, reports and recounts. They will replicate some of the super features in their own writing.
SPEAKING AND LISTENING
Speaking and listening is key, at school we use many drama techniques and talk partners to support the development of ideas.
VCOP – enhance writing by focusing on these elements:
Spellings – using phonics knowledge and patterns as well as high frequency words, only pick up on a few at a time (we use a maximum of 3) and start with words children will use more regularly. Games and investigating spelling patterns, as well as lots of exposure to key words will help embed spellings, rather than learning lists by rote.
Practise in many exciting ways e.g. outside in chalk or sand, using paint
In Key Stage 1, children should be forming letters correctly, sizing them appropriately and placing letters correctly on lines (decenders e.g. g, y have tails below the line). We use the cursive letter formation, starting in Year 1, to aid with the joining process in Year 2 – an objective on the new National Curriculum
It is important that children know what their targets are and how they can improve their writing. Next step responses from the children are usually very important to ensure that they have no misconceptions and to ensure that they undersand why they made mistakes.
Children need to be able to check, edit and improve their own writing. We always encourage children to take ownership of self assessmennt and learn from young age how to evaluate their work and peers work.
We support children with writing by building up to longer writing through many smaller activities. We model each activity to children and do shared writing that gives them ideas and confidence before writing on their own. We scaffold children in many ways, using sentence starters, picture cues, word banks, drama and so on, so that they do not feel worried when writing on their own.
It is important children see adults undertaking the writing process too!
Encourage them to be as independent as possible – not to be afraid of making mistakes.
Praise, Praise, Praise! Encourage and praise children as much as possible for any writing they do. Encourage them to share their writing with others to give them a greater sense of purpose. Display their writing to celebrate their successes.
Maths: Mastery Maths
Children are learning the new approach to Maths by attempting to explain their answers, prove them correct and use them in different ways. The new approach to Maths allows all the children to try the same problems and learn in the ways that suit them and their learning styles better.
Collaborative learning is key to our children and we continue to allow them to use their own creative thinking to solve problems and share different ideas regardless of the outcomes. Children grow in confidence to feel that they are able to achieve no matter how hard the learning is.
There are three main parts to our Maths lessons: In focus, Let's Learn and independent or guided practice.
Children attempt all three aspects of solving problems beginning with CONCRETE objects and moving on to using PICTORIAL representations and ending with ABSTRACT recording and working out!!
General Reminders
It would be great if you could encourage your child to practice these key non-negotiables. If you would like advice on how help your child achiee in numeracy please speak to a member of the Year 2 team on the playground each morning!
Year 2 – English Non Negotiables
Expectations for pupils by the end of Year 2
Capital letters.
Full stops.
Question marks.
Exclamation marks.
Commas in a list.
Apostrophe (omission)
Introduction of speech marks.
Year 2 – Maths Non Negotiables
Expectations for pupils by the end of Year 2
2 digit numbers and tens
Two 2 digit numbers
Three 1 digit numbers
Autumn 1
Check out these fun but educational websites:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3c6tfr
http://www.ictgames.com/resources.html
http://www.topmarks.co.uk/parents/
Some useful links for Phonic games
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/literacy/
http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/
http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/