Year 2

Welcome to Year 2

Year 2 Chad: Siobhan Cutts, Gillian Smith

Year 2 Vale: Silpa Chhaya, Darren Hemmings and Nutan Patel

Siobhan Cutts - s.cutts@chadvale.bham.sch.uk
Gillian Smith - g.smith@chadvale.bham.sch.uk
Nutan Patel - n.patel@chadvale.bham.sch.uk
Silpa Chhaya - s.chhaya@chadvale.bham.sch.uk
Darren Hemmings - d.hemmings@chadvale.bham.sch.uk

Autumn Term

We would like to take this opportunity to welcome you and your child to Year 2!

This year children will be encouraged to develop their independence and love of learning. Children will make their own way into school where they will sort their belongings and begin a pre-learning activity such as handwriting, spellings or maths questions when they arrive in the classroom.

Things to Bring

PE kits—On PE days, children should wear their PE kit to school. Please ensure that your child has suitable clothing for the UK weather! Layers are ideal. They can wear leggings or jogging bottoms and a t-shirt with a school jumper or plain hoodie as well as trainers. Please, no branded items with logos unless it’s the Chad Vale logo!

PE Days are Mondays and Thursday Year 2 Chad

PE Days are Tuesdays and Thursday Year 2 Vale

Art Shirts—Please provide your child with a named, large T-shirt, apron or overall to be used for messy activities such as painting, cookery, etc. A large adult-sized t-shirt is perfect to cover and protect their clothes. These can then be kept in school in their personal trays.

Reading bags— Please ensure your child has a small bag for transporting books and letters. Children can choose their own reading books from the class selection as often as possible. Please encourage your child to read every day no matter how short. It really does make a difference to their learning across all subjects! We will also be sending home a reading book for your child weekly which will be at their reading level.

Snacks– A healthy fruit snack is provided in Year 2 which we give to the children at no cost. Children are also welcome to bring in their own snack, but please ensure this is a healthy option. No chocolate, crisps or sweets please. Most importantly, due to allergies, please remember that we are a nut-free school!

Drinks—Children have access to drinking water at all times. They may bring in their own, named reusable bottles which can be kept in the class. Water and cups are also available in our classroom.

Lunches—All children in Year 2 are eligible for a free hot meal every day!

English

In English, we will continue to build on the learning in Y1 with a focus on developing fluency and grammar. We teach the children using The Write Stuff approach. This term, the children will be learning a journey story and adapting a set of instructions as well as creating their own poems. We will be looking at a wide variety of texts including non-fiction information texts, poetry, stories and chapter books. The children will continue to improve their reading skills using daily reading enrichment activities. Daily cursive handwriting and spelling, punctuation and grammar skills will also be taught, practised and consolidated. Our class book for this term includes many of Julia Donaldson’s stories and ‘The Twits’ by Roald Dahl.

Maths

Your child will continue to develop their problem solving skills and we will provide regular opportunities for them to apply and practise new skills. Visual maths forms the basis of our maths teaching, enabling children to understand place value and calculations.

During this term we will be continuing to develop our counting skills, practising doubling and halving to at least 20 and learning the 2, 5 and 10 times tables by heart and understanding the corresponding division calculations. We will be ordering and comparing 2-digit numbers before learning how to add and subtract them. The children will continue their work on time and measurement. They will be learning to recognise English coins, adding totals and calculating change so we would encourage you to practise using real coins at home with your child.

We would encourage children to apply their mathematical knowledge at home by helping with recipes and cooking as well as practising telling the time (using an analogue clock is very helpful—not just digital!).

Topics

All Around the World

For the first half of the term, the children will be finding out about the rainforest. This will include a trip to The Botanical Gardens. They will look at the animals and plants that live in different habitats, creating Art and projects based on what they have discovered.

After half term, we will be looking at some of the festivals and traditions celebrated by the children such as Diwali, Halloween, Hannukah and Christmas. We will also link this to work about significant individuals who inspire us such as John Cadbury and Christopher Columbus. We will be linking this with our Art, DT, Geography, History and written work in English.