(01744) 678150

ashurst@sthelens.org.uk

Excellence Everyday

Year 2 Class 

'Excellence Everyday'

'Learn, Live, Laugh and Love Ashurst'

Learn to be inspiring and make a difference to this world, we know how amazing you are,

Live with understanding and compassion for others, knowing we are all different and special in a community where equality stands tall,

Laugh and listen to the enjoyment of learning and excitement of everyone celebrating their achievements,

Love Ashurst, our special school and the hub of supportive staff, parents and children who aim high to be the best they can be.

Year 2 staff

Teacher

Miss J. Fildes

Learning Assistant

Mrs K. Mackenzie

HLTA

Miss A. Forshaw

Learning Environment

Year Two is a warm and welcoming classroom where lots of exciting learning takes place. We aim for all lessons to be interactive, exciting and engaging. Throughout Year Two, children continue to develop their independence. They are given lots of responsibilities and they challenge themselves to achieve their full potential! With support from teachers and family at home, the children work hard on their goals.  Mental health and well-being are high priority in Year 2.  We work hard to support the children to be happy and free from worry and anxieties.  We promote positive self-talk and resilience and guide children through any difficulties they face.  We use wonderful stories to explore themes linked to mental health and  well-being. 

 

Each child enters Year Two at a different stage. Therefore we treat every child as an individual and plan to cater for their individual needs. We understand that every child learns in a different way and has different interests and it is our aim to adapt our teaching to suit the children. We encourage their independence throughout, allowing them to take ownership of their learning and achievements and to understand how to solve problems on their own.

 

Rules and Routines

 At the beginning of the year, children are encouraged to contribute to our class rules and vision. This runs alongside the schools  policies and procedures and is expected to further improve the learning environment for all and in turn develop strategies for 'Behaviour for Learning'. Conversation and discussion are encouraged in Year 2 and is balanced with dedication to learn and succeed through quiet and independent work.        

Routine

  • Doors open 8:45am
  • Registration is at  8:55am and the school day ends at 3:15pm
  • Break time will be at 10:20am.
  • Lunch time will be at 11:30am until 12:30pm.

What do we learn?

We have daily Maths and English/SPAG lessons.  We have exciting books on our class reading spine which give children a breadth and depth of literature. We use the Talk for Writing approach, which starts with oral rehearsal moving into innovated pieces of writing and finally independent pieces of writing.  We have reading lessons to help us work on year group reading objectives. We have daily opportunities to read across the curriculum.  In Maths, we use a mastery approach to enable all children to gain a deep understanding of the unit of work. The activities we complete range from practical to written in order to cater for the different learning needs of the children.  

We have an action packed curriculum with lots of exciting learning.  We work as scientists, historians, artists , musicians and much more!  Click on the Long Term Plan and Topic Web documents for more information on the exciting learning journey that takes place each half term.

Important things to remember for September 2023: 

  • The class door opens at 8:45am and closes at 8:55am. The school day ends at 3:15pm - your child will enter and leave from the Year 2 classroom door.
  • You may wish to provide a healthy snack for your child to eat at 10:20am playtime or your child can have a piece of fruit provided by school.  Lunch will be at 11:30am -12:30pm.
  • Each child can have their own water bottle on their desk, please provide these with their name on.
  • We have PE every Wednesday and Thursday– please ensure that your child attends school on these days in their PE kit.  On these days children must wear the following PE uniform: Black jogging bottoms with the new logo, or black sports leggings, white PE tops , black hoody tops . Or a Summer PE kit : red shorts and white PE top.
  • Reading books will be changed every Friday.  Please ensure your child has their reading book in school each Friday.  Reading records will be provided for you to comment on your child's reading.  We will ask for these to be sent into school each Friday so that we can celebrate the reading taking place at home.  We expect every child to read at home every night to develop good habits and make the best progress. Thank you in advance for your support with this. 
  • Homework will be set weekly and will usually consist of English, Maths and Spellings but may also relate to other subjects. Homework will be set on a Friday, and will be expected back in the following Friday.  
  • Spellings will be sent home in the form of a worksheet (these will be different than the RWI spellings). Worksheets will be sent back into school the following Friday, with homework.   Please support your child in learning these spellings at home.  We recommend little and often. A spelling quiz will take place each Friday to allow us to assess and support your child.
  • Topic webs will be uploaded onto this class page in the first week of each half term. Topic webs will inform you of the learning taking place that half term, you may wish to discuss key learning with your child at home. 

 

KS1 SATs 2024

 

May 2023 was the last year when mandatory Key Stage 1 SATs were held. From 2024, the tests are optional. In Year 2 we will continue to report teacher assessment levels in combination with the optional KS1 SATs tests. These tests remain to be published and provided to schools to allow teachers to assess knowledge and learning in KS1.

If you would like to discuss any aspect of your child's learning then please don't hesitate to call and make an appointment to see us. 
Thank you for your continued support and I look forward to working alongside your child and your family.
Miss Fildes

Year 2 Long Term Plan 2023-2024

Year 2 Topic Webs

Name
 Autumn 1 2023.pdfDownload
 Autumn 2 2023.pdfDownload
 Spring 1 2024.pdfDownload
 Spring 2 2024.pdfDownload
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Book recommendations for Year 2

Follow the link below to view a wealth of recommended books for your child in Year 2. You will never be short of book suggestions with this site. 

 https://www.thereaderteacher.com/year2

Useful Phonics Websites

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo7fbLgY2oA_cFCIg9GdxtQ - free phonics films for parents

www.phonicsbloom.com

www.topmarks.co.uk

www.ictgames.com

Learning 2023-2024

Spring Term

Maths - adding two, 2 digit numbers

We have been using base 10 resources to learn about the formal method of column addition. If the ones become 10 or more, then we exchange 10 ones for a ten and place it into the ten's column.

Chinese New Year Dance Workshop

At the start of a new year on the traditional Chinese calendar (i.e. the first new moon that appears between the 21st of January and the 20th of February), people all over China gather to celebrate this important holiday. A dragon dance is a form of traditional dance where a team of skilled performers work as one to manoeuvre a giant, papier-mâché dragon using wooden sticks or poles. We were lucky enough to have a dance workshop and learnt how to perform this along with other dances.

PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies) 

As part of 'Time to Talk Day', we decorated pebbles for our new outdoor area whilst talking and listening to our friends about how we feel.

Storytelling Workshop

We were enthralled and entertained when listening to Gav Cross tell his stories about dragons. We even joined in to bring the stories even more alive.

We love to read

Reading for pleasure is a main focus at Ashurst Primary. In Year 2, we love choosing books from our class library and taking time to enjoy them.

3D shapes are all around us!

 We have been learning about the properties of shapes - how many faces, vertices and edges each 3D shape has.

Saints Community Development Foundation

We have been so lucky to receive rugby training, as one of our PE lessons, from St Helens RLFC. 

Herbivore or Carnivore?

We learnt about carnivores and herbivores in a food chain, but first we needed to sort the animals into groups.

Planting Daffodils

Throughout the year we will be observing and describing how seeds and bulbs grow into mature plants so we planted daffodils that will grow outside our classroom window.

Autumn Term

When the children met Santa

Tatton Park Christmas Extravaganza

We were so lucky and got to meet Father Christmas! He sang songs with us, gave us a Christmas present and even told us that we are all on the 'good list'. Phew! We heard the story of 'Christmas on the farm' around a fireplace that was all dressed in traditional Christmas decorations. As we walked around the farm, we came across a beautiful Nativity scene. As an additional treat, we came across Father Christmas' sleigh! We got to sit in it and and have a pictures taken! After this, we went into the Mansion. Every room was decorated to match a well known fairytale. We were very clever and knew which fairytale all of the rooms were dressed up as, it was amazing! What a busy, yet magical day we had at Tatton Park. One we won't forget!

Remembrance Day - Reading

As part of our learning about Remembrance Day, we read the book 'Where the Poppies Now Grow'. We inferred how the characters were feeling, based on the illustrations throughout the book. We also made our own poppies to take home and share with our families.

Science

We have been looking at microhabitats. Today we worked scientifically by gathering and recording data to help in answering the question: Based on a woodlice natural habitat, which section of the choice chamber will the woodlice prefer to be?

Geography

 We are learning about where our food comes from locally so we visited our local shops to interview the shopkeepers and find out exactly what was sold in each shop.

Science

 We had a fantastic afternoon at Sankey Valley looking at different micro-habitats. We were lucky enough to find lots of different living things such as snails, worms, bees, spiders and even a squirrel. 

Talk 4 Writing 

To help us with writing our own story, we have been learning all about 'Jack and the Beanstalk' - we even made up our own actions !

History 

We are learning about The Great Fire of London in 1666. In this lesson we were finding out that there are different perspectives on the reasons to why the fire started such as wood, the baker, wind, sun and living conditions. 

We had to find the puzzle pieces of information around the classroom and return with them to add to the “bigger picture” surrounding the  causes of the Great Fire of London and its  consequences. We found out that it wasn’t just the bakers fault!

 

 

Art

We worked together to arrange leaves in the style of Andy Goldsworthy. We looked carefully at his work and realised that the leaves must be arranged in a circular shape.

We chose our own colour formations—dark in the middle, then brown, then green.