Curriculum OverviewAutumn Term 2- 2017

Year 2

Topic: Magical Lands

As sportsmen we will be using running, jumping and hopping to complete field activities in athletics. In gymnastics the children will use their hands and feet to travel in different ways thinking about direction and level.

In PSHE we will recognise, name and deal with feelings in a positive way, focussing on how we can distinguish between right and wrong in the choices we make. We will look at how our behaviour can affect others.

In RE we will look at what can we learn from Biblical tales (David and Goliath, The Good Samaritan) and how Christians implement these ideas in their daily lives. We will learn about the story of Christmas and discuss why this is an important holiday for Christians.

This term you can help you child at home by;

Reading with your child and questioning them. Making sure they are correcting themselves if what they have read doesn’t make sense.

Practice the cursive handwriting style and ensuring that your child is forming their letters correctly with the correct joins.

Practice applying their knowledge of spelling patterns in written work, with an additional focus on the ‘common exception words’ (these are on a word mat sent home in the Spring term/are available online).

Practicing strategies to solve problems using the four operations mentally.

Practice their 2, 5, and 10 times tables so they can recall them without counting in steps.

In maths we will work on number and place value, counting in tens from any number, comparing numbers up to 100 and look at how we can partition numbers in different ways. We will begin to look at subtraction, recognising that it is the inverse of addition, start to understand the commutative law and solve problems using subtraction. We will recall and use multiplication facts for the 2, 5 and 10 times tables. In geometry we will identify and describe the properties of 2D and 3D shapes including the number of edges, vertices and faces. We are also learning to justify and prove our answers, across the maths.

The second Year 2 topic is ‘Magical Lands’ - the children will travel to different magical and imaginary worlds such as Oz, Neverland, Narnia and many more! We will use texts/stories, videos, and pictures to explore these worlds to inspire us in our art and writing. The children will compare the different worlds thinking about the similarities and differences between each one.

As scientists the children will find out how shapes of solid objects can be changed by squashing, twisting, bending and stretching. We will investigate how materials go through irreversible changes and what materials experience reversible changes. In order to do this, we will carry out our own comparative tests to gather and record data.

In Geography we be taking our work on magical lands to our world discovering the different continents and oceans. We will learn to locate each continent and ocean on a map and globe. The children will be able to name, locate and identify characteristics of the 4 countries and capital cities of the United Kingdom and its surrounding seas.

In English we will look at a collection of stories involving magical and imaginary lands. We will use these stories to inspire our writing across a range of genres to cover all of the different features of English in order to give each child the opportunity to write their best pieces of writing. The children will be encouraged to show an awareness of their reader when they are writing so they can create a mood with careful selection of vocabulary. Children will learn how to write both formal and informal letters, showing that they have an awareness of who they are writing to. Our grammar focus will be learning how to use a range of sentence types engage the reader and make our writing exciting.

As musicians we will be looking at the topic of travel, in this unit the children learn a Tanzanian game song and accompany a travelling song using voices and instruments. They listen to an orchestral piece and improvise their own descriptive music.

As artists the children will be practicing their sketching and shading skills to create their own magical creatures. We will be applying our knowledge of colour and the different painting skills we have developed over the year to create some of our own scenes from magical lands. In D&T the children will be designing and making their own catapults, linking this to our science work from last term- thinking about which materials will be appropriate.

In ICT we will create and modify pictures using a paint program, and print our work independently. We will begin to use presentational software, learning to import images and sounds into a presentation and cut, copy and paste text.