Autumn Term 2

Reading

This half term, the children will be revisiting the concept ‘Reading for Pleasure’. During this learning journey the children will develop their pleasure in reading, motivation to read, vocabulary and their understanding, by exploring a range of classic and contemporary poetry. Building upon their knowledge from Year One they will learn to appreciate, discuss and explain their understanding of poems and will learn to recite some from memory, using appropriate intonation to make the meaning clear.

 

Writing

During Autumn 2, the concept for writing learning remains ‘Communication’. Now that the children have learned (from Autumn 1) to communicate through effective use of different sentence types, they will learn to use an effective mixture of different sentence structures within their writing. The children will learn to use an accurate tense, keeping the tense consistent throughout their writing as required. They will revisit the use of conjunctions (from Year One), however, they will now learn to use both coordinating and subordinating conjunctions (pink words) to write compound and complex sentences. They will practise using these sentence structures effectively when writing for different purposes. After unpicking the conjunctions used in their lead text ‘Vlad and the Florence Nightingale Adventure’, the children will be inspired to help author Kate Cunningham by writing a Mary Seacole adventure story to entertain children, from the perspective of Vlad the flea. Towards the end of the learning journey, the children will be supported to apply their learning by writing for different purposes. By the end of the half term they will have revisited writing to persuade and will create their own poster or leaflet to persuade someone to build a new hospital in Ashurst. They will also write a letter inviting parents/carers to their school play and they will have their first attempt at writing a poem, after studying the features of poetry in guided reading.

 

Maths

This half term in maths the children will be learning about addition and subtraction. They will learn to find number bonds and will also learn about 2D and 3D shapes. The journey begins with children building upon their place value knowledge and understanding what addition means and how to calculate this. This begins with the use of concrete apparatus (Dienes), before moving on to pictorial representations and using both structured and unstructured number lines. They will then also develop fluency in using mental methods to solve addition calculations. Within their addition journey they will learn about commutativity, that an addition calculation can be solved either way round (e.g. 6 + 4 is the same as 4 + 6). They will then move on to subtraction and will repeat the process of concrete, pictorial, abstract. Once secure in this, they will learn about the inverse relationships (how subtraction is the opposite of addition). They will learn to find fact families, use related facts and will learn how to solve missing number problems. They will then use their addition and subtraction knowledge to identify number bonds to 20. The children will learn to recall these quickly and accurately and will learn to use this knowledge to derive related facts to 100.

 

Science

During Autumn 2, the question the Year Two children will explore in science is ‘what changes can happen as an animal grows?’ through the concept of biology – animal survival. They will explore the basic needs of an animal to live and how living things can think, move for themselves, breathe, reproduce and excrete waste. They will also understand that humans are animals too. Acting as scientists, they will classify different types of animal by sorting into groups or categories and investigate by making observations.

 

History

In Autumn 2, the children in Year Two will continue learning about the concept of chronology. Their learning journey builds from Autumn 1 and as we begin Autumn 2, they will learn to explore and compare the lives of significant individuals in the past, who have contributed to national and international achievements within their own locality. The children will learn about Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. They will learn about these inspirational women and their particular contributions, considering the impact of their achievements on modern day society. Their learning will be contextualised by

focussing on the changes made within the nursing profession. Once the children have demonstrated a secure understanding of this, they will progress onto step 4 of their journey. During this step the children will use their knowledge of Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale to explore and explain similarities and differences between different time periods and how this has shaped and made changes to society today. The children will build their awareness of the 1800s and use the context of these individuals to make comparisons between then and now.

 

Geography

The children will continue to learn more about their home of the United Kingdom. They will explore the seas which surround us and learn more about each of the capital cities. Finally, they will apply all of their autumn learning to answer the question ‘How do I get to Belfast City?’

 

Design and Technology

Following on from their research in Autumn 1, the children will create and evaluate their own glove puppet using a range of techniques and finishes.

 

RE

In RE this half term, the children will learn about how a candle can be used as a symbol. They will carefully consider what a candle means to them. To contextualise this new learning, the children will learn about the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, with a particular focus on the way in which candles are used during this time, in the form of a Menorah. The children will also apply their learning to consider how Christians use light as a symbol at Christmas.

 

RSHE

Now that the children have achieved their Autumn 1 milestones, the children will focus on the concept of relationships. They will learn about what a healthy friendship means and think about how they can help someone who is feeling angry in different scenarios. They will then talk about how they can be kind to others and help people if they are feeling left out. Finally, they will consider how they can resolve conflict, working in groups to think of solutions and strategies to help them navigate conflicts they may face.

 

PE

In their Real PE lessons this half term, the children will focus on the social cog. This means they will learn to praise and encourage others in their learning, share their ideas and show patience and support to others. These skills will be developed through the context of dynamic balance to agility, during which the children will learn to jump and land in different ways. They will be using these to think about the skill of jumping and landing, using this and applying it in different ways.

 

Music

During Autumn 2, the year two children will learn about pitch during music lessons. They will further develop an understanding of beat and rhythm patterns and will learn about the pitch of different Christmas melodies. The children will apply their knowledge by playing different tunes and untuned percussion instruments. They will also apply their musical abilities during our Christmas play, during which they will learn to use their voices expressively in different ways.

 

Computing

The children will learn about how computers can be used to create media. They will explore the different functions of Word and learn how to change the font, size and colour of their writing. They will also learn how to add an image onto their document. They will use their knowledge to create a poster of Florence Nightingale/Mary Seacole as well as where the best place would be to build a hospital (linking from their Geography learning). Finally, they will think about why a computer is a good tool to make a poster on.