Merton Bank Primary School

Welcome to Year 2

Year 2 is a warm, welcoming and happy classroom where lots of exciting learning takes place. We aim for all our lessons to be engaging and interactive, with a focus on making learning accessible for all our children. Throughout Year 2, children continue to develop their independence. They are given roles and responsibilities in the classroom, with a focus on working together and helping each other. In Year 2 we have a huge focus on supporting children to grow a love of reading, becoming readers who read for pleasure and purpose. The year is jam packed with high quality, hand-picked texts which we hope will help create life-long readers. Our children challenge themselves to achieve their full potential and we work hard to ensure our classroom is a safe space for everyone to try new skills and learn from mistakes. Mental health and well-being are high priority in Year 2. We work hard to support our 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, ensuring they know how special and capable they are.

Things to remember

• Please continue to support your child’s learning at home. It is expected your child reads 3x per week at home. Please record this in your child’s reading record. Thank you for supporting your children at home. It truly is appreciated.

• Your child needs to bring their reading book, book bag and water bottle into school daily.

• All children in Key Stage One qualify for a free school meal. Please enquire at the office for more information.

• Milk and fruit are provided daily. Please pay for your child’s milk (costing £2 per term) termly in a sealed envelope.

• This term (autumn) we have PE every Monday and Thursday.

Autumn Term Learning:

Take a look at some of the exciting learning in Year 2 during Autumn Term 2024

Maths

In maths, we have been busy becoming place vlaue experts! We have been busy partitioning and recomingin numbers to 100. We have used various representations to partiton numbers, we even used chalk outside to create our own part whole models. 

Talk for Writing- 'The Magic Porridge Pot' 

We have been learning 'The Magic Porridge Pot', using lots of actions and expression.  We have created text maps, descriptive sentences inspired by our text and even made our own delicious porridge. We have also enjoyed acting as the woodland characters Poppy meets on her journey. 

Take a look at some of the exciting learning in Year 2 last year.

Writing

This term in Year 2, we really enjoyed reading the book Jack and the Baked Beanstalk by Colin Stimpson; a funny twist on the classic tale. The children made comparisons between the two stories and acted out the story with stick characters. They then dined out at our Year 2 Beanstalk Café and then planned and wrote glowing restaurant reviews, using some wonderful adjectives. I think everyone gave it 5 stars!

Religious Education 

In RE this term, we have been exploring why Jesus was known as they ‘Light of the world’ and other different titles he might have been referred to. We looked at how light is symbolic to Christians and how this might be used as part of their Christmas celebrations and the different ways that they celebrate. We then got to make our own Christingle. The orange represents the world and the candle represents Jesus as being ‘the light of the world’.

Art

In Art this term, we have been taking inspiration from L.S Lowry and his famous artwork pieces. We've been developing sketching and shading skills by using different grades of pencils to add different affects, tone and mood to our drawings. Our new skills will prepare us for sketching a real St Helens landmark!

Take a look at some of the exciting learning in Year 2 during Spring Term 2024

Geography

In Geography we have been learning all about how the weather in Kampong Ayer compares to the weather in St Helens. We found it fascinating to learn all about the houses in the water village and the reasons for the houses being built like this. We really enjoyed having opportunities in Geography lessons for children to lead the learning, taking their ideas to new partners and different tables to explore further ideas and opinions of others. 

Design Technology

In Design Technology, our key skill was to learn how to make structures stronger. We decided that we would try to build a house on stilts just like the water village houses in Kampong Ayer and we knew that they needed to be strong to keep the stilts attached as well as withstand the rising and falling river height. We explored different joining techniques then made a plan before attempting to build a house that would stand on stilts using only cardboard. We really enjoyed this project, it required a lot of resilience and perseverance!

Computing

In Computing, we have been familiarising ourselves with Word. We've been getting used to the keyboard and where letters are positioned, we have also been learning how to change the style of what we have written. We have explored changing our writing into 'bold', 'italic' and to 'underline' our work. Not only can we change our writing style, we have also explored highlighting the font, changing the font colour and how to insert a picture onto a word document.