Year 2 - St. Dominic- Miss Glynn

Welcome to Year 2 - St. Dominic Class

Class Teacher: Miss Glynn

Support Staff: Mrs Glover and Mrs Davidson-Ali (Mrs Ali)

A Typical Day in Year 2

Library- Every Friday the children will have an opportunity to select and change their own Library books in the school Library. Please ensure their book is kept safely in their book bag. 

Doors open at 8.45am and children have a daily morning activity to complete at their desk. These activities are important as they are often about reflecting on their previous work. Once they have completed this activity, it is expected that the children get a book from the 'Reading Garden' and read it quietly in their place. The door closes at 9am sharp and it is then that the register is taken.

Statutory Assessments in Year 2
In the Summer term, all children (who are working within KS1 national curriculum), will be participating in Standard Attainment Tests (SATs). The areas that the children will be tested in, are:

• English comprehension- working at age related expectations and working at greater depth
• Spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPaG)
• Writing
• Mathematics- arithmetic and problem solving

Any children that did not pass the year 1 phonic screening check will be re- screened in the summer term.

Monday 17th September 2018 we met Rufus. He is a family member of Mrs Crane. Rufus has spent a considerable amount of time training and 'passing' many behavioural and temperament assessments. All his accreditations can be seen in school.

We are very excited to be welcoming him to our team.

What we have been up to...

Our topic this half-term is: London

February 2020

Article of the Month

You have the right to play and rest. (Article 31)

RE

This month we reflected on how we could bring good news to our family and friends. On 14th February, we participated in the WWF's Share the Love campaign to raise money for the animals affected by the bush fires in Australia. We thought Pope Francis' teachings, that "... each of us has a personal responsibility to care for the precious gift of God's earth...".

English

We started to learn about The Great Fire of London. Our local fire service visited us to help us reenact the fire, burning houses that we had made. This helped us to think about the emotion felt by the people whose houses were lost in the fire.

Mathematics 

We applied our knowledge of multiplication and division to finding fractions of number; these included unit and non-unit fractions. We started by using pictorial representations to help us and then applied this knowledge to working out the fraction using a numberline. 

What we have been up to...

Our topic this half-term is: London

Great Fire Of London.

We were very lucky to have the local fire service visit us to recreate the Great Fire of London. As part of  our home learning, we created Tudor style houses that the Firemen set alight to show how the fire spread across Pudding Lane.

January 2020

Article of the Month

You have the right to a good quality education. (Article 28)

RE

The children learnt that Jesus brought the good news of God’s love and that this changed people’s lives. They thought about how Jesus used his power to help others and reflected on the importance of these events. 

English

We began our topic by reading Katie in London, comparing the setting to a book set in New York called Lady Liberty’s Holiday.  We created our own story about Lady Liberty visiting London and going on an adventure. 

Mathematics

This month we developed our knowledge of multiplication and division. The children revisited their learning from Year 1, using pictorials to help them to solve mathematical questions and developing this understanding to counting in different ways using a numberline.

What we have been up to...

Our topic this half-term is: Ice

December 2019

Article of the Month

You have the right to special protection and help if you are a refugee. (Article 22)

RE

During this special time of Advent, we thought about God choosing Mary to be the mother of Jesus. We thought about ways in which we prepare for Christmas, the first coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. We reflected on the birth of Jesus, why it is important to us and ways in which we can show our love for Jesus. Our Caritas focus was the poor and vulnerable, a group of Year 2's visited a Christmas lunch for the elderly on Sunday, 15th December and sung to the parishioners as they ate their Christmas dinner.

English

In English, we continued applying a range of literary skills to our writing. These included: a variety of different sentence types, contractions, using common exception words, conjunctions (subordinating and coordinating), as well as words with suffixes -ly and -ful. 

Mathematics

We started to revisit multiplication and division, using pictorial representations to help us to solve both number and word problems. 

What we have been up to...

Our topic this half-term is: Ice

November 2019

Article of the Month

Every child has the right to relax and play. (Article 31)

RE

This month we started our new topic, The Mystery of God. We thought about different mysteries especially the Holy Trinity. To help us to understand that God is three in one, we thought about how we have more than one role, e.g. we're a daughter/son, a sister/brother and a friend.

English

We started our Ice topic learning about the Titanic. We enjoyed learning about it so much that it became our key focus for the topic. We used different sources to help us to understand what life was like on the Titanic, we wrote letters, designed posters and wrote fact files. The literary skills we focused on this month were, exclamation sentences, contractions and common exception words in sentences.

Mathematics

We have been applying our knowledge of adding and subtracting to money. We have explored the different coins and the values of them.

What we have been up to...

Our topic this half-term is: Chocolate.

October 2019

Article of the Month

You have the right to safe water to drink and nutritious food. (Article 24)

RE

In RE this month, we have been looking at the stories of Moses and Daniel. We learnt about the Ten Plagues and why God sent them. We thought about the importance of having faith and believing in God's promises because he always keeps his promises. For homework, we made the Ten Commandments, everyone enjoyed going home and researching all about them. We looked at the story of Daniel in the lions' den, we were able to compare all three Bible stories thinking about the common theme: faith and trust in God. As part of our work on Laudato Si' (care for our common home), we wrote to our local MP Sir Mike Penning asking him how he could support us in making Hemel Hempstead a more environmentally friendly place to live.

English

In English, we looked at Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We retold the story in different ways using a range of writing skills, e.g. exclamation sentence, question sentence, list of three and common exception words. We have designed our own sweets, written to persuade Willy Wonka to employ us in his factory and written a newspaper article. 

Mathematics

In mathematics, we have been continuing our knowledge of adding and subtracting. We have been applying our knowledge of partitioning to add and subtract two two-digit numbers. Also, we have been applying our knowledge of addition and subtraction to solving number problems. We have also been securing our knowledge of counting in different ways and number bonds using songs.

Our topic this half-term is, Chocolate.

September 2019

Article of the Month:

All children have these rights. No child should be treated unfairly. (Article 2)

RE

The children enjoyed celebrating Our Lord's Mother, Mary's birthday on 8th September. We celebrated with a birthday party that was filled with chocolate. The children thought about the significance of Mary, understanding that she was one of God's chosen people and without her sacrifices the world would be a very different place today.

Our new topic in RE is Chosen People. We have started to learn about one of God's chosen people, Abraham. We thought about the important message in The Story of Abraham remembering that God always keeps his promises. We have thought about what God's promise means to us and why it is important to always keep the faith and to trust in God.

English

We have started our first book in English, Grendel, about a monster who loves chocolate. The children have loved hearing about a little monster who is obsessed with chocolate! They have thought carefully about the moral of the story, being careful what you wish for. We have designed our own monster in the style of Grendel as well as retelling the story. In our English lessons, we have been focussing on securing a variety of key literary skills, including: using a variety of conjunctions (and, but, because, when), Year 2 common exception words, list of three (e.g. beautiful, brave and wonderful), as well as question sentences. 

Mathematics

Our focus in mathematics is securing our understanding of place value. We have been partitioning numbers in different ways, using our knowledge of the tens and ones to help us. We have applied our knowledge of place value to creating addition number sentences, to help us we have used our base ten and numicon manipulatives. We have also been practising counting down from 100, as well as counting in different was, for example counting in our 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s. We have had fun applying our knowledge of counting in different ways to solving a variety of mathematical challenges, including problem solving questions.

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