Year 2 – St. Teresa- Miss James

Welcome to Year 2 - St. Teresa Class

Class Teacher: Miss James

Support staff: Mrs K Quinn, Mrs H Gimmi & Mr Whiting

Our Dom Squad representatives are: Sofia, Daniel, Woody and *Darcie

Our class eco warriors are: Kaien and Anneliesa

Our class school council representatives are: Aarun and Sabina

Our class super scientists are: Freya and Eddie

*Associate member

Year 2’s Daily Routine
8.45-9am	Doors open- morning activity
9am-9.10am	Register and morning prayer
9.10am-9.30am	Spelling
9.30am-10.30am	English/Maths
10.30am-10.45am	Break
10.45am-11.45am	English/Maths
11.45am-12.05pm	Guided Reading
12.05pm-12.15pm	Newsround
1.15pm-1.30pm	Handwriting
1.30pm-2.15pm	RE/PE/TOPIC/Science/Music/Computing/PSHE
2.15pm-2.45pm	RE/PE/TOPIC/Science/Music/Computing/PSHE
2.45pm-3.05pm	Collective Worship
3.08pm-3.10pm	End of day prayer

Children are provided with a mid morning snack of fresh fruit or vegetables and milk or water. Playtime is from 10.30 am to 10.45 am and is supervised by two members of staff, with a third member of staff on first aid duty.

Lunchtime break is from 12:15pm until 1:15pm where the children are supervised by Mid-day Supervisors.

Reading Books	In Miss James's class, books are changed once a week during 'Guided Reading' sessions. Please ensure that you have signed your child's orange reading record book when you have heard them read. Please comment on how they have read and also how they have responded to the comprehension questions that you have asked them. For examples of comprehension questions at your child's reading level, please refer to the example questions under the 'Useful Resources' section on our class page. Please note that the books your child takes home are books that they are fluent in; this is to encourage reading for pleasure but also to give them the opportunity to work on their understanding through comprehension questioning.
P.E. Days	Our P.E. days are Monday and Friday. P.E. kits should be kept in school at all times. We will send them home over the school holidays. Long hair needs to be tied back and earrings are not allowed to be worn in school at any time. It would be helpful if girls could have a pair of white ankle socks in their PE bag for the days they come to school wearing tights.
Morning Routine	When children arrive in the morning they are expected to come into the classroom themselves and change out of their coats and outdoor shoes, putting their things away. The children then go to their places where they can do 'Early Morning Work' or read a book for pleasure. At 9:00 the classroom door is closed and registration is taken, finishing with morning prayer. Any child arriving after 9:00 must enter school through the Main Reception Area. We will always strive to maintain these routines. However, on rare occasions, circumstances prevent us from following them exactly.

Nina and the Neurons Use your engineering skills to play games and help the Neurons collect stars.

Statutory Assessments in Year 2
Children will be working throughout the year towards the final end of Key Stage 1 Statutory Assessment Tests (SATs). Children will be assessed on Reading; Writing (including Spelling, Punctuation & Grammar); Mathematics and Science. All subjects are teacher assessed but some judgements are supported by tests.

Following the Curriculum Information Sessions, held for Year 2 parents at the beginning of the Autumn Term, parents will receive:

Parent Curriculum Information Leaflets

Meet Rufus

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

January 2020

Article of the Month

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

English

Mathematics

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)

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)

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.

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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)

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.

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What we have been up to...

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)

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.