Supporting your child in Year 2

Speaking & Listening

As the year progresses, children are encouraged to present their work or findings in a particular subject or create a show or play for their peers to watch. These need to be well thought out and rehearsed by the children, so that they are seen as an important part of school life. Class assemblies help to develop presentation and performance skills such as speaking loudly, clearly and at a good pace.

Ways in which you can help your child:

When giving instructions to your child, increase the amount of content, and ask them to repeat the instructions back to you. Encourage your child to add detail when they are talking to you about events during their day. Don’t be afraid to model words or phrases if your child mispronounces them. “Let's pretend” is a great way to get your child involved in role-play and acting out.

Reading

The reading schemes used within the school are, ”Big Cat for Little Wandle” until your child has progressed through the phonic programme.  After this the children will bring home developmentally matched books from the books held in school.  Read in school happens in many different contexts:

• Daily reading of texts as a whole class with their teacher.
• Reading of shared books at story time.
• Reading as a part of English and other curriculum subjects.
• Reading of instructions on how to complete tasks and activities.
• Reading of classroom resources e.g. working walls & displays.
• Reading out own work as part of plenary or feedback session.
• Home/School reading partnership.
• Visits to the school library.
• ERIC (everybody reading in class) and D.E.A.R Time (drop everything and read.)

Each child has their own ‘reading record’. This will indicate what reading your child had undertaken in school with a matched reading book.  The children will have 3 reading sessions (decoding, prosody and comprehension.) They will then bring the book home to read to you.  You may feel the book is tooo easy because they are reading it successfully but that is the point - the children will come home confident and able to read the book and show off their skills to you.  Please fill in the reading record when you hear your child read and let us know how they are getting on at home.  Alongside this, the children will bring home a sharing book (one they may not be able to read) for you to read them.

Ways in which you can help your child

Ensure your child brings their book bag to school every week. Set aside a short time to read on a one-to-one basis without distractions. Try combating a lack of enthusiasm by taking it in turns to read a page each. If your child is reading independently, ask them to tell you what has happened so far, to predict what will happen next and to suggest how different characters may be feeling.

Writing

The children have regular handwriting practice and will continue to learn to use joined up handwriting throughout the year. As the year progresses they will be encouraged to join their writing in all subjects.

Writing activities are completed as part of specific English lessons and in other curriculum areas. Some writing will be independent, some may be with a partner or group and some adult led, with wordbooks and dictionaries used to help with spelling. The children will write recounts, narrative pieces, poetry and stories.

Punctuation skills are developed, including full stops, exclamation and question marks, commas and inverted commas. The formal teaching of grammar is also an important aspect in writing sessions. The children will work on specific spelling patterns throughout the year to support their phonic and spelling understanding.

Phonics

The children will have daily phonics sessions that will focus on letter and sound recognition, spelling patterns and word familiarity. We use the fully DFE validated scheme "Little Wandle Letters & Sound Revised" to teach phonics. The children will revisit ideas they have already covered to ensure a full understanding and will be set regular tasks that will develop and consolidate the ideas they have learnt in class each week. This will also be included as part of their homework each week. As the children progress they will focus more on the grammatical features of writing, looking at word beginnings, endings and plurals.

Ways in which you can help your child

Help your child to learn and recognise the key words, topic words and spelling patterns that are sent home. When writing at home, ask your child to try to spell words first rather than give them the correct spellings before trying. Ask your child to help you by writing for you e.g. lists for shopping/reminders/jobs to do. The Look, Cover, Write, Check method is also useful in helping your child retain the patterns they are learning.

Maths

Maths is generally taught as a discrete subject area. There will be mental Maths activities as well as specific teaching on focus areas. Pupils will complete differentiated activities, which consolidate and then extend their learning. Plenary sessions often conclude parts of the lesson and allow teachers to assess the children against the learning objectives set.

The Maths covered includes work on number – number and place value, number – addition and subtraction, number – multiplication and division, number – fractions, measurement, geometry – properties of shape, geometry – position and direction and statistics. The children will also be involved in individual, group and class investigations to enable them to apply mathematical skills and investigative concepts through problem solving and reasoning.

Ways in which you can help your child

Play number games and puzzles, both at home and on the way to school e.g. 7 cars and 4 lorries make how many vehicles/how many wheels altogether/how many windscreen wipers? If each car has two passengers then how many people are there? Ask your child to count the change in your purse for you. Being allowed to spend half/20p/all the 5p pieces may help to offer an incentive! Make a shop from tins of food/toys/books and involve giving change. Sharing objects or food equally between family members or friends is a practical way of reinforcing division and fractions and multiplication can be covered by inversing the operations and helping our child to learn their multiplication facts (timetables). Weigh out food or objects together when cooking, or just for fun.