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TOPICS/CURRICULUM

Summer Term 1

Welcome back! We hope you all had a lovely Easter with your family and friends. We had a fantastic Spring term: Our school trip to Arundel Castle was a particular highlight.   

Last half term, we welcomed Mrs Martin and Mrs Lee into Willow class. They have loved getting to know the Wonderful Willows. As part of our Discover project, we learnt that ‘Historical events lead to change over time’. We compared the Great Fire of London to the Titanic and thought about which event lead to the most significant change. We analysed historical sources and debated what we think could have caused the events.

We have an equally exciting Summer term in store for us, with a South American party, a forest school day, growing our own butterflies, hosting a home-grown tea party and writing to a South American Pen pal.

Summer Term Topic - Explore "If the world could speak, what would it say?"

We will be learning to become geographers by using the Big Ideas of

Space, place, diversity, scale, sustainability and change. Our project concepts for this half term are stewardship, sacrifice, consequences and influence.

We will:

  • Identify that South America is a continent and be able to pinpoint it on a map.
  • Explore the scale of South America and investigate how many times England would fit inside South America!
  • Discuss some of the physical and human features in South America.
  • Understand what life is like in South America with a visit from the charity ‘Step Forward’.
  • Analyse sources to help us find out what the terrain and climate are like in South America.
  • Understand the reasons why there is such a variety of landscapes in South America and justify this using geographical sources.

We will be using this learning as a vehicle for our project question. We will be thinking about how all human actions have consequences- positive or negative. 

Next half term, we will use this learning to dive deeper into one specific terrain- the Rainforest!                                      

English Learning

In English, we will be reading a variety of rich texts.

We will be learning about how to write for a variety of purposes and audiences:

  • Narratives, formal letters and haikus.
  • We will be continuing to practise a range of skills such as expanded noun phrases, contractions and rule of three.
  • We will be learning new skills such as:
    • Superlatives (comparison language such as largest)
    • 1st, 2nd and 3rd person
    • Commas in a list

Mathematical Learning

This half term we are learning about:

Multiplication:

  • The multiplication symbol means ‘groups of’- ‘There are 5 groups. Each group has 2 sweets. 5x2’
  • Factor x factor = product
  • Skip count in 2s, 5s and 10s to find the product
  • Find adjacent multiples. For example, if we know 3x2, then we know that 4x2=3x2+2

Division structures:

  • Understand grouping- for when we know how many are in each group and we are need to find out how many groups there are.
  • Understand sharing- for when we know how many groups there are but not how many in each group.

Count in 2s, 5s or 10s to solve a problem

PSHE Learning

We will be finishing our topic about the local community: Learning about rules outside school, caring for the school and local environment and exploring the roles people have within the local community.

Scientific Learning

Our topic this half term will be plants:

We will learn about:

*   The life cycle of plants

*   What seeds of made of and what conditions they need to grow into plants

*   The parts of a plant, including those that we eat.

Music Learning

We will be learning the song ‘I want to play in a band’.

They will learn how to play, improvise and compose appraise rock songs.

Faith and Wonder Learning

We will be focusing on Humanism and comparing and contrasting this with a Christian viewpoint. We will be investigating the question: ‘How do those without a religious faith care for the world?”                                                                       

Computing Learning

We will learn about how to stay safe online. We will learn about what happens when we post things online and how to keep the things we post safe.

PE Learning

This half term, we will be focusing on dance, learning a traditional May Day dance routine which we will film. We will also be practising the skills of throwing, catching and bouncing a ball, individually and in small-sided games.

How can you help?

  • Continuing to read regularly at home to an adult, with lots of discussion about the books.
  • Supporting your child with learning their spellings, discussing the meanings of words, putting them into sentences and reviewing spellings from previous weeks.
  • Continuing to play Numbots at home.
  • If you are particularly green-fingered, we would love some support as we prepare for our Home-grown Hub Grub next half term. Whether this is volunteering to do some gardening with the children or bringing some seedlings in, we would be very grateful!

Events/Trips planned for this half term

  • Dates to be aware of for this half term:

    Further dates and information may come out from the Office throughout the half term

If you have any resources you are happy to loan to us or have any particular knowledge about any of our focuses, please let us know.

Class emails:

willow@stmargaretsprimary.org.uk

cherry@stmargaretsprimary.org.uk

The Year 2 team