Year 2 Curriculum Enhancement 2019-2020

AUTUMN 2019

• Christmas production – Lights, Camel, Action.
• Charanga music unit - Hands, feet, heart and Ho Ho Ho.
• Kittywake trip – seeing places of interest and learning about our local history from a canal barge.
• Leigh Library visit – learning what a library is and building our enthusiasm for reading.
• School councillors – working together to change important aspects in our school.
• A visit from our Class Governor, Dr Tensel.
• Using tactile and pictorial representations for multiplication and division.
• Money raised for Children In Need (Big Morning Move) and Save The Children.
• PE - a small group of children represented the school at a Kurling Competition.
• Christmas tree decorating – each child brought a bauble in to decorate the school tree.
• Salt dough Christmas decorations for the Christmas Fayre.
• Breakfast with Santa.
• Christmas maths / colouring.
• Class reader Flat Stanley, including kite flying – newspaper article, diary extracts, recounts and information texts.
• Class reader Coming Home – information text, recount and poetry.
• DT/Art – a picnic for an explorer with a trip to Pennington Flash to make natural sculptures.

SPRING 2019

• Science – a visit from a bearded dragon and tortoise.
• Maths – building bar models and pictograms.
• Song writing for Safer Internet Day.
• Reading miles – Dancing to Dublin and Catapult to Cardiff
• Class assembly – acting, singing in two parts and dancing.
• Chinese New Year – made dragon puppets, whole class dragon and whole class dragon dancing with percussion accompaniment.
• World Book Day – children came dressed up and made books using the Book Creator app.  Books linked to Neil Armstrong.
• RE trip – Lowton St Mary’s church – focus on the features inside a church and what they represent, followed by write up.
• British Science Week – visited Imagine That! (science experiments).
• Class reader Fantastic Mr Fox – interviewing Mr Fox, diary extract, information text and poster.  The Hodgeheg – information text, leaflet, diary and newspaper report.
• Science – creating Venn diagrams to sort and classify materials.
• Eggs Factor competition.
• Art – painted Christopher Columbus’ ship in the style of William Turner.
• DT – dinosaur land.
• Charanga songs – I wanna play in a band and Zootime with our own compositions.
• French – school subjects – speaking in sentences
• Valentine’s Day, Mothers’ Day and Easter cards.
• Caking designing for Valentine’s Day

SUMMER 2019

• Mindfulness activities from Go Noodle - breathing exercises
• Russian week – engaging in the Russian culture by learning Russian, a Russian dance and making Faberge eggs
• Football tournament at Leigh East against 7 other teams
• Visit to New Brighton – How is it different from where we live?  What were Victorian seasides like?
• Arts Week – How can you tell a story?
• Puppet making 
• Data collection - comparing a YR and Y6 body and examining rock pools
• Sketching a lighthouse
• Well-being Week - yoga, peer massaging etc...
• Sponsored walk
• Super Class Party
• French – learning seaside vocabulary
• Songshare performance at Robin Park
• Charanga unit – Friendship song
• Swimming

Impact of the curriculum:

Learning

Within our cross-curricular sessions, the children enjoy exploring key questions to develop and widen their knowledge and understanding.  Each lesson the children are eager to research and find out more about their topics, including researching further topics at home and sharing the information with their peers.   When we begin a topic, our pre-learning mind map is often quite empty, however as the topic progresses, the children’s mind maps start to fill up with key facts.

Engagement

When visiting our local library, the children were keen to find books on life 100 years ago, the topic we were studying at the time.  They enjoyed sharing facts with their peers and adults.  It’s a pleasure to see the start of the children’s independence as they want to deepen their knowledge and interests further on their own

British values

At the start of the year, the children prepare a speech on why they would be the best person for the job of a school councillor.  They deliver their speech to the class and a secret ballot takes place to vote a male and female school councillor representative.  This creates an opportunity for the children to experience and respect democracy.  Later on, the children model this approach when making whole class decisions.

In year 2, we enjoy celebrating and respecting each other’s cultures and beliefs.  We enjoy learning about our different backgrounds including religious beliefs, language and culture.  This allows the children to appreciate all backgrounds.

SMSC

It has been a pleasure to see the children mature and become independent learners.  RE, PHSCE, British Values and the curriculum as a whole, have helped the children to become mature and independent in looking after themselves, their friends and others around them.  The children are kind, considerate, thoughtful and aware of their classmates.  Fortunately, our children do not walk on by; they are keen to listen to one another and work through friendship issues together.

Diversity

As we live in a diverse, multicultural society, it is important to think about other cultures and religions.  Within all subjects, children are able to learn about other cultures and respect their individuality.  For the children in particular, they love listening and appraising music from around the world.  “My favourite was the reggae music!  I like the rhythm.”  

Opportunities to increase vocabulary – class discussions, opportunities for reading around a topic, etc.

This year, Y2 are keen readers!  Each half term, we read a class reader from a different author.  The children enjoy researching about the author but also finding other books by this author in the school library.  From their wider reading, the children independently develop their own knowledge and vocabulary, which is often used in their writing.  As the children become mature learners, they use the thesaurus to broaden their vocabulary choices, challenging one another to use alternative word choices.

Transferable learning e.g. Explorers – geography, map skills, important historical figures, trade etc…

Pupils are able to transfer knowledge from their cross curricular work.  For example, when generating questions to find out about Christopher Columbus, these can be transferred to find out about other historical figures such as Nelson Mandela and Neil Armstrong.

Are teachers and children making links?

The children particularly love comparing and contrasting modern home life and school life with that of 100 years ago.  Of course, the lack of technology is an initial shock to them, however the children enjoy learning which traditional playground games and board games are still played today.

How do we ensure learning is ‘durable’ (it lasts) and is ‘flexible’ (applicable in different contexts)?

At the start of the year, careful consideration and planning helps to create an overview. Each topic addresses different skills and objectives from across the curriculum.  By linking subjects, such as designing a dinosaur land (DT) and finding out what animals need to survive (science), help the children to apply knowledge across the curriculum, but it also gives them a purpose to learn this topic.  As children explore a line of enquiry, new interests and questions develop which are then explored.