English

English

"Reading is the gateway for children that makes all other learning possible" - Barack Obama

In Year Two, we aim to instill children with a life-long love of writing by carefully planning engaging lessons that are linked termly project focus. Our daily English lessons are usually taught around a class book or by genre, for example, character descriptions or non-chronological reports. The children also have a daily Phonics lesson in a group which is planned and taught according to their individual reading ability and needs.

Writing

During our writing sessions, we focus on one genre per unit of work. Together, we pick apart the features of high-quality texts to ensure our children are equipped with the knowledge, skills and vocabulary to then write and edit their own piece.

By the end of Year 2, we expect children to be able to:

• write a simple, coherent narrative about their own and others’ experiences (real and fictional) after discussion with the teacher
• write about real events
• demarcate most sentences with capital letters and full stops or question marks
• use present and past tense mostly correctly and consistently
• use co-ordination (or/and/but) and some subordination (when/if/that/because)
• segment spoken words into phonemes and represent these by graphemes, spelling many of these words correctly and making phonically-plausible attempts at others
• spell many Key Stage One common exception words
• write capital letters and digits of the right size, orientation, and relationship to one another and to lower-case letters
• use spacing between words that reflects the size of the letters.

Children who are ‘working towards’ the expected standard may not achieve all of these standards, and children who are working at ‘greater depth’ may achieve more complex writing standards.

Reading

This year, the children will use the word-reading skills they learnt in Year One to begin to show their understanding of the texts they read. They will answer both verbal and written questions using their retrieval and inference skills, showing that they not only are taking in what they are reading, but they are also beginning to 'read between the lines' of the text.

'Reading for pleasure' is highly encouraged both in school and at home, and children are praised and rewarded for showing an interest in books.

Here are some activities that will help you with reading for understanding.

Polar animals

Birds

Hedgehogs

Sharks

Tigers

Minibeasts

The Fox

Emperor Penguin's Life Cycle

Beach Habitat

Layers of the Ocean