Welcome to Year 2

                                                                           Mrs Keeling                                                             Mrs Finch

                                                                                            Lavender Class Teacher                                    Rosemary Class Teacher

                                                                                                                        Mrs Ragaven                     Miss Adcock
                                                                                                                      Lavender Class                   Lavender Class
                                                                                                                 Teaching Assistant              Teaching Assistant

A Very Warm Welcome to Year 2

Welcome back to the second part of the Autumn term 2025, from all of the Year 2 team. We are really excited to jump into teaching and learning with our amazing 'History’ led topic.

‘What was it like to be a Victorian in Beeston?’

This half term we will be exploring what life was like as a Victorian. We will be learning about key aspects of Victorian life and how this differs to our life today. We will be exploring Victorian school life and what John Clifford School was like, in the Victorian era. We will be visiting Newstead Abbey as well as experiencing a Victorian school day at school, taking part in Victorian activities to help us discover what life was like. To help our understanding, we will be exploring a range of Victorian artefacts.

Our focus texts this half term will include ‘The Three Little Pigs’:

Over the half term, we will also be learning:

• MATHS – Addition and Subtraction       
• SCIENCE – Uses of Everyday Materials
• COMPUTING – Computing Skills
• HISTORY – Victorian Life
• DT – Construction & Textiles (Puppet Show Theatres)
• RE – Christmas Celebrations
• PSHE – Health and Wellbeing
• OUTDOOR LEARNING – Uses of Everyday Materials
• PE – Gymnastics and Netball.  

Key Dates for Autumn 2

PE and Outdoor Learning for Autumn 2

In the Autumn 2, PE will take place on alternate Tuesdays and every Thursday. 

As part of our commitment to ensuring all children are fully prepared for PE lessons, we kindly ask that your child brings in their PE kit at the start of each half term. The kit should be placed in a clearly named bag and left on your child's peg for the duration of the half term.

PE kit consists of:

• Plain black shorts or jogging bottoms.
• Plain black jogging sweater.
• Plain white T-Shirt
• Plain black trainers

In addition to PE kit, please ensure your child has a set of clothes for Outdoor Learning. These clothes should be ones that can get dirty and wet, as activities may include gardening, mud kitchen play and other hands-on learning experiences, in varying weather conditions. It is important that these clothes are durable and suitable for outdoor play and include a waterproof coat and wellies, when necessary. Please only send these on Outdoor Learning days and these will be sent home after the sessions.

Please bring PE kits into school at the beginning of the half term and leave them in school until the end of the half term.

This ensures that PE kit is in school when needed.

Outdoor learning kit goes home after each session and should be hung in the outside classroom before the start of the school day.

Topic Knowledge Organisers

We will be using these topic knowledge organisers, throughout the half term, to help children recall key facts and vocabulary and to support them in all areas of the curriculum. Please use these at home with your children, to discuss their learning.

Homework in Year 2

Reading -We ask that children read at home with somebody, at least three times a week, (this could be any adult, an older sibling or friend) and record this in the Communication Diary. This reading interaction will support children to apply their phonics learning and develop their fluency and comprehension skills. Every little bit of reading really does help children on the learning journey and will help them to make the most progress throughout the year. 

Phonics support and pronunciations can be found at: https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/essential-letters-and-sounds/

Spelling - Spellings will be sent home every Friday in the communication diaries, for children to practise. This will support them to apply their phonics knowledge and develop their spelling of 'harder to read and spell' words. This will also support their writing.

Maths - Please use Numbots at home to support your child's number fact fluency. Logins can be found at the front of communication diaries and you can log in on computers, tablets or phones. This can be accessed using this link: https://play.numbots.com/#/account/school-login/23244

Housekeeping

Please ensure that everything that your child brings to school (including OL kit, PE kit, hats, scarves, gloves and water bottles) has their name on it. Name tags are great, but biro on a label is just as good. This will hopefully make it possible to return any lost property.