Primary 2 Blog Post (Term 4 Update)

Hello and welcome to our term 4 blog post. Primary 2 has been very busy over term 3, consolidating previous learning and building their skills in preparation for our summer term.

Literacy

Our focus in reading will be to continue to use word attack strategies and knowledge of phonemes covered to date, to decode unfamiliar words. We will also focus on inferential questioning and building our understanding of the deeper messages evident in our books whilst completing read-to-write tasks linked to these texts. We will continue to look at punctuation’s effect on texts, with a particular focus on speech. Pupils will then be able to identify this in our books and use some evidence of speech within our writing.

In writing, our focus will continue to build on written formation, the use of capital letters and full stops, and building confidence to write a few sentences independently, using our knowledge of common words, spelling strategies, and increased punctuation. Using our skills from descriptive writing, we will expand our sentences and add more detail when writing larger pieces of work, with narrative being our focus over this final term of primary 2.

Our spelling activities will continue to help children retain knowledge of previously taught phonemes and to build confidence in tackling trickier joined phonemes as we progress through term 4.

Numeracy

Our focus will move from multiplication to division, using our previous knowledge of fractions to help us with division strategies. We will frequently revisit place values to help us continue working with numbers up to 99 and 3-digit numbers beyond 100. Children will also consolidate learning in addition and subtraction and apply these strategies to bigger numbers. In Beyond Number, measure will be a focus as we begin to look at length, weight, and volume, as well as data handling, as we progress through term 4.

Health & Wellbeing

Our Paths Pupil of the Day program will continue in term 4, and our Pupil of the Day will receive many compliments. Children will also tackle more comfortable and uncomfortable emotions and develop strategies for managing situations in the playground or classroom when they experience these emotions. This links to our whole school Paths strategies, which help children recognise when they need help managing emotions or social situations.

In P.E., our sessions will take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In term 4, our focus will be on athletics and striking and fielding games. Children will have the opportunity to partake in some fun activities that support teamwork and focus on developing general fitness and skills in activities such as hurdles, running, and team races.

R.E

Our focus during R.E. sessions will be on Mary, Mother of God. We will also continue with themes of prayer, worship, and church routines. As always, we will also spend some time reading and discussing Bible stories relating to friendship and family.

Topic (IDL)

Our class topic this term will be mapping, with a particular focus on my school and my town. We will link this to our place in Scotland, the UK and the rest of the world to develop our understanding of geography and the globe. Our narrative writing will be developed through this topic, and with the return of ‘Plop’ to our classroom, he will help us navigate our local environment.

French

In French, we will continue to build our knowledge of greetings and numbers to 20. We will also discuss colours, days of the week and family members.

UNCRC

Children are reminded that our class charter and rules are linked to the UNCRC and by following the rules and charter agreements, we make sure everyone has a right to be healthy (24) learn (28) and play (31).

Homework will be sent out weekly on Monday as normal. Reading books will be attached to pupils’ accounts through our online Bug Club reading programme. These will be issued on Monday and should be returned to school on Friday.

We hope this is the start of another successful term and that the pupils are enjoying their return to school following the Easter break.

Take care,

Mrs Travers & Mrs Strachan

Primary 2 Curriculum Update Term 3

Welcome to our curriculum update for term 3. I hope all our pupils and their families/carers had a wonderful festive period and a lovely new year. Term two was busy as we prepared for all the fun and exciting Christmas activities and the Nativity Show!

Literacy

Last term, our focus had been summarising what happened in our books and thinking about sequencing parts of a story we’d read in order of what came first and next or at the beginning, middle, and end. In term three, the focus will be answering both literal and inferential questions orally and in written responses whilst beginning to find and identify key features of non-fiction books like the index, contents and labels, which may be helpful for fact-finding for our new topic. We will continue our usual spelling and common word activities that help pupils retain and recognise their spelling sounds/phonemes and common words when reading books.

In writing, children will focus on report writing, building on their knowledge of fact-based information and sharing it in a report, including a title, heading, subheadings, and pictures. Our new topic will allow us to explore report writing while building a knowledge bank for our topic (IDL). Children will continue to enhance their understanding of nouns, verbs, and adjectives, identifying these in texts we are accessing in class while recognising and using speech marks and speech bubbles in texts and written pieces.

During term 3, we will also participate in listening and talking games and activities to help children develop the key skills needed in whole-class or group discussions. These skills will be further developed when we begin weekly information sharing, sharing our topic reports and receiving feedback from our peers.

Numeracy

Our focus in numeracy during term three will be to complete subtraction and understand how addition and subtraction link through fact families. Money will continue through January to revisit giving change and to develop a good understanding of subtraction when using coins.

Children will spend time mentally counting in 2s, 5s, and 10s and developing mental strategies for the skills we have worked on. They will continue to recite numbers up to 100 while developing knowledge of number patterns. Children will then use this knowledge of counting in 2s, 5s, and 10s to expose them to an early introduction to multiplication, exploring the symbol and what concrete materials can support us when building up groups/sets of numbers. The strategies we will explore are repeated addition and groupings.

In beyond number, we will build on our knowledge of halves and quarters, and this will support pupils when the idea of half past and quarter past is introduced with time, both in analogue and digital formats. Pupils will grow their knowledge by looking at minutes in an hour, ½ hour and how many hours in a day. They will also consider the time an hour was before and an hour after. Children will regularly use their ‘Busy Bee’ jotters to develop problem-solving skills, apply knowledge of numbers to new contexts and develop strategies for any number problems.

Health & Wellbeing

All children will have the opportunity to be pupil of the day again in term three. They will continue to explore emotions, comfortable and uncomfortable, and how we recognise these emotions within ourselves and in others. We will also look at strategies for helping us deal with conflict with friends or in the playground.

In P.E., our sessions will continue to be on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In term 3, our focus will be gymnastics, using more extensive apparatus, fitness and taking care of the body, and racquet skills like tennis and badminton. Children will also have the opportunity to partake in some fun activities that support teamwork while focusing on developing their listening skills and awareness of space.

R.E

Our focus during R.E. sessions will be on Jesus’s life, where he lived and grew up, and where he went to pray as part of a faith community. We will also look at Jesus the Teacher and reflect on his words and teachings.

Topic (IDL)

In term three, the focus of our topic (IDL) will be on science and living things in the form of ‘minibeasts’. This will include insects, arachnids, and mollusks, to name a few. We will explore different body types, whether they have a spine, shell, or armour for protection. This will extend to studying their habitats and food chains associated with each minibeast.

 French (Modern Languages)

Children continue to familiarise themselves with basic greetings and expand their number knowledge by increasing this to 20. Pupils will become more familiar with questions they can ask to learn someone’s name or age. We will also look at days of the week and months of the year.

UNCRC

We continue to refer to the articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in class by looking at our class charter and reminding pupils that we have the right to play (31), to learn (28) and to be healthy (24). We formed our class rules around this charter to allow all pupils to have the best positive experience in school. As a school, we will focus on the articles/themes of Safer Internet Day (articles 17, 19), Holocaust Memorial Day (2. 9, 37, 38) and World Water Day (24.27).

We hope this is the start of another very successful term and that the pupils will continue to enjoy learning new topics across the curriculum.

Take care,

Mrs Travers