Dear Parents/Carers,

Primary 2 are continuing to settle well into school life. Day by day, the boys and girls are becoming increasingly more confident and familiar with the routines of the class and the wider school.

We are all very excited for a fun year of learning here at St. Brendan’s. All the children looked so smart starting the school year and with your support we know this will continue. This term with your help we aim to ensure your child achieves their full potential in all aspects of learning.Here is a brief overview of some of the learning experiences planned for this term:

Literacy

We will work on stage 2 North Lanarkshire’s Active Literacy programme for spelling and phonics. Children will revisit the phonemes taught in primary one before being introduced to new sounds and words each week and this will be consolidated through class work and homework. For reading, the children will continue to read one or two books per week. I would be grateful if you would continue to support reading at home and ensure that your child brings their book into school each day. In taught writing the children will be working with Mrs. McLauchlan on developing skills in recount and narrative writing.

Numeracy

This term we will be focusing on four key areas of numeracy: time including days, months, seasons and calendars, number and number processes (place value to 100), estimation and rounding and mathematics and its impact on the world(past present and future). The children will experience a variety of active lessons as well as written tasks in order to develop their skills in each of these subject areas. We will also continue to work on addition and subtraction as well as mental calculation skills.

Health and Wellbeing

In P.E. the children will be taking part in a variety of ball games and will be working on ball control as well as developing a co-operative spirit within a competitive setting. P.E. days are currently Thursday and Friday. Children should bring their P.E. kit to school on Mondays and take them home each Friday.

This term we will also be exploring the theme of ‘Growth Mindset’. This aims to help children become engaged with learning and activities that they may otherwise try to avoid through fear of getting things wrong. The children will learn that intelligence isn’t fixed – it can change depending on how much effort is applied. Their brains grow and learn by effort, and hard work.

Religious Education

This term we will be focusing on the themes ‘Beginning the year’ and “My uniqueness”. We will be listening to stories from the Old and New Testament and exploring how God speaks to us through bible stories as well as learning and taking part in our daily prayers.

Interdisciplinary Learning

Our topic this term is ‘Under the sea’. For this, we will be learning about sea life in different parts of the world comparing it to our local environment. We will look at different sea creatures and where they are found around the world as well as considering our local environment and how we can care for it by exploring the impact of pollution, The children are excited about our new role play area that will shortly be set up in the classroom which will run alongside our topic and the children will be heavily involved in the creation of this also.

Thank you for all your continued support and if you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind Regards,

Miss Degnan

Primary 2 Class Teacher.