Nightingales | The Holme Church of England School

Year 2 (Nightingales)

Our Curriculum

We have redesigned the school curriculum plan so that, while it is still based on the National Curriculum, it better reflects our ethos and values. One of the main changes is the addition of planned enrichment and am emphasis on Values-based Education, developing a Growth Mindset (a belief that everyone can learn and improve) and teaching Habits of the Mind (skills that will help children to become better learners). We want our children to have aspirations for the future, but believe that in order for that to happen, we need to give them different experiences so that they know what they might aspire to.

Reading

The children continue to use the reading scheme which they began in Wrens and Robins. We use a variety of schemes, eg Oxford Reading Tree, Big Cat, Story Worlds etc. The books are colour banded according to the Book Band Scheme and children are regularly assessed and checked to ensure they move through the books appropriately. We also use free choice books so the children can begin to decide for themselves what sort of books they enjoy reading. We encourage regular reading at home to help the children increase their fluency and also to talk about what they are reading.

Helping at Home

These websites might help to brighten up repetition of learning facts. You could also play card games, sing (lots of great songs on Youtube), play games with the facts on the way to school etc.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/ This covers all our school subjects. I like Bitesize Literacy and Numeracy best.

http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/maths/timestable/interactive.htm great for practising Maths over and over.

http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/interactive/literacy.html#5 mixture of Literacy games (they are for all ages, so select the right level for your child)

http://www.galacticphonics.com/ lots of phonic games linked to the sounds we have to teach across KS1

We need to be able to spell the first 300 commonly used words and the National Curriculum 'exception words'. Click below to see what these words are:

First 100 words Next 200 words Year 1 words Year 2 words

(You will see that there is quite a over lap and that the exception words are part of the first 300 words, so at school we focus on those)

We also need to be able to add and subtract numbers from 0 - 20 in different ways, e.g. 3 + 12 = ?, 12 + ? = 15, ? - 3 = 12 etc. Year 2 are expected to know their x2, x5, x10 times tables - begin by counting in 2s, 5s, 10s, then learn them in order, then try them randomly. Can they link them to division, i.e. if your child knows 3 x 2 = 6, can they tell you how many groups of 2 are in 6?