Year 2

Hello from the year 2 team! Year 2 is such an exciting time for the children of Riddlesden St Mary’s.

Our children are encouraged to explore more independent learning, and to reflect upon their own work.

They will develop skills through lots of interesting, cross-curricular topics.  We regularly take the children's learning out into our amazing school grounds, making use of our onsite woods, ponds and gardens. We also link their learning to real-life experiences and enrich through our bespoke Enrichment sessions. Children have opportunities to deepen skills in Citizenship, DT, Sports (Boccia), Cooking, Art and Music.

Each day, our Year Two children benefit from daily Maths lessons. This is taught using a structured approach which allows the children to take responsibility of their own learning. This method moves from real life resources (the 'concrete') to drawings and diagrams (the 'pictorial') and finally to written methods (the 'abstract'). We allow the children to map their own learning by allowing them the opportunity to choose for themselves, the level of challenge they wish to attempt. This makes sure that children develop a deeper understanding of the number system and the calculation strategies they are learning. We love getting hands on with our Maths and try to apply it to real life with activities such as going on array hunts and creating our own Maths games.

Literacy is also taught daily and children are fully immersed in the text, making meaningful links and developing key skills. Each half term we focus on one particular story. For example this year we have explored The Owl who Was Afraid of the Dark ,The Secret of Black Rock  and Florence Nightingale.

Reading is embedded within our school and we make use of as many reading opportunities as we can. We have a whole class reading lesson every Friday where the children will read a completely new text, which can be anything from a newspaper article, an invitation to a party or a visual stimulus like an animation or even a poster! Children are given the opportunity to discuss the text and apply their Reading skills and this is a fun and enjoyable way for the children to start to

prepare for SATs. Reading for pleasure is something we encourage through our daily story times, inviting book corners and visits to the library. We often have special guests coming in and reading with us during assemblies such as Reverend Tony and local authors. We advocate reading with your children at home is the most important thing you can do to support your child's learning at school.

Over the year, we cover a wide range of fun and exciting topics and the children have loved these thoroughly!