Yr2 Curriculum Update – 17/01/20
Working together to achieve success for every child
Greetings! – It’s our 9th edition!
We write a regular newsletter keeping you up-to-date and informed about your child’s learning. This will provide you with a good understanding of happenings in Year 2 and how you can support these learning experiences.
Let’s Inquire – How We Express Ourselves
Central Idea: People express themselves through celebrations.
An inquiry into:
*The reasons why people celebrate (causation)
*How celebrations are similar and different (connection)
*Different ways people express celebrations (perspective)
Transdisciplinary Learning – It’s all connected!
Click the video camera to get an active glimpse of Year 2 learning.
Since returning from the holidays, Year 2 students have begun exploring how we express ourselves through celebrations. They thought about what the central idea means by using dictionaries to uncover word meanings. Some students re-wrote the central idea to make it easier to understand: “People share their feelings or ideas by doing something special and fun for important events or days.”
Through stories such as “The Sandwich Swap” and “When Pigasso Met Mootise”, classes are also beginning to understand what it means to be open minded…willing to listen to and consider other people’s ideas and points of view.
Students experienced some celebrations first-hand by taking part in mini celebrations in different classrooms. Whether walking down the wedding aisle, mixing spooky brews or playing party games, students inquired about why and how celebrations take place.
Students are enjoying trying out traditions linked to different celebrations.
Math is heavily linked to our Unit of Inquiry learning in the way of data handling. Students have begun to develop the skills of collecting and organising data by surveying classmates about favourite celebrations, popular traditions, celebrations that were important for their families, etc.
Outside of the Unit of Inquiry, students also explored math language related to position and direction through coding. Students created written algorithms (e.g. Go forward 4 squares, etc.) to navigate across a map, guide their classmates through an obstacle course and send a Beebot (bee robot) along student-made paths.
As a grade level, we are working on how to find the big ideas and important details when reading either fiction or nonfiction. These skills will particularly help them throughout their learning as they read for information to find out more about different celebrations.
In writing, students used what they have learned so far about sentences to write learning reflections and to write recounts of their holiday highlights. They were encouraged to zoom in so they could add interesting details about the most significant events.
Students use cooperation, mathematical language and problem solving to
program and debug blocks, friends and beebots.
Suggestions for supporting learning at home
*Discuss the celebrations that are most important to your family. Why do you celebrate them? Why are they important to you? What do you do to celebrate and why?
*Visit your local library and look for fiction and non-fiction books about celebrations.
*Cook or create something for your family’s next celebration.
*Look for examples of real life data handling. Where do you see surveys, tallies, graphs,etc.? How are they used?
Friday, Jan. 17th: Chinese New Year assembly (wear red or traditional lunar new year clothes)
Friday, Jan. 17th: School Disco
Thursday, Jan. 23rd: Last day before mid-term break (full day of school)
Jan. 24th-31st: Mid Term Break
Wednesday, Feb. 5th: Registration for school fair auditions
Friday, Feb. 14th: CPD (no school)
Please remember that February 3rd IS NOT a CPD day (as printed in the diary).
Students should attend school as usual.
If you have questions or concerns, contact your child’s teacher. We welcome feedback and look forward to working with you to achieve success for every child.
Kindest regards,
The Year 2 Team
