North Melbourne Primary School

Year Two Teaching Team

Welcome to Year Two, 2025!

We are very excited for the year ahead and the learning we will be doing in Year Two.

Reading

In Year Two this year, students will be learning to make meaning from a range of fiction and non-fiction text types. They will identify how different text types across the curriculum can be organised, and how text features such as chapters, tables of contents and sub headings can help them to navigate a text. Students will engage with a range of rich literature by discussing the plots, characters, and settings, exploring how language is used to present these features in different ways. Through reading a range of texts, students will understand that connections can be made between ideas by using a compound sentence with two or more independent clauses usually linked by a coordinating conjunction. They will also learn how similar topics and information are presented in different types of texts, and how to identify the purpose and audience of different text types. Through the use of comprehension strategies, such as visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising, monitoring and questioning, students will begin to analyse texts to build literal and inferred meanings. Students in Year Two will spend a minimum of 20 minutes a day engaging in explicit phonics instructruction which will build their knowledge of how to read and write words of one or more syllable with vowel digraphs, long vowel patterns, consonant blends, and silent letters. They will also use their knowledge of blending and segmenting to read and write increasingly complex words. 

Writing

During Writing lessons this year, students will work through the writing process to create texts that entertain, inform and persuade. This will include idea generation, planning, drafting, revising, editing and publishing. Students will explore a range of text structures to organise their ideas to ensure their purpose is clearly conveyed to their chosen audience. Together and independently, we will analyse and adapt published texts to meet their own writing purposes, finding inspiration in the word choice and ideas of other authors. This will be in combination with personal idea generation, where students find inspiration through their own experiences, interests and hobbies. Students will regularly practise handwriting and spelling along with grammar rules including the correct use of punctuation and capital letters. Further, students will use their phonetic knowledge to spell, applying their understanding of digraphs, trigraphs and letter sound relationships to spell increasingly complex words. We will also explore different types of words including nouns, pronouns and proper nouns along with verbs, adverbs and adjectives which will expand students’ vocabulary. A celebration of student achievement in Writing will be evident in their Writer’s Gift, an accumulation of published pieces sent home at the end of the year. 

Speaking and Listening

Throughout the year, students will use interaction skills when engaging with topics, texts and others. This will include actively listening to others, receiving instructions and speaking appropriately to express their own ideas. They will deliver short spoken texts to the class and will explore how their language choices change depending on the context. These skills will be given many opportunities to be practised, including in our daily morning meetings, mini lessons, and throughout our independent work, partner work, and small group work. Finally, the students will discuss the way in which characters and settings from familiar texts can connect to those developed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups, as well as a wide range of Australian and world authors. 

Maths

To begin the year we will focus on Number & Algebra. Students will consolidate their understanding of place value by recognising, representing and ordering numbers up to 1000, as well as partitioning, rearranging, regrouping and renaming two and three digit numbers. This foundational knowledge will support students as we move into addition and subtraction, where they will practise their fluency with addition facts up to 20 and connect these to the related subtraction facts. Students will use these facts, as well as their part-part-whole knowledge, to support them as they solve one and two digit addition/subtraction problems. Students will continue to build on their understanding of number by exploring fractions, focusing on the concepts of halves, quarters and eighths. In Measurement, students will use a variety of tools to measure and compare objects based on length, capacity and mass, as well as reading and representing time on analog and digital clocks. They will recognise, compare and classify 2D shapes based on attributes such as vertices and sides. In Statistics, students will explore methods of collecting and organising data, using various graphical representations to present and compare their findings.

Humanities

In Year Two, students will build a strong sense of community through a variety of engaging activities. They will learn about different emotions and develop the ability to identify, label and regulate their own emotional responses. Students will work on building their capacity for cooperative play and collaboration with their peers and the development of positive social interactions. Our History studies will begin with students discovering the history of themselves, then broaden their focus to explore history in the community. We will examine how objects, communities and people have changed over time and integrate learning in our Literacy lessons. As the term progresses, students will deepen their understanding and connect to wider historical topics of Ancient Rome and Egypt. In Term Three, we will explore the connection Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have with Country/Place. Students will learn how they have traditionally created maps using natural landmarks, shared stories and understood the impact of weather on the environment. At the end of the year, students will use technology to publish and create a variety of works. Students will learn how to use the iPad to further support their learning to prepare them for the BYO iPad program in Year Three.

Learning at Home

If you would like to support your child’s learning at home, here are some things you can do: 

Encourage reading every night – including short periods of reading aloud. We cannot stress how important reading is. A student who reads less than a minute per day outside of school reads only 8,000 to 21,000 words per year. However, a student who reads 20 minutes per day outside of school reads almost 2 million words per year! Please encourage your child to fill in their Reading Log.

Further suggestions include:

• Going on Nessy to practise Spelling at home.
• Continue reading every night and record books they have read in their Home Readers. 
• Use real life opportunities such as shopping and cooking to discuss money, time, addition and other mathematical concepts.
• Write at home – it could be about anything! The more short pieces your child can write, the better writer they will become.
• Encourage random acts of kindness. This could be anything from using manners to writing a card to a grandparent. 
• Ensuring that your child is getting an appropriate amount of sleep each night. It is recommended that children between ages 6-11 get at least 10 hours of sleep each night to ensure that they are alert, engaged and ready to learn each morning.  
• SeeSaw. Students will be uploading a piece or two of their work that they are most proud of every week to SeeSaw. At home, students and parents can view what has been added to the journal and make positive comments on other submissions. Students may choose to share other elements of their lives to the journal as inspiration for Writer’s Workshop (for eg. a new pet, an inspiring image or something exciting happening at home).

If you would like to make contact or arrange a time to meet with your child’s teacher, please contact them through Compass. 

Kind regards,

Sally, Emma, Risa, Jen, Georgie and Jack