North Melbourne Primary School

Year 2 Teaching Team

Term 2 Curriculum Overview

Welcome to Term 2! We are so excited for this term and cannot wait to continue our learning.

Literacy 

In Reading, students will continue to practise their comprehension through the use of skills such as questioning and inferring. These strategies involve asking and answering questions about a text whilst reading to review meaning, as well as making and justifying inferences using clues in the text or prior information. Additionally, students will focus on monitoring and self-correcting while reading aloud, using context, prior knowledge, punctuation, language and letter-sound knowledge. As in Term 1, we will be exploring a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts, focusing on how the structure and specific features are selected to serve the purpose of the text. In Word Study, students will continue to work towards automatic recognition of 200 high frequency words.

In Writing this term, students will establish positive writing routines by following the writing process which includes planning, drafting, revising, editing and publishing. Students will begin to use their Writer’s Notebook to generate and express ideas about personal experiences, imagination or research. They will focus on writing sentences that fluently connect to central themes or ideas within their writing. We will explore a range of text types and structures such as narratives, information reports and procedures. This will provide students with the tools to create texts that are organised and sequenced. 

Our Speaking and Listening focus this term will be on understanding how methods of communication can differ according to the audience, purpose and context. Students will practise this through partner, small group and whole class discussions, altering the way they communicate to ensure their message is conveyed clearly and respectfully. Students will also work on expressing personal preferences by explaining their thoughts on different literacy texts and providing reasons to support their opinions.

Maths

In Term 2, Students learning in Maths will initially focus on skip counting. We will be consolidating skip counting by 2, 5 and 10s and focus on extending students to skip count fluently by 3 and 4s. Students will be encouraged to extend their skip counting abilities by skip counting by 6, 9, 7 and 8 where appropriate. This knowledge will support students when we begin our unit on Multiplication and Division as students will be required to use multiplication and division facts to solve number sentences utilising these operations. We will also be encouraging students to use concrete materials to support their understanding of multiplication and division along with more abstract skills such as the use of arrays, repeated addition and subtraction and grouping. 

Later in the term, students will be working with fractions to identify parts of a whole. Students will work on identifying halves, quarters and eighths and will use these to create equivalent fractions. We will then move into our unit on shape where students will recognise and compare 2D shapes and 3D objects, by identifying the number of sides, edges, faces. Students will also work with terms such as opposite, parallel, curved, and straight to describe shapes and movements such as flip, turn and translate. 

Other Learning Areas (OLA)

In Term 2, our OLA focus will be History. Through engaging learning activities and some research at home, students will explore their own personal history. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn more about family histories, traditions and cultures and we are looking forward to sharing our stories with one another.

We will also be integrating history in our Literacy sessions and focusing on Ancient civilisations. By critically engaging with primary and secondary sources, students will further develop their reading comprehension abilities. This will provide us further ideas to use in narrative and informative writing pieces. 

In Wellbeing this term, Year 2 students will be learning strategies to prepare for unfamiliar situations and experiences. They will describe ways to make and keep friends and learn how their actions can have positive or negative consequences. We will continue using the School Wide Positive Behaviour Supports (SWPBS) Matrix to uphold our school values and foster a supportive and positive learning environment.

We will continue our Auslan (Australian Sign Language) lessons this term. Students will continue to explore foundational signs, including greetings, ways to describe the weather, and sea animals. Our focus is on practical vocabulary for daily communication, fostering cultural understanding within the Deaf community. Interactive lessons, games, and creative activities make learning enjoyable. Auslan enhances cognitive skills, promotes inclusivity, and equips students with a lifelong communication tool.

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 Reading Journals. 
• 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,

Jen, Emma, Tom, Tess & Georgie