Year Two Curriculum

Academic Year

2023/2024

Academic Year

2022/2023

2021/2022

Academic Year

Autumn Term 1 - Fire, Fire!

Fire, Fire!

What I will learn...

KNOWLEDGE

By learning about the Great Fire of London, I will understand more about significant events in history and how they have changed the way we live today. By studying Tudor buildings, I will learn about the importance of using the appropriate materials for a purpose, including manipulating materials to create a product. I will gain a better understanding of myself and others, knowing how to stay safe and respect others.

POSSIBILITIES

Through the inspiration of The Fire of London, I will be given opportunities to create

and write about many things. Through collaboration, I will understand the importance of being a team and achieving together.

DIVERSITY

I will understand that anyone can achieve if they work hard enough and believe in themselves. It is also possible to achieve after something has gone wrong.  

COMMUNITY

I will gain a better understanding of what it means to be part of a community. I will improve my collaboration skills and awarness of how my effort can influence others

around me.

Autumn Term 2 - We are survivors!

KNOWLEDGE

By learning about the world around us including the continents, oceans and hot and cold areas of the world we will understand more about what makes the world. We will understand more about ourselves and others around us. We will understand that we all have similarities and differences and these should be celebrated. We will understand more about belonging and co-operation, applicable to both the classroom and wider society.

POSSIBILITIES

Through learning about the wider world around us, we will be given opportunities to research, explore, create and write about many things. Through co-operation, we will understand how important we are as individuals and recognise our achievements.

DIVERSITY

We will understand that people may have different believes and objects that are speical to them. We will understand that some people may use objects to show that they belong to a relgion or group. Through discussion we will be able to discuss if belonging to a group makes a difference to who we are as a person.  

COMMUNITY

Through the geography of our locality, We will be able to gain a sense of what a community is and understand that by being part of a school, We are part of a community. This will help us to understand the reasons for belonging and co-operation.

2020 / 21

In literacy, our core book The Secret Sky Garden, will introduce us to the character of Funni, who loves hearing the planes and watching the sights from the abandoned airport car park. Sadly, she feels that something is missing. Over the course of the book, she transforms the abandoned area into a beautiful garden and with it, discovers a new friend. This lends itself to our learning in PSHE about the importance of friendship and how to be kind to one another and what bullying and teasing look like.

The Sky Garden is a wonderful story that shares the impact that small actions can make on our communities and on ourselves. The main themes of the story revolve around caring for the local area, making positive changes to improve the local environment and to consider the importance of friendship. The depth of the story through both the text and illustration and the creative approaches planned, will encourage the children to explore and comment on settings, events and characters and form opinions of both texts and about the wider world around us.

This book will be a starting point for our cross-curricular learning, where we will consider how to improve our own environment. Illustrator Fiona Lumbers cleverly uses colour and layout to chart the transformation from urban desolation to a sumptuous explosion of nature and we will be expressing our creative ideas in a similar way – taking in the work of Ben Heine in art, to create our fantasy school grounds. Just as Funni nurtures the plants that will change the face of her urban landscape, we too will explore what plants need to grow and survive. Together we will work to create our own little garden spaces.

In considering our local environment, we will learn the geographic skills of map reading and learn to read and recognise key symbols. Our understanding of the wider community will build on the children’s knowledge of the Jewish faith to learn about Passover. We will also look at special stories within Christianity and learn about sacred places.

In maths this half term we will be consolidating our knowledge of place value, including identifying the various different ways of partitioning a number. This in turn will help us when estimating where to place numbers on an empty number line.  We will also be using our addition and subtraction skills to carry out calculations, applying the number facts that we have already learnt to help us.  We will be looking at patterns in number and using these to reason about other number facts. There will be a focus on explaining our methods and proving why an answer is correct or incorrect.  Finally, we will learning about measurement, using standard measurements such as centimetres to calculate and compare height and length.  Practising our rapid recall of multiplications facts and number facts within ten and twenty will continue throughout the half term.

Summer Term 2 Topic: Up, Up and Away!

Up Up and Away! This term we are looking at our own aspirations. The Year 2 children are moving on and it is a fantastic time to understand and recognise inspiration all around us!

In English, we are reading 'Man on the Moon' by Simon Bartram, 'Look up' by Nathan Bryon and 'Mae Jemison' by Mary Nhin. Even though we are not learning about space, we are looking for inspiration in a historical figure who realised their dream of going to space. In History, we are studying the life of Mae Jemison who was the first African-American woman in space. Of course, we will learn about Neil Armstrong as well...one small step for man (and woman!)

In Art, we are creating our own alien out of clay. We will also be painting our alien in order to write about it. To add to our creativity, we are also making a moon buggy in Design and Technology. We obviously need to make it out of the appropriate material, therefore in Science we are going to study the properties of different materials and their effectiveness. The Mars Rover is nothing compared to what we are going to create!

For computing, we are hopefully going to connect to a school in Decatur in America (Mae Jemison's home town) via a video call. How exciting! Furthermore, in Geography we aim to learn more about Decatur and its geographical differences to Milton Keynes.

Finally and most importantly, we are going to be exploring our own aspirations. We are going to recognise what we are good at, learn to  make the right choices, set simple goals and targets and build on our aspirations. Just like Mae Jemison, we are going to be brave and strong for our next adventure! To Year 3 and beyond!

Other areas we are covering can be seen on our Curriculum Map.