National Poetry Day
This week it was National Poetry Day and we’ve enjoyed sharing poems that we have read as our weekly poems so far in Year 2. We thought about what we liked about them.
In our whole school assembly, we enjoyed performing Don’t feed the animals by Robert Hull.
There was some great prosody in the children’s voices and some excellent voice projection too. Well done, Year 2! We’ve really enjoyed reading and learning this poem.
Help at home: have a look at this website to listen to and read a variety of poems at home.
Maths: tens and ones
This week, we’ve been exploring numbers to 100 in lots of exciting ways! Using part-whole models, 100 squares and place value charts, we’ve been breaking numbers down into tens and ones. Take a look at our brilliant work!
Help at home: Pick a number between 20 and 99. Work out how many tens and ones it has, then write it as a number sentence.
Example: 45 has 4 tens and 5 ones → 40 + 5 = 45
Questions
This week, we’ve been learning all about questions (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip). We learnt a question is a sentence that ends with a question mark and we discovered that many questions begin with words such as what, who, when, how, why or which.
We then came up with our own questions to ask Giraffe, the main character in our class novel. After writing them down, we had fun playing a game of hot seating. In this activity, the children took turns stepping into the role of Giraffe and answering questions as if they were him.
Help at home: Think of three interesting questions to ask giraffe or another character from the book.
Living and learning: manners and courtesy
Manners are words and actions that we can do to help us be kind and respectful to others. Good manners help us to get on well with others.
We thought about examples of good manners and we did some role play to model these good manners.
We linked our daily poem to manners to reinforce this important aspect of Living and Learning.
Help at home: reinforce this message about using good manners at home as well as at school. Encourage your child to greet the adults on the gate as they arrive at school.
Also, have a go at this manners quiz to check your child’s understanding.
Leeds Rhinos play offs
PLAY OFF ACTION RETURNS TO AMT HEADINGLEY
Following the conclusion of the regular season Leeds Rhinos will take on St Helens in a mouth-watering elimination play off at AMT Headingley Stadium on Saturday 27 September 2025, kicking off at 8pm.
Tickets are on sale now at Leeds Rhinos – Online ticket sales
We hope that you will join us for what promises to be a fantastic occasion as we aim to get within 80 minutes of the Grand Final at Old Trafford.
Further info can be found here Play Off Eliminator tickets on sale now
Learning at home
Your child should now have their new e-book login and a reminder of their Numbots login (same login as Year 1). These can always be found inside their reading record book.
Reading
At the end of each week, your child will be set the book they have been reading in school. This can be accessed on the Collins e-book app. Please ensure this book is read at home and a comment is added to your child’s reading record book. Reading record books should be brought back to school by Wednesday of the following week.
Numbots
The children do use Numbots in school but regular short periods of time spent on this at home will help to support the children’s addition and subtraction knowledge across the year. Certificates are awarded every Thursday where children have earned their next level. We’ve had plenty so far!
Spellings
Each week, the children will be given eight spellings and these will be tested the following Friday. The spellings can always be found on the Year 2 spellings page. They will be a mixture of words from our phonics learning and also some tricky words. This spelling guide gives you some ideas for how to learn these spellings with your child. They will know their weekly score so please ask them how they have got on.
We have also been checking the children’s spelling of the Year 1 tricky words and your child has brought this learning home to show you which of these words they need to practise at home.
Handwriting
The children are practising our cursive handwriting daily following the letter sequence in our handwriting guide. This will support the children when we start to join our letters. Please use this at home to practise handwriting so the children can apply this in their writing at school.
Thank you for your support with your child’s learning at home and if you have any questions, please do come and ask!
Geography – Where in the World am I?
This half term, our Geography topic is ‘Where in the world am I?’ We have started our learning off by learning the names and location of 7 continents. A fantastic way to remember each of the continents is to learn the continents song.
Seven Continents Song (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip).
We’ve loved learning this song and have listened to it lots of times.
Each class spoke about how a continent is the largest piece of land. A country is smaller than a continent and a city is smaller than a country.
We have also been learning about the 4 countries that make up the UK. We listened to another educational song that tells us all about the countries in the UK and what sorts of things you can find in each.
“United Kingdom Song” with signing | By Al Start | Primary School Geography (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip).
We placed or wrote labels on a map of the UK, adding each country, capital city and sea/ocean name in the correct place.
Help at home by listening to the songs above!
Autumn term after-school clubs – places available
As we start week two of our new after-school club schedule, there are some clubs with spaces available and it is not too late for your child to join a club.
Monday
- Y3/4 Table tennis 1 space
- Y3-6 Chess spaces
- Y4-6 Dodgeball 1 space
Tuesday
- Y1-3 Foot-tech football 1 space
- Y1-3 City of Leeds Basketball spaces
- Y5-6 now open to Year 4 Table tennis spaces
Wednesday
- Y1-3 Fun and games spaces
- Y4-6 City of Leeds Basketball spaces
Thursday
- Y5/6 Coding 2 spaces
- Y5-6 now open to Year 4 Netball spaces
English text
The children are enjoying our current class novel, Yours sincerely Giraffe by Megumi Iwasa.
Help at home: Ask your child what is happening so far in this fiction text.
PE – Castles and Cannon Balls
In PE, we worked together as a team to build castles using different pieces of equipment. This challenged us to use our resilience and communication skills. Once our castles were built, we had great fun using balls, quoits and beanbags to try and knock them down!
