St John’s CE Primary School

Year 2 Curriculum Fact Sheet

Autumn22017 ‘Pumpkin Soup’

This gives you some information about some of the work your children will be involved in during the first four weeks of this half term.

English
/ This half term our English lessons will be based on the story Pumpkin Soup
We will be:
  • Reading the story and exploring our understanding of it
  • Exploring the characters from the book using drama
  • Developing our descriptive writing skills by exploring the setting.
  • Practising writing consistently in the past tense.
  • Using adverbs
  • Using coordinating conjunctions (so, and, but) to extend our sentences.
  • Using inverted commas to write speech for the characters in the story.
  • Retelling the story from other points of view.

Maths
/ This half term the children will concentrate on:
  • Multiplication (using objects and arrays)
  • Statistics (making comparisons and reading information from simple charts or graphs)
  • Fractions (finding ½ and ¼ using objects)
  • Capacity and Volume (ordering and comparing)
  • Money (adding and taking away amounts within 100p)
  • Time (ordering units of time and understanding time as a measurement)

Literacy based Topic
Pumpkin Soup
/ In addition to completing lots of exciting writing activities we will also complete the following activities.
Science - How to grow a pumpkin; Will a pumpkin float or sink? Why? What will happen to other vegetables?
Art - Creating autumnal collages using different materials to explore texture and autumnal colours.
Drawing pumpkin house pictures and using painted pumpkin seeds
DT - Making Pumpkin soup and writing instructions and designing a new menu for Duck’s kitchen.
Geography - Examining woodland habitats to find out what types of plants grow there and what animals live in the habitat.
History - Looking at the American festival of Thanksgiving.
RE / In RE this half term children will:
  • Learn about Diwali the Hindu festival.
  • Making a Diwali lamp.
  • Retell the Christmas story
  • Think about their experiences of good news;
  • Learn about the role of angels in the nativity story;
  • Learn the stories of Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1: 5-25 & 39-80), of Mary and Gabriel (Luke 1:26-38), and the shepherds on the hillside (Luke 2: 8-20)

Computing
/ Children will be starting a unit on ‘Digital Literacy’. They will:
  • start to use two hands when typing
  • use a word processing programme to type up work
  • use simple keyboard shortcuts Ctrl + B, I, U to edit text
  • use spell checker
  • add borders, pictures
  • save work in their online file

Useful Websites /
  • Why not use your log in to go on to Mathletics and play against children all over the world
  • You can now use your Mathletics log in to access ‘Spellodrome’ and play the great spelling games
  • I will be adding activities to children’s ‘to do’s’ on Purple Mash that they can complete at home if they wish.
  • Purple Mash log ins can also be used to log on to the school blog and leave comments. Keep checking the blog for pictures from the classroom, fabulous writing, and activities to complete.
  • BBC Bitesize

Year 2 Home Learning tips

Remember homework goes home every Friday and should be returned by Wednesday for marking

Online log-ins are now stuck in the back page of homework books to use at home.

Make sure your reading book is in school every day

Don’t forget to read your reading book. If you read anything else – magazines, comics, Library books, web pages) remember to get someone to write it into your reading record as it all counts!

Mrs Stringer