Welcome to Year 2 & 3
Year 2 & 3 at Ebbsfleet Green is called Willow Tree Class, and we are taught by Miss. Webster.
Our learning is interconnected, if appropriate, meaning each term we interconnect some subjects to support reading, writing and the wider curriculum. By learning in this way, we deepen our understanding, become critical thinkers, and develop both knowledge and skills in key areas. Learning is subject specific. If interconnections are not appropriate, subjects are taught discretely.
Learning in Year 2 & 3 includes:
- Light It Up!
- Who Lives Here?
- The Great Fire of London
- London Today
- Walkabout in Australia
- Celebrate!
At Ebbsfleet Green, all our learning have elements of the same overarching threads of:
Character – personal qualities including identity, acceptance, resilience, perseverance, coping strategies and mental strength
Communication – purposeful speaking and listening to enable collaboration
Collaboration – to work together for a shared end goal, to solve a problem or work towards a shared understanding/outcome
Creativity – to problem solve by thinking of ideas which are original and serve a purpose using what is known
Critical Thinking – to use what is known to think precisely in order to find a solution. This will involve critical questioning
Citizenship – to develop a sense of a place within the community, city, nation or world and recognise a commitment to it.
Following on from Little Wandle's Letters and Sounds Revised, we begin this year by following The 'No Nonsense,' Spelling scheme to ensure full coverage and consistency of approach.
Learning gives us the opportunity to acquire new knowledge, develop our skill-sets, apply our Ebbsfleet Green Values and develop our 6Cs: Character, Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, Critical Thinking and Citizenship. Our learning in school is built around these areas; we use a class read to as a stimulus and segue into our learning. We love sharing what we have learnt in school, although learning also happens outside the classroom; our homework and wider reading opportunities are one way this happens. It is important to us that we are always learners whether we are in school, at home, or out and about in the world. Events we look forward to are our Big Outcomes where we welcome parents and visitors into school to share in our learning with us; this is one of the times you will see our 6Cs in action!
Light It Up!
Science is our key focus in our first half term where we will build upon prior learning about light. We will carry out investigations including how animals see in the dark as well as other important senses, which is a link to our learning in Year 1. We will be critically thinking about animals we see in the day compared to those who are only seen at night. We will be creating a collage in art that focuses on diurnal and nocturnal environments. Our class read, Rama and Sita, will support us in further learning opportunities, such as mapping Rama and Sita’s journey across the continent in geography, and using computing to track this. Whilst Florence Nightingale was known as ‘The Lady of the Lamp’, our history teaching sequence will compare the life and events in the life of Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell. We will be using our knowledge in our writing of instructions, traditional stories and poetry.
Who Lives Here!
Science continues to be our focus this half term as we learn about habitats and animals. Our class read: ‘Stanley Saves the Amazon Rainforest,’ stimulates our thinking about this. We interconnect this with a geographical enquiry about our own locality, which will include local wildlife. In art and D.T., we will create a class rainforest display to showcase our learning, which will include thematic reports, instruction writing and recounts. Always, we recall our Phase 5 phonics learning as well as new spelling rules to apply in our writing. We will develop our computing skills across all subjects, using the internet to gain knowledge safely and with discretion. We will be composing our own rainforest music, with a focus on creating patterns and we will also use movement and interpretation in P.E. to link to the rainforests. R.E. this half term focuses on worship and celebrations in the Christian calendar.
The Great Fire of London
This very exciting teaching sequence will allow us to explore many areas of learning including different materials in science where we will discuss and investigate why certain materials are used to build houses and why some are not suitable. This interlinks with our learning in history but we also learn about fires from recent times. Our class read, ‘The Great Fire of London,’ will help us to learn new knowledge and produce timelines of the events back then and to learn as much as we can about the Great Fire. We will also be putting ourselves in the position of different people at the time in role play and drama activities and using these experiences to write newspaper reports, diary entries and descriptive prose including poems and linking this to computing by emailing friends from other Trust schools to share what we are learning about. We practise applying spelling rules throughout the curriculum. We will be using design and technology processes to design an effective vehicle that could have been used to put the fire out. Art opportunities are abundant as we experiment with colour mixing and artistic impact and effect as well as using computer programs to design Stuart house montages. Our geographical knowledge will be called upon to locate the city of London, key rivers and landmarks that were important during the Great Fire as well as the importance of directional and positional language. We will continue to build upon our understanding of the Christian faith with a focus on the importance of the Church and in music we will be learning about different instruments and the sounds they make. P.E will include understanding the importance of following the rules of the game and how we can express feeling and mood in a dance sequence.
London Today
We will then move from the London of our past, to London today, interconnecting knowledge and finding out what has changed and why. Using ‘Katie’s Picture Show,' we will be going up to London, planning different routes using a range of maps as part of our geography learning, looking at buildings that have been built since the Great Fire of London and looking at different portraits and paintings of the London skyline before experimenting with our own techniques to create portraits and landscapes of our own. As part of our map work, we will be using our computing skills to program a vehicle to follow a planned route on our own maps. In D.T, we will be designing and creating prototypes of our own instillation for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square after researching and exploring previous and the existing artwork on display there. In our writing, we will learn about Haiku poems and writing our own and using our class read to write our own story in a familiar setting and using our own experiences of a trip to London today to write a report. London is a melting pot of different cultures and religions and as part of our learning about this, we will build on our Year 1 experiences of the Sikh religion by learning about the importance of their religious garments and objects they carry with them as well as finding out about their place of worship. London is an incredible place for music of new and old and our music lessons will give us opportunities to explore how the music scene has changed and developed in London over time- we may even get to see some buskers when we visit the city! We will be learning different songs about London. Do you know any we can learn? In P.E. we will be focusing on our coordination, ability to copy the movements of others and how to play team games tactically!
Walkabout in Australia
From London to the other side of the world with our next teaching sequence! We will be using our existing knowledge of London to help us to compare it to the capital city of Australia in many different ways and using this as well as our class read of ‘Wombat Goes Walkabout’ to write information and explanation texts as well as letters. We will use our computing skills to create a document using dual coding of images and texts as part of these writing outcomes. We will build on our map reading skills to compare physical geography of the two localities and our research skills to find out how the human geography are different. We will explore Australian art and use papier mache to create an Australian object such as a boomerang in D.T. We will also incorporate our science learning about plants to discover what similar plants grow in both localities and what differences there are and thinking about the reasons for these differences. Australian music is as diverse as it is here and we are looking forward to finding out about popular music there and learning how to express an educated opinion about the music we hear. In P.E. we will be playing a team sport such as tag rugby. There is a lot of opportunity for free and cued recall of learning done so far as well as dual coding in this teaching sequence - very exciting! In R.E, we will be learning all about Jewish festivals, which will give us a wonderful prelude to our next block of learning next half term.
Celebrate!
‘Celebrate!’ is very apt as we know we will have lots of successes to celebrate and we will be learning all about different celebrations around the world as well as in different religions. At Greenacres, in the summer term, we celebrate all our learning at our ‘Greenacres Learning Festival’ and our learning this half term is all linked to this spectacular event. We will be recapping and building upon all the science concepts we have learnt this year, with exciting investigations and taking our learning in different directions, asking our own questions. In D.T., we will be thinking about what foods and meals we have at different celebrations and designing as well as making our own celebration foods! We will then link this to our writing by writing instructions for the food we make. How we celebrate different events and days has changed over the years and we are keen to find out how our parents and grandparents used to celebrate Christmas, birthdays and other important occasions in our history learning. We will also be reading a lovely class read called ‘Alfie and the Birthday Surprise,’ and using this as well as other learning and experiences to write stories from the same author and reports.
