Year 2 Book Map 2024-2025

Term 1

We are starting the year reading 'Marv and the mega robot' by Alex Falase-Koya. This is a book is about a boy whose super power is kindness and his "big heart", teaching us many important qualities as people. It has been chosen to enable conversations around these qualities as we settle into Year 2, but also due to the high-level vocabulary which can be taken into our writing lessons. If you would like to read the blurb, please click here.

Term 2

In Term 2, we are reading a lot of fairy tales. This will allow the children to talk about the characteristics found in fairy tales, and help them decide if they are reading one. We will be reading from the Usborne published book, as this has new vocabulary to the children in addition to some new stories. 

Term 3

To link with learning across the curriculum this term in Year 2, we will be reading 'The Boy who grew Dragons' by Andy Shepherd. This is a comical book, to allow the children to explore more exciting tones within their story writing, as well as increasing their base of imaginative ideas to draw from. The children will come across many new words within this story, which they can take into their dragon writing, such as glimmered and flickering. This story will also lead into conversations relating to secrets and friendships.  If you would like to read the blurb, click here

Term 1

We are using 'Emma Jane's Aeroplane' by Katie Haworth to inspire our writing.

We are writing a character description, a diary and a changed ending to the story. To help us do this, we will be learning about adjectives and spelling past tense words with an -ed suffix.

In our humanities learning, we will also write some short biographies about famous people linked with flight.

A big focus for us this term is capital letters and full stops. We know that the word I needs a capital letter, as well as names of people and places. We are practising our letter formation to make sure we do not have capital letters in the middle of words by accident. 

To help at home, practising writing lower and upper case letters would be beneficial. Children may find it helping to trace over some of yours to gain the appropriate size on a line. 

Term 2

In Term 2, 'Winter Sleep' by Sean Taylor and Alex Morss will be helping us to write a non-chronological report about hibernation. We will also write a setting description in the role of a hedgehog who is getting ready for hibernation. We will talk about making sentences longer with conjunction during this writing, as well as how to use commas in lists. 

Afterwards, we will use 'Little Red Reading Hood' by Lucy Rowland. This is an alternative fairy tale, and will encourage discussions about the similarities and differences from a reading perspective.

Term 3

We will spend the first two weeks learning about a traditional tale from another culture. We will use our knowledge of fairy tales from last term to compare this story to one that we know. After exploring the main character's personality and making inferences about them, we will change part of the story and make up our own ending with a similar structure.

After learning about tales from another culture, we will start writing about dragons. We will be able to describe their setting well due to our knowledge from our history lessons, although our writing will also focus on other aspects too. We will write informative sentences about an imagined dragon, and write our own story about it. 

If you would like to help at home, please be on the look out for adverbs (they are usually ending in the letters -ly and describe an action). This might be in reading books or when practising spellings.

Year 2 Maths Long Term Plan

Term 1

Number and Place Value

We will be building on our Year 1 knowledge to help us understand numbers to 100, including estimating where numbers are on a number line if some of the numbers are not shown. We have looked at how we can use number facts we know to answer similar facts with larger numbers. 

To help at home, you could talk about how many tens and ones are in a number, practise writing numbers in digits and words, and practise counting in 2s, 5s and 10s.

In school, the children will start to move towards a pictorial form of dienes, which means drawing the number of tens and ones in a number. This will be an important skill when moving into calculations with numbers.

Please also continue to regularly practice your Number skills using Numbots. Your child's log in details can be found in their reading record.

Term 1 and 2

Addition and Subtraction

We will be slowly building up to adding and subtracting 2 digit numbers, for example 45 + 37 or 63 - 26.

We will learn to do this with dienes, so that the children have a method of drawing to help them each time they are given a question. This method links to place value, making it easier to understand, and helps with making the jump to mental methods. 

Please keep an eye on your child's Seesaw page, where a step-by-step example will be posted once the children have been taught it. To help at home, increasing speed at number bonds to 20 (e.g. 20 = 16 + 4) would be beneficial. 

Terms 2 and 3

The children will be learning about more 2D and 3D shape names, including ovals, hexagons, octagons, pyramids and prisms. Once these are all named, we will start to describe how many vertices, edges and faces these shapes have. The children will sort the shapes to help them in describing similarities and differences, as well as completing patterns with them.

To help at home, please ask what shapes can be seen around the house. You could even send them on a 'shape hunt' to find as many shapes as possible!

Term 1 - Why Can't Animals live everywhere? How Do I know if something is alive?

We will start by talking about things that are living, non-living and dead, which will involve classifying a lot of objects into the three categories. 

We will deepen our understanding of animals, habitats and microhabitats, by talking about how we will only find animals in the places they are suited to. Food, water, shelter and air are all identified as things that a living thing needs to stay alive, and will be discussed in relation to these habitats. We will work practically by looking at minibeasts and their microhabitats around school, as well as conducting experiments where we can learn more about how animals keep warm and dry. 

We have been trying really hard to add labels to our drawings.

To help at home, please talk about the plants and animals that appear around while you are travelling somewhere, and why they have chosen to live or grow in that habitat.

Term 2 - Which materials will make the strongest castle?

This unit will link to our DT and History topics next term, giving us useful information to help us succeed in future learning. 

We will start this topic by revisiting many of the materials we learned about in Year 1, and using words to describe their properties. We will then begin to learn some new properties and apply these too, such as transparent and absorbent. We will experiment with materials to discover these properties.

After we are experts on what they materials are like, we will then begin thinking about why particular materials have been chosen for an object. We will also make sure that the wrong material is not chosen for an object!

To help at home, please talk about the simple materials that are used around the house. You could also ask questions such as 'What would happen if I poured water on this?' and 'Is this material stretchy?'

Term 1- How has air travel changed over time?

To answer this history question, we will look at different transport types and then the forms of flying in chronological order. We will talk about the different parts of a plane, so that we can also talk about how they have changed since being invented. We will learn about many important people, including Lilian Bland, who was born in Maidstone! 

TERM 2- Where in the world are we?

This is a geographical enquiry, where the children will learn about the continents and oceans. We will learn the names of these through some catchy songs, and then use globes and atlases to look at the different places. Learning about the equator will also help us learn about hot and cold places across the world. The children will finish the topic by talking about where they live (or do not live) to show off their understanding of the new words. 

Which castle in Kent is the best for protection, and why?

This is a historical enquiry. The children will start by learning about why the first castles were built, what they were like and how this compares to the castles they know. We will then explore the features of a castle, including geographical features, before learning about the people who lived here and what their lives were like. Throughout the topic, the children will be looking at examples of castles across Kent. When they come to answer the big question at the end of the term, they will see these castles again and use all of their learning to explain which one was best at protecting the people living inside.