Autumn Term 1: ‘Bounce’
The topic began with an exciting trip to Hickory Dickory’s indoor play park. We had great fun using all the slides, climbing apparatus and ball pits. The children learnt how to work as a team to travel from one place to another, following instructions to solve problems. Back at school in PE the children enjoyed exploring a variety of ball games, ways of travelling with a ball and honing their skills on throwing, passing, dribbling and catching. They also made up some of the own ball games. We used a variety of different sized balls with different textures to produce abstract pieces of art. Our inspiration was the work of the artist Wassily Kandinski. With the main focus of the topic being PE, we followed closely the Rio Paralympics and looked into the life of Tanni-Grey Thompson and how she faced challenges throughout her life.
Autumn 2 – ‘Muck, Mess and Mixtures’
This topic started with a fabulous “Muck, Mess and Mixtures” science day where the children found out how to create different mixtures and discovered how they reacted with each other. We used items such as shaving form, corn flour, gloop, mud and food colouring. They then used these mixtures in a practical way to enhance their learning. In DT we used our knowledge of mixing to follow and write recipes based on Roald Dahl’s book “George’s Marvellous Medicine”. This also linked to the work of the artist Carl Warner who inspired the children to create their own food landscapes practically and visually.
Spring 1: ‘Land Ahoy’
We introduced the topic with a “Pirate Day”. All the children and staff in Year 2 came to school dressed as pirates and joined in a variety of piratey things “OOOOOARR!” The children thoroughly enjoyed learning sea shanties, rhymes and related dances which they performed at the end of the day to the whole year group. We also invited parents in for a “build a boat day” where the children had to build a boat from scrap materials that could float independently. In geography, the children learned about the world’s 7 continents and 5 oceans, and the characteristics of the countries and capital cities of the United Kingdom and the surrounding seas. Our text in English was the story of ‘The Pirate Cruncher’. The children wrote their own version after acting out the story using different character voices and emotions. They also wrote an information booklet about Captain Cook.
Spring 2 ‘Wriggle and Crawl’
The topic began with and awe and wonder day in our fabulous forest school. We became mini-beast detectives for the day looking for clues related to the habitats and features of all things creepy crawly. We followed this up by writing an information booklet for new visitors to our forest and wrote successful persuasive letters to Mrs Bishop and Mr Hatchel to express why the new school should not be built on our forest school. We linked science to English by writing mini-beast riddles where the reader had to work out from clues which animal we had written about. We also used these riddles as a means to identify the different parts of various species of mini-beasts by giving the reader a labelled, detailed drawing.
Summer term: ‘Towers, Tunnels and Turrets
The children had a wonderful day enjoying the delights of Warwick Castle. We found out about the amazing capabilities of the ‘Mighty Trebuchet’, the wonders of the magnificent Birds of Prey and how the history and skill of the Bowman. We found out about the history of the families that have lived in the castle, climbed the many winding steps to the top of the mount to view the surrounding grounds of the castle. We used our experiences to write a detailed recount of our day at the castle. In addition to this we found out about the correct names for all the features of a castle and how the structure of castles has developed over time. We drew and labelled detailed diagrams to explain the features and their uses. The abstract artist Paul Klee was our focus in art and we created pictures of castles in his style. Our text for the summer term was Sleeping Beauty. We re-wrote the christening scene focusing on the traits of the bad fairy and also wrote a monologue from the point of view of the handsome prince as he encountered the concealed, overgrown grounds of the palace where Sleeping Beauty had been lying undiscovered in a deep slumber for 100 years!
Assessment for learning is integral at The Meadows Primary School and drives the next steps in learning, by flagging up gaps and informing what the teachers need to plan for in terms of individuals, groups and whole class learning. As a result some objectives may be modified, added or omitted depending on the needs of the pupils.
|Year 2||Year 2 Projects Overview||https://cornerstoneseducation.co.uk/cornerstones-curriculum-topics/year-2-curriculum-projects/|
|Summer 1||Wriggle and Crawl||https://cornerstoneseducation.co.uk/cornerstones-curriculum-topics/year-2-curriculum-projects/#resource-id-9|
|Summer 2||Towers, Tunnels and Turrets||https://cornerstoneseducation.co.uk/cornerstones-curriculum-topics/year-2-curriculum-projects/#resource-id-8|