This term, Beech Class will be reading "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. We will be looking at the structure of the narrative, identifying the opening, climax and resolution of the story, as well as examining and describing the main characters. The children will be learning about both present and past tense, as well as the use of pronouns in order to rewrite the story from Scrooge’s perspective. Year Two will begin to use some direct speech, looking at how we present and punctuate when characters are talking. 

We will be reading the text during daily Whole Class Reading sessions, in which the children will be learning to track the text and develop their fluency by reading aloud. We hope to begin to focus on comprehension by looking at the words the author uses and retrieving information from the text. The more practise the children have doing this, both at school and home, will be reflected in their progress and success. 

In Maths this term, we will be continuing to consolidating our knowledge of addition and subtraction before expanding our understanding of number, counting up to and beyond 100. The children will be expected to recognise, read and write numbers from 0 to 100 in digits and words. They will learn to partition numbers into tens and ones, developing the understanding to count and add more tens and ones to a number. Again, additional practise counting amounts or singing number songs will only support this learning and strengthen success. 

This term, we delve into our first History unit of the year, "Discovering History". We will aim to give the children a strong understanding of the past and the structure of timelines. We will be learning about historians and how they use evidence from the past to find out about people who lived throughout history. We will discover how to create family trees and begin to develop our understanding of the monarchy by looking the royal family tree, which will support our learning further in the year. Beech Class will be finding out about historically significant individuals from history using sources just like historians. They will focus on the life and work of Mary Seacole. We will also examine the role of archaeologists and how they can use objects left behind to find out more about people who lived before us.

Science this term will focus on developing scientific knowledge about animals. The children will learn to recognise and name a greater range of animals and use their observations to group animals according to how they look and what they eat. They will begin to use scientific words such as carnivore, herbivore and omnivore, as well as develop the skills of scientific drawing as a form of recording information. The children will then get to explore the needs of animals, focussing on how we can take care of pets.

Our Art unit this term focusses on "Line", building on the knowledge the children gained from their final piece from last term. The children will learn that lines are like basic tools for artists and they will explore Klee’s influential statements describing lines. We will develop vocabulary for describing different kinds of lines and the children will practise using these to create pictures, working directly from instructions and using their imagination. They will investigate the work of Rembrandt, Miro, and Klee which show how lines can be used to show different things, ranging from simple shapes and objects to representing dreams and patterns. They will look at how artists can use different materials to make lines, not only using pencils, pens and paint but using 3D media, such as wire and string. They will then produce their own work using mixed media. 

The question we are going to examine this term in RE is "Why is learning to do good deeds so important to Jewish people?" The children will learn about the concept of a ‘mitzvah’, a good deed and how this is viewed within the Jewish faith. They will find out about how Jewish people view the act of doing a good deed as means of creating more justice in an unfair world and how, because it is a commandment of God, it is a way of becoming closer to Him. They will learn that it is also a commandment to accept a mitzvah towards you if it is offered. We will examine how good deeds are not always financial or significant acts, but that it can be anything that makes the world a better place or improves the lives of those around you.



This term, Beech Class will also be completing a unit of Design Technology, focussing on cooking and food preparation. We will be looking at how to preserve food and the varieties of food prepared for festive celebrations. The children will develop their baking skills.