Year 2 - Empathy, currency and oracy

As the second half of term begins, Year 2 has wasted no time getting stuck into their learning.

To mark Black History Month, we began by exploring the history of the “Windrush” Generation. Using different sources in our Topic lesson, including video interviews, photos and Baroness Floella Benjamin’s story “Coming to England”, the children discussed with impressive maturity how it must have felt to leave a country for a completely new and very different one. Exploring further sources led us to find out that the reality was quite different to what people expected. We showed empathy when creating our own “interviews” with people before and after they had travelled to England after the Second World War, and when writing a postcard from Dame Floella Benjamin’s point of view after travelling to England.

As further practice of real life skills in our learning, we are exploring money in Maths. At first, we questioned whether learning about cash and coins is still relevant in an increasingly cashless world, but we soon realised that becoming familiar with physical currency can help us investigate and solve real-life problems. From calculating change to comparing amounts, we found that using coins and notes was an incredibly useful visual and physical aid.

We have also been polishing up our oracy skills and have been exploring the importance of having a clear voice with varied intonation, expression and volume to make what we say more interesting and engaging for the audience. These skills have been put into practice more than once; we performed our Marvellous Medicine poems for House Poetry week and have also been working hard to perfect our Christmas Performance which we look forward to showing you in person at the beginning of December.