Welcome to Term Two, 2024!

 Dear Parents,

I hope you had a wonderful holidays and a Happy Easter. I cannot wait to hear about all of the children's adventures of camping, travels and fun in the sun🌞😎. I had a great break that was full of eating yummy food and spending time with family and friends!

Just a few pieces of information for the start of the term...

Wadandi Totems 🌨💧🍂🍁

We are now in the season of Djeran - This is when the weather starts to get cooler and the leaves turn orange and fall off the trees. We are very lucky that Josh Whiteland from Koomal Dreaming has approved every classroom with a native flora and fauna and their traditional Noongar name. Over the coming weeks, we will be spending some time learning about the significance of these. Please see below for the Wadandi Totems assigned to 2M.

	Plant	Wadandi Name	Animal	Wadandi Name
2M	Round Reed	Manjin	Western Swamp Tortoise	Yaagan

Homework

The Year Two fluency grid with this fortnights focus sounds and tricky words will be sent home on Wednesday. Have a look at our blog post titled 'Week 4 Information' which shows you how you can use this at home to increase your child's reading fluency. We have also included all of the spelling lists for your information on the back of the fluency grid. The pink list 💓 is the target for Year Two from our InitiaLit program. Please feel free to use these lists at home to increase your child's spelling abilities.

Have a look at our Fluency grids and spelling lists below to see our focus sounds 🤓

IntiaLit2

This term we will be transitioning from InitiaLit 1 and will be commencing InitiaLit-2. InitiaLit–2 teaches children how to read and spell through daily lessons, using research-based teaching methods. It also uses a range of engaging storybooks to develop children’s vocabulary, oral language and writing.

How does InitiaLit2 work?

By the time children are in Year 2, they have learnt that words are made up of sounds represented by letters. They should be able to work out most words they encounter for reading and spelling without guessing. The focus now moves to reading comprehension and spelling.

There are four main teaching components in InitiaLit–2 spread across the week.

• Comprehension and fluency

• Spelling

• Grammar

• Vocabulary (using children’s literature)

During the first 25-40 minutes of a lesson, the teacher will introduce a new concept to the children in a very clear explicit way. A number of areas will be covered during the course of the program. Children will learn to use different comprehension strategies to help them understand what they are reading and they will practise reading with expression.

They will learn the various ways to spell the sounds of English, as well as some spelling rules to help them make the correct choice. They will also be introduced to some simple and useful grammatical concepts to help with their writing.

After the new concept has been taught, the teacher will work with different groups of children in turn, helping them to develop their reading fluency and comprehension using a variety of reading material. The rest of the class will be engaged in different activities to consolidate what they have learnt.

Learning Intentions

English: 

This fortnight we are learning the spelling sounds 'ai' as in rain, 'ay' as in play, 'ea' as in ear and 'ee' tree' and the tricky words for this fortnight are - until, here, was, February.

Please have a look at the rule for using 'ay' & 'ai' and 'ea' & 'ee' below:

A few parents have asked what they can be doing with the spelling words which are located on the back of the children's fluency grids. Have a look below at some of the activities we complete in class and would be beneficial if you would like to complete at home:

We are continuing to focus on the text genre of narrative and have now begun focusing on our mentor text titled 'The Shimmering Opal'. This term, we will begin innovating our mentor text and completing various activities based around this and skills needed to enhance your child's narrative writing. Once this is completed, the children will then complete a 'Hot Task' of the narrative genre which will show their knowledge and understandings of the unit that has been taught.

Math: 

We will be finishing of our unit of length and beginning to focus on number sense for the next two weeks. This involves ordering numbers from largest to smallest and smallest to largest, identifying missing numbers in a sequence and identifying numbers before and after any given number. We found this was an area that needed revision and further exploration after reflecting on our place value assessment last term. 

Important Dates for Term 2

• Monday 15th April - Term 2 Commences
• Thursday 25th April - ANZAC Day Public Holiday
• Sunday 12th May - Mother's Day
• Tuesday 14th May - Scholastic Book Fair
• Wednesday 15th May - Scholastic Book Fair
• Friday 17th May - Student Free Day
• Monday 27th May - School Photos
• Tuesday 28th May - School Photos
• Thursday 13th June - Cross Country
• Thursday 20th June - OLC's Got Talent
• Friday 21st June - 2Mc's Prayer Assembly
• Saturday 22nd - Year 2 Family Mass & Pizza
• Thursday 27th June - Last Day of Term

Thanks for your ongoing support,

Natalie Matthews