Inspired by: Five Minutes Peace - Curriculum Objectives
In Year 2, pupils are encouraged to develop their literacy skills across various dimensions, with a particular emphasis on reading and writing. They are taught to continue honing their phonics knowledge, which aids in the automatic decoding of words for fluent reading. This includes blending sounds in words with familiar graphemes, reading multisyllabic words, recognising common suffixes, and becoming adept at reading common exception words. The curriculum objective is to foster a love for reading and an understanding of text through activities such as discussing a range of literature, retelling stories, and becoming familiar with non-fiction. Pupils also learn to read with accuracy and fluency, re-reading to build confidence, and engaging in discussions to express their views and deepen their comprehension.
On the writing front, pupils are taught to spell by segmenting words into phonemes, learning new spellings for known phonemes, and mastering common exception words and homophones. They are encouraged to add suffixes, apply spelling rules, and write dictated sentences from memory. To develop a positive attitude towards writing, they engage in planning their writing, making revisions, and reading aloud their work with appropriate intonation. Pupils also learn grammatical concepts such as punctuation, sentence forms, tense consistency, and the use of subordination and co-ordination in sentences. Moreover, they are introduced to the grammatical terminology used in discussing their writing. Handwriting is also a focus, with pupils learning to form letters correctly and use appropriate spacing between words. The book "Five Minutes' Peace" by Jill Murphy serves as an engaging module for comprehension and composition exercises, including predicting story outcomes, exploring intentions, and writing descriptions and poems.
