Latchmere School

Year 2

Spring Term

We hope that you had a lovely Christmas break. Welcome to the Spring Term where we look forward to the continuing partnerships between home and school.

Reading

Our goal is to create confident, fluent, independent readers. We prioritise reading at Latchmere School and have very carefully chosen the texts your child will study this term. We focus on word reading to develop fluency and encourage the whole class to join in through strategies such as choral reading (the whole class read together) and echo reading (the teacher models the reading and the class echo back). We also have the Latchmere reading skills. These are based on comprehension skills such as retrieval, inference, summarising, making links, prediction and vocabulary.

In Year 2, we will be studying books including non-fiction books on polar lands and polar animals, Leaf, The Princess and The White Bear King, and non-fiction books about the Great Fire of London.

We will be continuing to embed the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds phonics programme. This involves teaching of phonics and up to three reading sessions per week for every child focussing on decoding, prosody and comprehension.

Please see the phonics page on the website for further information.

Maths

Our curriculum is based on the White Rose Maths programme. This research-based initiative ensures that the skills and concepts children taught, are fully embedded before moving on. The children are taught strategies such as bar modelling and have plenty of opportunities to use ‘manipulatives’ such as counters and dienes as they progress through the school.

This term we will be focusing on shape, money, multiplication, division, length, height, mass, capacity and temperature.

Children in Year 2 also benefit from using the Numbots program to help embed the core maths skills of subitising, number bonds, addition and subtraction. White Rose have released an app called ‘1-minute maths’ which is very useful. We will also begin to use Times Table Rockstars. Your child’s log in for Numbots is the same for Times Table Rockstars.

Curriculum Highlights

This term, we will be learning…

Science – We will continue to learn about living things and their habitats. We will also be looking at materials and their everyday uses.

History – We will be learning about The Great Fire of London. The children will have a workshop from a travelling theatre company to help immerse them in this topic.

PE – We will be looking at fitness, ball skills, invasion games and yoga. Swimming lessons will start this term.

RE – We will be learning about ‘The good news Christians believe Jesus brings’ and answering the question ‘Why does Easter matter to Christians?’.

Thank you in advance for all of your support in the year ahead.

Kind regards,

The Year 2 Team

Mr Morris (Gold Class) and Mrs Conroy (Silver Class)

   

Key dates

Thursday 15th January 2026 - Gold Class Assembly

Thursday 29th January 2026 - Silver Class Assembly

Spring 2 - Great Fire of London Workshop (details will be sent home nearer the time)

Updates and reminders

Morning and afternoon routine – In the morning, the children should enter school via the Year 2 gate (which will open at 8:40am and close at 8:50am) and walk to their classroom. If you arrive after this time please enter via the school office. At the end of the day, the school gates will be opened shortly before 3:20pm and you will be able to collect your child from the KS1 playground.

Snacks – Children are able to bring in a healthy (nut-free) snack for them to have during morning play. Each class will also offer a daily selection of fruit and vegetables.

Water bottles – Children may bring a water bottle to school each day. Please remember to put your child’s name on the bottle.

PE Kit – We are asking for children to come to school in their P.E kit on P.E days. We ask that children are dressed appropriately for the weather. Please see the P.E day timetable on the Year 2 notice board (by the Year 2 gate) for P.E days.

Swimming – Please speak to your class reps if you can volunteer your time. We will need three parent helpers each week for the swimming lessons to take place. On the day of their lesson, children will need to come to school with a bag containing: a towel, a swimming costume, and a swimming cap/hat. Goggles are optional. Please ensure that all clothes and equipment are named.

Gold – Monday afternoon.

Silver – Tuesday afternoon.

Medication – Please ensure that any medication your child needs is in school and up to date. Please speak directly to the main office regarding medication that is kept in school.

Class Representatives – If you have any messages or anything you need clarifying please contact Class reps or email the office.

Contact Address and Telephone Numbers – If you have moved recently or changed home or mobile telephone number, please let the office staff know. It is important that we can contact you quickly if your child is unwell.

Parent helpers and DBS Clearance – We really appreciate the support that parent helpers can offer in school. As you can appreciate, we are only able to ask parents who have an up-to-date DBS form. Please speak to the office if you need to apply for clearance of if you are unsure whether your DBS form is up to date. Thank you.