Year 2 Homework

15 May 2015

This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Wednesday 20th May 2015.

‘Who do you think you are?’

This week, we want to know all about  you and who you think you are. We’re going to be asking this question all week (beginning 22.05.15), thinking about our individuality, how we are different to those around us and how we belong to different communities.

Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing…

• life journey
• family tree
• self image
• art work/poetry/report
• quiz

08 May 2015

This week’s homework is Talk Time and is due Wednesday 13 May 2015.

I can talk about my favourite book character.

This week, Year 2 have been writing character descriptions. We have been looking at characters from different Roald Dahl stories and we’ve talked about their appearance, behaviour, likes and dislikes and our opinions of them. In particular, we’ve looked at the characters from The Twits. Can you ask your child about their favourite book character and talk about how you would describe them?

From our Homework Policy:

Talk Time homework

This involves a discussion topic eg ‘Should animals be kept in zoos?’ Children should make notes (even pictures, diagrams etc) ready to participate in a class / group discussion on the topic. Please make sure you write a comment about the Talk Time discussions in the homework books.

Top Tips: Turn the telly off! Sit around the dining table! Have a chat and share opinions and ideas! Children should talk with family, friends and each other. (Your child should write some notes in their Homework Books.)

01 May 2015

This week’s homework is creative and is due on Wednesday 06 May 2015.

If I ran the country I would…

It’s the General Election on Thursday 07 May so how would you like the country to be run? At home, get your child involved in thinking about what we are voting for and how it might change things across the country. What are the main parties called and what kind of things are they promising? Then, in as creative a way as you like, think about how you would run the country and what your main policies would be (as a serious bid or with crazy ideas just for a bit of fun).

Your child could…

• create a speech for people to vote for you
• draw a ‘Theme Park Map’ of the country as it would look if you ran it
• create a manifesto
• write a story with you as the prime minister
• write a letter to the prime minister suggesting the policies you would put in place

24 April 2015

This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Wednesday 29 April 2015.

• What do you know about night time?
• What questions would you like answered about night time?

With the launch of a new topic for Summer term, I’d like the children to think about what they already know about night time (the night sky, people, animals, changes) and what they don’t know but they’d really like to find out. Thinking about questions they’d like answering means we can keep the topic closely linked to the children’s interests with them excited about their learning.

As always for Creative homework, the choice is yours, but here are a few ideas of what you could do.

• An oral presentation.
• An interview with your child.
• Question and answers (but some answers may be missing).
• A night time poem.

13 March 2015

This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Wednesday 18 March.

Choose a time in the past. What have you learnt about it?

Use all your creative juices to show what you have learnt through our Time Travel topic. We’ve travelled from 600BC all the way into the future; meeting the Celts, Romans, Vikings, Normans, Tudors, Victorians and our modern day selves along the way. Choose one of these periods of history and show (in any way you wish) what you have learnt about them.

You could:

• Create a leaflet
• Do a quiz
• Make a house from that time
• Prepare a verbal presentation
• Write a story with characters from that period
• Conduct an interview with somebody from that time…or…
• any other creative idea you might have!

06 March 2015

This week’s homework is Talk Time and is due on Wednesday 11 March.

Everybody has the right to have a house. Discuss.

Talk about your and other people’s opinions and write a couple of sentences to help you join in the discussion in class.

From our Homework Policy:

Talk Time homework

This involves a discussion topic eg ‘Should animals be kept in zoos?’ Children should make notes (even pictures, diagrams etc) ready to participate in a class / group discussion on the topic. Please make sure you write a comment about the Talk Time discussions in the homework books.

Top Tips: Turn the telly off! Sit around the dining table! Have a chat and share opinions and ideas! Children should talk with family, friends and each other. (Your child should write some notes in their Homework Books.)

Time to learn your times tables

Practising times tables at home is really important. Knowing times tables facts really helps your child to feel confident in Maths, and enables them to make progress in areas such as calculating, fractions… even shape work can involve times tables – when we think about angles, for example.

The National Curriculum sets out expectations for times tables knowledge:

• Year 2: recall and use multiplication and division facts for the 2, 5 and 10 multiplication tables, including recognising odd and even numbers
• Year 3: recall and use multiplication and division facts for the 3, 4 and 8 multiplication tables
• Year 4: recall multiplication and division facts for multiplication tables up to 12 × 12

If your child is in Year 5 or 6, they need to know all the tables facts so they can start thinking about prime numbers, factors etc. Knowing the tables facts (including division) means having rapid recall – being able to say the answer within about five seconds, not counting through the times tables to work it out.

Each week, your child is asked to learn a particular times table. We might also work on a pair of tables which are related, such as x4s and x8.

Please make sure your child practises as home: in the car, in the bath, on the way to school, straight after school as a matter of routine. Your child needs to know that something like this involves effort and there aren’t any easy solutions!

It’s really helpful to test them two or three times during the week to make sure their ‘score’ improves, and also try to build in some multiplication and division games and references:

• play ‘tables ping-pong‘, where you and your child counts through a times tables forwards and backwards, alternating the counting: 0, 4,8, 12, 16, 20…
• look out for arrays, where you see a grid of something: eggs in a carton is a simple 2 x 3 or 3 x 2 array, and there are arrays on your mobile phone (to log on to mobile phones, you might see a 3 x 3 array – a square number), on buildings (the window panes of a block of flats are useful for larger numbers), tiles in your bathroom, chocolate and other food products…
• download an app to practise on a phone or tablet (there are loads of free ones)
• talk about when you use times tables knowledge

Times Tables

From now on, Year 2 will be given a times table to focus on each week. By the end of the year, children are expected to know the 2, 5, and 10 times table with quick recall. This week we will be focussing on the 5 times table – here are the type of questions your child can expect.

• 1 x 5 is 5
• 2 lots of 5 are 10
• 3 groups of 5 are 15
• 4 times 5 is 20
• 5 multiplied by 5 is 25
• 6 groups of 5 are 30
• 7 lots of 5 are 35
• 8 x 5 is 40
• 9 multiplied by 5 is 45
• 10 times 5 is 50
• 11 lots of 5 are 55
• 12 groups of 5 are 60

They will also be expected to then know the related division facts. For example, if 6 times 5 is 30… 30 divided by 5 is 6. There will be a couple of questions relating to division facts each week.

Help at home by counting in fives as you go up the stairs or walk down the street. Ask quick fire questions while driving in the car and make it a competition to see who can write the whole table the fastest – you or your child?

27 February 2015

This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Wednesday 04 March.

I can present my favourite book.

Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, lots of us have a favourite book or at least a book we have enjoyed recently. Discuss what books your child has enjoyed recently and think about how they can present this to the rest of the class.

Here are a few suggestions…

• Prepare a speech.
• Write a book review.
• Create a poster.
• Interview the characters.
• Make a story board to retell from.
• Create a fact flap page.

Of course, this homework is creative so any of their own ideas would be great too!

Taken from our Homework Policy:

Creative homework

This involves a creative piece of open-ended work based around an ‘I can…’ statement eg ‘I can use research skills to find out about a country.’ ‘I know how instructions are used’ Only one rule: don’t use more than one page of A4 (unless your teacher says otherwise!). Content will be a balanced mix of subjects.

Top Tips: Be as creative as you like! Chat about ideas with your child: Could the homework be in the form of a poster, a letter, a comic strip, some writing, a PowerPoint…? Could it use photos, drawings, foldout ‘extras’ on the page…?

Supporting your child’s maths at home

This article is a thought-provoking read, and might inspire you to support your child in different ways; in it, Professor Jo Boaler sets out this list of top tips for parents who want to support their child in Maths:

1. Encourage children to play maths puzzles and games at home. Anything with a dice will help them enjoy maths and develop numeracy and logic skills.
2. Never tell children they are wrong when they are working on maths problems. There is always some logic to what they are doing. So if your child multiplies three by four and gets seven, try: “Oh I see what you are thinking, you are using what you know about addition to add three and four. When we multiply we have four groups of three…”
3. Maths is not about speed. In younger years, forcing kids to work fast on maths is the best way to start maths anxiety, especially among girls.
4. Don’t tell your children you were bad at maths at school. Or that you disliked it. This is especially important if you are a mother.
5. Encourage number sense*. What separates high and low achievers in primary school is number sense.
6. Encourage a “growth mindset” – the idea that ability changes as you work more and learn more.