Year 2

Welcome to our Class Page!

In our class, we aim to live out our school values every day:

🌟 Care for ourselves, each other, and our world
🌱 Grow by embracing challenges and new learning
💪 Persevere even when things feel tricky
✨ Shine by being proud of who we are and what we achieve

Meet the Year 2 Team

Your child’s class teacher is: Mrs Marsh from Monday – Wednesday & Mrs Lucas on Thursday & Friday. They are supported by Mrs Cooper, Miss Hill and Mrs Hammond who help make our classroom a warm and supportive place to learn.

Times

KS1 School gates open: 8:30am – 8:40am

It is important children arrive on time as learning starts right away!

Collection: 3:10pm from KS1 courtyard

Entry & exit via Newham Green path gate. Dogs & phones are not permitted on the playground & please refrain from using the climbing frame during this time.

Communication: office.3200@crowmarsh-gifford.oxon.sch.uk

The office will forward emails to teachers

PE Days

PE takes place on Thursdays and Fridays
Please send your child to school in their PE kit on those days, including suitable shoes for outdoor sports. Long hair should be tied back, and earrings removed or taped.

Curriculum: What are we learning?

To ensure children gain the skills they need to effectively progress through school and the knowledge they need to be successful learners in the future, we have a bespoke Crowmarsh curriculum.

Curriculum Overviews outlining the learning that will take place each term can be found here at the bottom of our class page. These can be useful to instigate discussions at home.
Learning in class will be posted here on our class page & sometimes on Instagram

You can find more information about the subjects we teach on Our Curriculum page of the school website.

We also share some of our wider curriculum events on our website link..

Homework

Children spend only 20% of their waking hours in school. So, your support with learning at home is integral to your child’s success.

Homework should build positive habits, not create stress.
Little and often is more effective than long tasks.
Reading remains the foundation at every stage.
Independence gradually increases as children move through the school.
Homework consolidates learning rather than introducing new content.

Year 2 - Strengthening fluency and recall

Daily time guide: 30–40 minutes

Reading (10 minutes daily)

Read aloud and discuss meaning.
Answer simple comprehension questions.
Record in Reading Record.
Reading book and reading record in school every day.
We used the All Aboard scheme for phonics. It is a crucial KS1 building block. You can read more about Phonics to enable your support at home on our Phonics page.

Spelling (10 minutes, 3x weekly)

Practise common exception words.
Apply spellings in simple sentences.
From Year 2 upwards, we follow the Babcock Spelling scheme. An age-appropriate spelling list can be found here at the bottom of our class page

Maths (10 minutes, 3–4x weekly)

Rapid recall of number bonds to 20.
2, 5 and 10 times tables (including division facts).
Read and write numbers to 100.

Focus: Fluency, recall and simple comprehension.

Whole School Expectations

Reading Records in school daily (EYFS–Y4).
Homework celebrated and acknowledged.
Support available where needed.
Consistency of routine valued more than perfection.

Homework Grids (Years R–4) – Found below on this page

Each week, please choose a different activity to enjoy together as a family. These activities are designed to encourage curiosity, creativity and conversation.

Completing homework with your child should feel positive and relaxed. The discussions you have, the questions you explore and the enjoyment you share are just as valuable as the finished outcome.

There is no right or wrong way to approach these tasks. Take as much time as you need — some projects may take a week, others may grow over several weeks.

You are welcome to present Topic Tasks in any way you choose, for example:

A photo or short video
A drawing, poster or model
A scrapbook page
A short written piece
An email
Artwork
Even something edible!

We love seeing children’s creativity shine in different ways.

Parental Choice and Flexibility

We recognise that family life is busy and that every child’s circumstances are different. Homework at CGPS is designed to support learning and build positive habits; however, we understand that families may not always be able to complete every task.

Reading remains our strongest recommendation, as it underpins all areas of learning. Beyond this, we encourage families to use their professional judgement about what is manageable and beneficial for their child.

If homework is not completed, there will be no sanctions. Our aim is to foster a love of learning, independence and responsibility over time, not to create pressure at home.

If families ever need support, adjustments or guidance, we welcome open communication.

Reading Museum Recount

May 2026

WALT: Write a recount of the school trip to the Victorian Museum.

On Tuesday, class two were lucky enough to go to the Victorian Museum in Reading. We all got on the coach; we strapped our seatbelts in and started the journey to the museum. In the coach it was noisy and fun. My partner Rupert. and me Josh, chatted the whole forty-minute journey about our favourite animals. Mine is ants and Rupert’s is his puppy. The journey was bumpy because of speed bumps and when we were out of the school gates we all cheered! When we finally got there we all cheered too.

When we got off, we walked across the road and went through the automatic doors of the museum. Inside it looked gigantic. We went down a corridor, and into Room One to put our bags in there. There were lots of lights in the room.

When we had been to the toilet, we walked across the road again and went to a building shaped like an arch. We went up some stairs – a few flights – and got to a room at the top. We took our ‘High-Vis’ jackets and sat on the creaky floor made of wood and screws, the wood was old. A woman was talking about Queen Victoria and the old machines back in the Victorian times.

Next to where we sat there was a Victorian classroom set up. When we had got dressed into Victorian clothing, boys wore waistcoats and collars and girls wore aprons, we did lots of lessons like arithmetic, geography, history and writing. We wrote on slate boards with slate pens and in arithmetic we wrote with ink pens, and we used dabbing paper and ink pen cleaners. We learnt that the Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish flag make up the British flag.

When it was lunchtime we went back down the stairs and out of the arch, we walked past the statue of some men and walked across the road. When we got back to the main museum we went back into Room One to get our bags and have lunch. My lunch was delicious.

After, we walked through the corridor and stopped at a few flights of stairs and walked up them. When we got to the top, we walked down a corridor with display cases of fossilised biscuits. When we got to the end of the corridor there was a gallery full of artifacts from the Victorin times. We met a man and he pretended to be a Victorian servant in a rich house, he was a gardener in the rich house. We learnt to do the laundry and it used to take five entire days! We dressed up in clothes and pretended to be servants and pretended that we came from the future.

At the end of the session, we walked down the stairs and past more galleries and a tour that was happening. We walked to Room One again, we collected our stuff, put on our high-vis’s and lined up at the door. I was at the front with Rupert. and we went to the toilet then we got back to the front of the line. Then we walked to the coach and set off for the journey back. We chanted on the coach and talked about what our favourite animals did for forty minutes, also we talked about what their lives were like. When we got back we had missed assembly, we walked in through the classroom and waited for our parents to pick us up to go home. My mum Paola picked me up and we went home.

The end.

Joshua, Year 2

Summer Term 1 - Our learning

We had a fantastic trip to Reading Museum to learn about the lives of Victorian children (at school and at work).

Spring Term 2 - Our learning

In PSHE we have been learning how to keep our bodies healthy. We made a selection of healthy snacks in class, then tasted them all. Ask us why they are good for us and which ones we preferred. Some of us were brave enough to try something new!

We enjoyed a visit from author and illustrator, Steve Antony, who told us about his childhood and how he followed his dream to be a writer and illustrator. He also read us one of his books and taught us how to draw one of the characters - Mr Panda!

Spring Term 1 - Our Learning

Floaty Boats workshop with Science Oxford.

We had fun exploring which materials float or sink, then designed and built our own boats that float.

Autumn Term 2 - Our Learning

What a great start to the term we had, visiting the Earth Trust to investigate microhabitats and minibeasts! Our time was spent in the woodland, along the hedgerows, and in the classroom where we were able to use microscopes to have a good look at some minibeasts. We also climbed up the Clumps and ran back down, just to work up an appetite for lunch!

We have started our topic about the Great Fire of London by being history detectives and investigating how the fire started using a range of clues. We then created our own puppet shows to re-enact the early stages of the fire.

Autumn Term 1 - Our Learning

Pretending we were Paddington, Class 2 wrote postcards to Aunt Lucy in Darkest Peru, telling her all about our adventures in London.

We also made marmalade sandwiches to see why Paddington Bear loves them so much! Next we will write the instructions for how to make them. Earlier in the week, we followed instructions to create our own Paddington Bear figure using a toilet roll and coloured paper.