Year 2 - Beech 2025 - 2026

Welcome to Beech Class - Year 2

Mrs Lavelle and Miss Tyler would like to welcome to you to the Beech Class page. Here you will find information about home learning, curriculum and KS1 SATs. Click on the Files button for home learning, our timetable and curriculum documents.

Learning in Action for February

We would like to say a big thank you to all of our parents and carers for the recycling materials you kindly sent in to support our learning.

First, we sorted the items into cardboard and plastics. Using our prior learning from Science, we discussed the properties of each material and carefully considered which would be most suitable for building our beach huts.

As you can see from our finished creations, we loved experimenting with the different materials to design and construct our beach huts. The children were very proud of their work and were excited to take them home to share with you.

Thank you again for your continued support in helping to enrich our learning experiences.

Wow, Beech Class — what a busy and exciting half term we have had! We have been learning all about coastlines, shapes and money, and have shown fantastic curiosity throughout our lessons.

 In maths, we have been working practically to explore money. We are almost ready to use coins and notes in the real world, as we now know the correct value of each coin and note and can make the same amount in different ways. Mrs Lavelle even challenged us to think really hard and create amounts in the most interesting ways possible!

In English, we have started reading The Storm Whale and enjoyed an amazing immersive experience. We listened to music by Benjamin Britten before creating artwork inspired by our thoughts and feelings. Although presenting our work to Miss Tyler was a little nerve-racking at first, it really boosted our confidence and prepared us to present our artwork in a gallery for Year 1. Our geography learning about the SS Rohilla and coastlines also helped to inspire our work, with boats featuring in lots of our artwork.

In DT, we are beginning to research beach huts and have been collecting recycling materials ready to test and build. This links closely to our science learning, where we have been exploring the properties of materials. We have tested different types of paper and ranked them in order of absorbency and strength.

Parent Sharing Event 06th February 2026:

Beech Class recently held an art exhibition, welcoming parents and carers into the classroom to celebrate the children’s creative work. The event was well attended and thoroughly enjoyed by our school community.

Mrs Lavelle, Class Teacher and Creative Arts Lead at Budbrooke, said:

“It was wonderful to showcase the children’s artwork, especially as they worked so hard to create it. Beech Class have been fully immersed in their English learning, listening to storm music inspired by Benjamin Britten, which then influenced their artwork. The children used rich adjectives and powerful verbs to describe the scene, and it was lovely to see how proud they were of their finished pieces. We also loved welcoming parents, carers, siblings, and members of the wider community into the classroom to share this creative experience — made even more special by the children singing a piece from our new music curriculum.”

A fantastic celebration of creativity, confidence, and community 👏

Spring Term

This term's topic is called 'Coastlines' and has a Geography focus. 

This project teaches children about the physical and human features of coastal regions across the United Kingdom, including a detailed exploration of the coastal town of Whitby, in Yorkshire..

For more information about this term's curriculum, please visit the Files section of this page to view the Curriculum Newsletter. 

Reading This Term

This term we’re exploring The Storm Whale by Benji Dacies, which is a story about a lonely little boy called Noi, a whale washed up on the beach by a storm and a friendship that will change both their lives forever.

Homework focus this term

Homework will primarily focus on preparation for the SATS at the parents workshop this will be explained further to you so attendance is highly advised.

Autumn Update

Beech class have had a super busy Autumn Term. We have settled into the new classroom and expectations of Year 2 - rising to the challenges we face each day.

Some of our class highlights have been:

Visiting the Swan Orchestra and watching their open rehearsals for their concert. The children had an absolutely amazing time and everyone thoroughly enjoed the experience, I hope that it has inspired some children to want to play an instrument and be our next generation of musicians!

Children in Need

We had a briliant day dressed in our pyjamas and doing lots of fun learning raising money for a fabulous cause - thank you for all your donations!

Reading This Term

This term we’re exploring The Emperor’s Egg by Martin Jenkins, which shows how emperor penguin parents meet the challenge of raising a chick in Antarctica—perfect for sparking curiosity and celebrating collaboration and consideration.

Learning in Action for November

We have been researching, reading, acting out and watching all about Emperor penguins and their journey from the sea to their breeding ground. We enjoyed our immersive experience of acting out penguins movements, this enabled us to write using verbs exploring the suffix -ed and -ing.

Phonics we are continuing to explore spelling rules and recently we have been learning about the /l/ family and looking at the graphemes, el, al, il and le.

In Maths we have been busy exploring addition and subtraction crossing the 10 and up to 100. Although we have found elements of this tough, we certainly raised to the challenge and are now confident with the star words, partition, exchange and using number lines to aid our learning. We done lots of practical work exploring this topic and this has really helped us to grow in confidence!

In DT we have explored the topic, remarkable recipes where we have been designing a new school meal. We chose to make the vegetable casserole which had lots of things in we have not tried, courgettes, peppers and lentils. We used are excellent kitchen skills and peeled and chopped the veg to prepare it for Mrs Lavelle and Miss Tyler to cook. We then enjoyed eating it and evaluated it. As you can see from our faces we thoroughly enjoyed this hearty, healthy meal and some of us even had seconds, thirds and fourths!

Autumn Term

This term's topic is called 'Movers and Shakers' and has a History focus. 

This project teaches children about historically significant people who have had a major impact on the world. They will learn to use timelines, stories and historical sources to find out about the people featured and use historical models to explore their significance.

For more information about this term's curriculum, please visit the Files section of this page to view the Curriculum Newsletter. 

End of Key Stage Assessments (KS1 SATs)

This year, pupils will take the non-statutory end of Key Stage assessments in May 2026. The tests will assess pupils'skills in Reading, Mathematics (Arithmetic and Reasoning), Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar.  To support your child, please practise skills relating to these subjects using resources found in the 'Files to Download' section of this page. 

In the afternoons, we enjoy reading books from Pie Corbett's Reading Spine - essential reading and enjoyable books for Year 2 children. 

Beech Class Reminders

Our P.E. day this term are Mondays. Please could children come in to school wearing their P.E. kit on the relevant day. 

Please ensure that your child comes to school with a water bottle filled with water every day. We will send these home at the end of every day to be washed and returned the next day. 

Home Learning: 

A piece of English home learning or a piece of Maths home learning will be set for homework each week. The dot on your child's home learning book will indicate which piece of home learning your child should complete for Maths and for English. 

Home Learning will be uploaded to this Class Page on a Thursday and should be handed in by the following Tuesday. Answers to questions should be recorded in your child's home learning book. There is no requirement to print the home learning task. 

Spellings will be uploaded onto this Class Page and will be tested on a Friday. 

Reading: A reading book and a reading diary will be sent home with the children. Please complete at least one entry in your child's reading diary per week. Reading diaries will be checked weekly. 

Times Tables: The aim is for children to be able to recall this times table off by heart, out of order and be able to apply the divsion rule. Please encourage your child to log in to Times Tables Rock Stars regularly to practise their tables. 

Ways to Support Your Child at Home

Maths

Mental Maths (Level 2): https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/daily10

Include the practice of 2,5 and 10 times tables.

Maths Games and Activities - Purple Mash: welearn365.com and use your child's log in details. 

Spellings

See High Frequency Words files in Media. 

Grammar and Punctuation

Purple Mash - English - SPaG section. (Use your child's welearn365.com login.)

Strategies for to support spelling at home. See the Strategies document in Files.