How Could It Be Better?Year 2 Summer Term Topic InformationLiteracyNumeracyScienceHistory

We will read Traction Man is Here by Mini Grey.The story is about lots of imaginative things that an action hero gets up to with the family who own him.Children will design their own ultimate toy and create their own imaginative story about it.The childrens own toy designs will then be used for persuasive writing of posters and adverts.Our core learning in maths will continue to focus on calculation skills including using number lines and written methods.Additionally, we will explore the use of 2D and 3D shapes in our Toy Design.We will use our data handling skills to do some consumer research on The Ultimate Toy.We will be developing our skills of telling the time, working in our toy factory.The Traction Man story centres on an action figure. We will use this to think about health, diet, exercise and ourselves.We will look at what we need to stay healthy and use this to design a healthy diary for Traction Man. How have Toys changed over time?We will explore the change of toys throughout history and even have a go at playing with some of these.We will look at some of the significant changes in toys and games and think about how they happened.

REMusicComputingDesign

Our Religious studies will explore both Jewish and Christian stories with characters such as Joseph, Jonah, Noah and David.We will look at what is special about these stories and consider where the Torah comes from.We will sing a range of songs about toys Playtimes Past!, Youve Got a Friend in Me, The Friendly Robot to support the topic on toys. Through these songs we will extend our historical understanding along with our understanding of friendship and other related PSHE areas of learning. We will listen to the Nutcracker and use instruments to create our own compositions including a range of different toys.We will use iPad apps to make our own TV advert for our new toy. We will also use programmable floor robots (Beebots)We will explore lots of existing toys already on sale before designing our own better Ultimate Toy!We will look at what our toy needs to be like to suit what our customers want.We will make models/prototypes of our toy building up to our finished product.

ArtPSHE

We will use charcoal, graphite, ink and wash to develop drawing skills. We will use continuous line drawing techniques to build up mass and texture in a drawing, We will use the story Ruby to explore the theme of Good to be Me.

WOW Event To start the whole topic we will have a storytelling event, using the iPads and a range of toys. To start the history part of the topic we will have a visit from Partake who will do some work with the children on comparing toys past and present. More details to follow.

In our final term of the academic year, we will be thinking about the question How could it be better? and applying it to Toys! We will explore how toys have changed through time and having a go at designing the Ultimate Toy! Our core-text will be Traction Man is Here by Mini Grey. To add to the excitement we will be running our own Toy Factory for the whole project. Please note that we have a whole-school themed week 20th-24th April so this topic will not begin until the 27th April. Thank you for your continued support.