Visit to Year 2

This week I visited the awesome Year 2 teachers and students. In my morning visit, I noticed how settled the students were in their routines. Upon investigation the cohort of teachers have set up a five week transition program to build on class expectations and improvement in literacy and numeracy outcomes. The students begin the day with a sequential routine from the “day of the week to include the month of the year, weather and season. The students then moved through a process building on vocabulary, grammar and then onto structuring a sentence of the day. The routine concludes with an inquiry open based question called “Talk for Learning” in which the students talk to their partner to try and solve the questions collaboratively. The question I saw today was “ How is a map different to what we see in real life?”  The routine is based around a strategy of moving short term memory to long term memory. The last part of the process focuses on mathematics such as ordering numbers etc. The morning routine teaches concepts over continuous periods of time. It builds automaticity in children’s learning and skills which leads to mastery. It’s a great tool to improve students’ vocabulary and academic background knowledge.