What's teaching in Year 2 like?

[disneyprincess87]

Evening everyone, it looks like I'm moving from ks2 into Year 2 🎉 😊 been teaching for over 10 years but have never taught in KS1.

I'm really excited at this change and I've got plenty of time to get my head around it and start to prepare things eg Pinterest ideas!! I've never had to teach phonic sessions before so thrilled I'm getting the opportunity too.

What insider top tips can you give me please?! What do you wish youd have known before starting? What works well for you in the day? Anything that you can tell me would be wonderful. X

Get your pure sounds sorted, you don't want to accidentally add the shwa. Practice squatting- you'll be doing it a lot. Don't bend forward, you'll end up with a bad back. Spend some time with the current Y1s if possible before the end of the year so you can get a feel for what the new y2s will be able to do in September. Transition day is a start, but doesn't really give you the full picture.

Get into a current Y2 class and have a look at the displays- make a note of what words are up etc. Have a look at routines. Do you need to take them to wash their hands/toilet before lunch or does the midday supervisor do that? When is fruit time?

Going down is, IMO, harder than going up. You have to really break everything down and resource prep is often very time - consuming. You'll get the hang of it quite quickly though. I'd look closely at the maths curriculum and consider the pedagogy carefully, too. Teaching the basics well requires a very in-depth understanding of them.

I love it 😍 Get familiar with the topics and be prepared to go really cross-curricular. IMO it's the best year to teach - they're very sweet but grow enormously in terms of independence in this year.

Thank you for your advice, I'll start to do that as soon as.
What do you do to ensure the best possible results for maths, writing and reading?

Read the Teacher Assessment Frameworks and go through the exemplification materials. That will give you a good idea of the expectations for the end of the year.

Attend all the new to year 2/KS1 assessment courses that you can get on to.

Read the National Curriculum - the TAF doesn't cover everything you need to teach!

Identify those who will need to resit the phonics check early so they can have intervention in addition to normal phonics/spelling teaching.

I've taught R-Yr6 but I'm really enjoying Year 2 this year. They're a lot of fun

Will you be state or private? Will you have a full time TA? Will you have any SEN children? Will you have to teach every subject? The answers to these, as in any year group, will have impact.

Wonderful thank you. Can't wait!

Also, whether you're a Teaching for Mastery school or not, the NCETM PD materials are brilliant for maths planning. I was using them anyway as part of our maths hub but they were highly recommended on our KS1 assessment course as they're very much in line with DfE/STA etc. Plus they're actually very very good.