Year 2 English
Choose the block you wish to teach
We’ve been busy spring cleaning our poetry blocks.
Our revised summer poetry blocks should be on the site in May, the autumn ones in July, and the spring ones in September.
Autumn Blocks
Explore fables including The Frog and Scorpion, Ant and Grasshopper. Write dialogue between grasshopper's indignant sister and cruel ant. Look at compound sentences and write a fable.
Traditional Tales and Fables: Explore Brilliant Fables!
Be inspired to write letters with fantastic excuses by J.P.N. McHennessy. Describe an adventure based on Dear Teacher by Amy Husband. Study sentences with different forms.
Letters and Postcards: Excuse Letters
Using Lear’s celebrated poetry, including The Owl & the Pussycat, children are stimulated to write & explore nouns, adjectives, prepositions, & expanded noun phrases.
Classic Poems: Poems of Edward Lear
The Bear and the Piano and Flat Rabbit stimulate creative writing. Use coordination and subordination to extend sentences, learn about past/present tense.
Fantasy: Just Imagine
Share beautifully illustrated books about pets: Dogs and Matilda's Cat by Emily Gravett, and reference texts. Write, using expanded noun phrases and sentence punctuation.
Information Texts: Pets
Drawing on classic picture books, sequence plots, study description and noun phrases, learn progressive forms of verbs and write stories based on The Sand Horse.
Familiar Settings: Imaginary Creatures
Get cooking with The Children's Step-by-Step Cookbook. Explore recipes, use commas for lists and investigate sentence types. Write new recipes for a class cookbook.
Instructions: Cooking
Children explore feelings of anger and loneliness through painting, drawing, making/playing musical instruments and dance. Working together, they develop ideas about how we can help ourselves to feel better.
Wellbeing: Umbrellas and Rainbows
Spring Blocks
Explore three stories – Fox, The Tin Forest, Whales’ Song – set in wild places and write your own. Study noun phrases and conjunctions of subordination and coordination.
Stories on a Theme: Stories about the Wild
Read Follow the Moon Home and a book of Sea Creatures. Pick a sea creature to describe. Read biographies of Jacques Cousteau and write about the diver’s life.
Information Texts: Follow the Moon Home
Using Poems about Monsters, children enjoy reading, discussing and writing poems about monsters. Revise grammatical terminology and expand noun phrases.
Poems on a Theme: Monster Poems
Dragons are ancient & fascinating mythical creatures. Read, sequence, compare & review dragon stories; produce a version of Paper Bag Princess. Use noun phrases & conjunctions.
Fantasy: Stories about Dragons
Enjoy Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French. Explore conjunctions and the correct use of present and past tense. Write diary entries in role.
Recounts: Animal Diaries and Recounts
Read and listen to different versions of Baba Yaga and Hansel and Gretel. Identify different types of sentence and study subordination and coordination. Write a traditional tale.
Traditional Tales and Fables: Traditional Tales from Other Cultures
Using Instructions by Neil Gaiman, explore reading, giving, planning and writing instructions. Learn about different sentence types and revise sentence punctuation.
Instructions: Instructions by Neil Gaiman
Summer Blocks
Explore quest stories through Lost and Found and The Way Back Home, by Oliver Jeffers. Study sentence types and experiment with tense. Write and perform your own quest stories.
Fantasy: Quest Stories
Using Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs, explore differences between fiction and non-fiction. Research and create fact files using noun phrases. Study sentence types.
Information Texts: Dinosaurs
Using McGough's Happy Poems, children read and write poems about pets, treasures and magic pebbles. Grammar includes apostrophes and features of written standard English.
Poems on a Theme: Happy Poems
Anthony Browne’s books epitomise creativity and quirkiness and will stimulate higher level writing, reading and comprehension skills. Study noun phrases and conjunctions.
Stories by the Same Author: Stories by Anthony Browne
Inspire children to write creative recounts by reading great imaginative texts, including The Velveteen Rabbit. Grammar includes subordinate clauses, present and past progressive verbs.
Recounts: Reading and Writing Recounts
Explore wonderful stories about Clarice Bean and her fantastic family. Practise using commas in lists and punctuating speech. Write letters in character and write and publish a story in the style of Lauren Child.
Stories by the Same Author: Lauren Child
With this relatable theme, children speak and write powerfully about bedtimes, bedroom inventions and petition for a pyjama party. Grammar includes tense and sentence forms.
Persuasive Writing: Bedtime Arguments, Adverts & Letters
Reading and watching stories about dragons lead to paper-craft, clay modelling, painting and collage, and the creation of puppets. Children think about feelings and how best to express these safely.
