Australian Curriculum Overview
English
In Year 2, students communicate with peers, teachers, known adults, and students from other classes and community members. Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment. They listen to, read, view and interpret spoken, written and multimodal texts in which the primary purpose is to entertain, as well as texts designed to inform and persuade. These encompass traditional oral texts, picture books, various types of print and digital stories, simple chapter books, rhyming verse, poetry, non-fiction, film, multimodal texts, dramatic performances and texts used by students as models for constructing their own work.
Mathematics
Understanding includes connecting number calculations with counting sequences, partitioning and combining numbers flexibly and identifying and describing the relationship between addition and subtraction and between multiplication and division. Fluency includes readily counting numbers in sequences, using informal units iteratively to compare measurements, using the language of chance to describe outcomes of familiar chance events and describing and comparing time durations. Problem Solving includes formulating problems from authentic situations, making models and using number sentences that represent problem situations, and matching transformations with their original shape. Reasoning includes using known facts to derive strategies for unfamiliar calculations, comparing and contrasting related models of operations and creating and interpreting simple representations of data.
Science
In Year 2, students describe the components of simple systems, such as stationary objects subjected to pushes or pulls, or combinations of materials, and show how objects and materials interact through direct manipulation. They observe patterns of growth and change in living things, and describe patterns and make predictions. They explore the use of resources from Earth and are introduced to the idea of the flow of matter when considering how water is used. They use counting and informal measurements to make and compare observations and begin to recognise that organising these observations in tables makes it easier to show patterns.
HASS
The Year 2 curriculum extends contexts for study beyond the personal to the community and to near and distant places that students are familiar with or aware of, exploring connections between the past and present and between people and places. Students examine remains of the past in their local area, coming to understand how connections have changed the lives of people over time and space and how their community values and preserves connections to the past. They study where they are located in the world and how the world is represented on maps and through place names that reveal the history and value of these places. Students explore other cultures' connections to their local place and their own connections to distant places. Through a study of technological change, students see how they are both similar and different to people in the past and how they are connected to places near and far. The idea of citizenship is introduced as students think about how people are connected.
Health and Physical Education
The curriculum for Years 1 and 2 builds on the learning from Foundation and supports students to make decisions to enhance their health, safety and participation in physical activity. The content enables students to explore their own sense of self and the factors that contribute to and influence their identities. Students learn about emotions, how to enhance their interactions with others, and the physical and social changes they go through as they grow older.
The content explores health messages and how they relate to health decisions and behaviours and examines strategies students can use when they need help. The content also provides opportunities for students to learn through movement. It supports them in broadening the range and complexity of fundamental movement skills they are able to perform. They learn how to select, transfer and apply simple movement skills and sequences individually, in groups and in teams.
Technologies (Digital)
In Foundation to Year 2, students begin to learn about common digital systems and patterns that exist within data they collect. Students organise, manipulate and present this data, including numerical, categorical, text, image, audio and video data, in creative ways to create meaning. Students use the concept of abstraction when defining problems, to identify the most important information, such as the significant steps involved in making a sandwich. They begin to develop their design skills by conceptualising algorithms as a sequence of steps for carrying out instructions, such as identifying steps in a process or controlling robotic devices. Students describe how information systems meet information, communication and/or recreational needs. Through discussion with teachers, students learn to apply safe and ethical practices to protect themselves and others as they interact online for learning and communicating.
Music
In Foundation to Year 2, students learning Music listen, perform and compose. They learn about the elements of music comprising rhythm, pitch, dynamics and expression, form and structure, timbre and texture. Aural skills, or ear training, are the listening skills students develop to identify and interpret the elements of music. Music involves active listening, imitating, improvising, composing, arranging, conducting, singing, playing, comparing and contrasting, refining, interpreting, recording and notating, practising, rehearsing, presenting and performing.
Dance
In Foundation to Year 2, Students are engaged through purposeful and creative play in structured activities, fostering a strong sense of wellbeing and developing their connection with and contribution to the world. In Dance, students become aware of their bodies and learn about the body bases, parts and zones used in dance.
Students explore space, time, dynamics and relationships as they make and observe dances. They explore locomotor and non-locomotor movements and use these fundamental movements skills in their own dance.
Media Arts
In Foundation to Year 2, Students are engaged through purposeful and creative play in structured activities, fostering a strong sense of wellbeing and developing their connection with and contribution to the world . In media arts students become aware of structure, intent, character and settings in ideas and stories. They explore ideas and learn about composition, sound and technologies to construct stories. Students learn how their ideas can be communicated through selecting and organising the elements of media arts.