Online Advent Calendar

As Advent begins this Sunday with Advent Sunday celebrated in Churches, we would like to share this online Advent Calendar with you, produced by the Diocese of Guildford. It explores the Christmas story through Christian artwork, investigating a different artist and aspect of the story throughout the term time days of Advent. Please enjoy sharing this with your family as we prepare for Christmas in school and at home.

Foundation Subjects Home Learning 

All of the children will have an investigative topic-linked learning task to complete, which is rotated over a three-week cycle. The children will focus on one of their three current foundation subjects each week.
To support this, the children are split into 3 groups, which you can see below.
This will be set on a Thursday and due by the following Tuesday.
In class on a Tuesday or Wednesday, the children will then share the outcomes of their research, and the knowledge they have retrieved, within their own group.

This week (beginning 24th November 2025)

PE will now be on Mondays and Tuesdays for the rest of Term 2!

We’ve had a fantastic week of learning in Durham 2. This week in maths, we have been learning to recognise and count different coins and notes, and to make amounts in a variety of ways. Durham are enjoying developing confidence with money and understanding its value. Ask the children to show you their coin counting at home! Practising skip counting in 2s, 5s and 10s will further support our learning next week.

In handwriting, we have begun learning how to join our letters using the RWI handwriting approach. The children are really enjoying using the “cake with sponge and jam” model to help them remember the correct letter formation and joins.

In English, the children have been planning informal letters. We have been focusing on using informal language and writing in the past tense, especially practising using -ed words accurately in sentences.

In Science, we have been exploring food chains. The children have learnt that a food chain shows how energy is passed from one living thing to another. They now understand the roles of producers (plants), prey, and predators, and how all parts of a food chain depend on one another to survive.

In Design and Technology, we have begun designing and creating Christmas cards with moving mechanisms. The children are experimenting with levers and sliders to make their card designs come to life.

Thank you so much for supporting the foundation home learning tasks. The children have loved sharing their work with their peers. We’ve been incredibly impressed by the thoughtfulness and creativity they’ve shown, and it has really helped to deepen and extend their understanding in class.

The Durham 2 Team💫

Spelling (Term 2 Week 5-6)

Here are the spellings your children can practise at home to support their learning. The following link will take you to the spelling scheme we are working from in school Oxford Owl Primary Spelling. The following document contains spelling strategies that are used in class, and can be used at home to aid learning new words: Southborough's Spelling Strategies

A typical week in Durham 2...

Maths, Numbots and Timestable RockStars

To use Numbots or TTRS, for games to support number knowledge, timestables and fluency go to https://play.numbots.com/#/intro or https://play.ttrockstars.com/auth. If you need your child's log-in please ask your class teacher.

Reading

Parents please log your child's reading on the BOOM reader Parent Portal or by using the BOOM reader parent app on your tablet/mobile no more than once a week. You can record their school reading book or a book they are enjoying from home. 

Your child will bring home a Read Write Inc. book every Friday with speed sounds to practise. Children are asked to bring these back in on Wednesdays please.

Read Write Inc. Phonics

Please click on the link to view how to pronounce the Read Write Inc sounds.

Click here for Read Write Inc sound pronunciation