Year 2
Fluency, confidence and curiosity
How we teach in the Early Years band — and why
The developing mind (Piaget)
Late preoperational moving toward concrete operational thought. Learning is anchored in play, story, movement and concrete materials; symbols (letters, numerals) are always tied to things children can see, touch and act out.
Learning together (Vygotsky)
Learning is social and language-rich. A parent/carer works alongside the child as the 'more knowledgeable other'; lessons script that shared talk. Scaffolds are heavy and visible: modelled sentences, counting materials, picture prompts.
Our design commitments
- Short bursts (10–20 minutes) with movement between them
- Play-based and story-based entry points into every concept
- Systematic synthetic phonics and concrete-materials numeracy
- Parent/carer is a co-player and co-reader, with side-notes telling them exactly what to say and notice
Units open now
Tale Spinners: Reading Aloud, Rhyme and the Mighty Paragraph
Learners step up from sounding words out to making words SING. First they train their reading voice: phrasing, expression, and punctuation as road signs, so reading aloud sounds like talking, not robot beeps. Then they tune their ears to the music of poetry — rhythm, rhyme and alliteration — and discover that rhyme lives in the SOUND of words, not the spelling. Next they meet traditional tales, the stories so good people have retold them for hundreds of years, and learn the shape those tales share: a beginning, a problem, and a fix. Finally they learn the writer's sturdiest tool — the paragraph — and build one of their own: a big idea up front, with details standing behind it like mates backing you up. The unit ends with each learner retelling a traditional tale in their own strong paragraphs and performing it aloud with their best storyteller voice.
🧭 Why it matters: Have you ever noticed how some people read a story aloud and everyone leans in — and you can't wait to hear what happens next? That's not magic, it's a skill, and this unit teaches it to you. You'll learn to read aloud so well that little kids will beg you for one more story, to spot the tricks poets use to make words bounce, and to retell the tales people have loved for hundreds of years — around campfires, at bedtimes, on long car trips. And the mighty paragraph? That's the tool you'll use for the rest of your life, every time you want someone to really understand your idea — in stories, letters, projects, everywhere words matter.
Big ideas
- Fluent reading sounds like talking: punctuation tells your voice when to pause, stop, ask and get excited
- Poems have music built in — rhythm is the beat, rhyme is the echo, and rhyme lives in sounds, not spellings
- Traditional tales share a shape — a beginning, a problem and a fix — and that's why they're easy to remember and retell
- A paragraph is a team of sentences about one big idea: the big idea leads, and the details back it up
Curriculum alignment (AC v9)
AC9E2LA03 · AC9E2LE03 · AC9E2LE04 · AC9E2LE05 · AC9E2LY04 · AC9E2LY06
Start this unit →Number Builders: Hundreds, Groups and Money
Learners discover the big secret of our number system — we bundle things in tens — and use it to build, break and read numbers all the way to 1,000. Then they meet multiplication where it really starts: equal groups and arrays you can touch and count. Finally they put it all to work with Australian coins, making amounts and telling change stories. Every lesson moves concrete → pictorial → abstract, using things from the kitchen drawer, because seven-year-olds learn number with their hands first.
🧭 Why it matters: Numbers to 1,000 are all over your world: the page count of a fat book, the points on your game, the metres to the park. Equal groups are everywhere too — egg cartons, muffin trays, sock drawers. And money? Money is the big one. When you can count coins and check your change, nobody can short-change you at the shop, and you'll know exactly how long until you can afford the thing you're saving for. This unit makes you a Number Builder — someone who sees how numbers are put together, so no number can trick you.
Big ideas
- We count in bundles of ten: 10 ones make a ten, and 10 tens make a hundred
- The same number can be broken apart and put back together in different ways
- Equal groups can be counted quickly by skip counting — that's where multiplication begins
- A coin's value is written on it — size and number of coins can trick you
Curriculum alignment (AC v9)
AC9M2N01 · AC9M2N02 · AC9M2N05 · AC9M2A01 · AC9M2N06
Start this unit →Everything Changes: Seeds, Mixtures and Movers
Nothing stays still for long. Seeds swell and split open, chocolate powder vanishes into milk, a nudge turns a still ball into a rolling one. In this unit your learner becomes a change detective, chasing three kinds of change with their own hands: living things growing and changing over their lives, materials changing when they get mixed together, and objects changing how they move when something pushes or pulls them. Everything happens with what's already in the kitchen, the bathroom cupboard and the backyard. Lessons run about 30–35 minutes and are designed to be read with a helper nearby — partly for the reading, mostly because half the fun is having someone to say 'look at THIS' to.
🧭 Why it matters: Once you can spot change, you can make it happen on purpose. That's how you get a mango seed from the compost to grow into a tree, how you stir a chocolate milk so it actually tastes chocolatey, and how you work out that a heavy wheelie bin rolls easily if you pull it the right way. Gardeners, cooks, farmers, nurses, builders and engineers all do the same job you're about to do: watch closely, work out what changed something, and then change it better next time.
Big ideas
- Living things grow and change over their lives, and their young grow up to be like their parents
- Mixing materials makes something new — and dissolving is not disappearing
- Some changes can be undone and some are there for keeps
- A push or a pull changes how something moves or what shape it is — and a bigger push makes a bigger change
Curriculum alignment (AC v9)
AC9S2U01 · AC9S2U03 · AC9S1U03 · AC9S2H01 · AC9S2I01 · AC9S2I02 · AC9S2I03 · AC9S2I06
Start this unit →Our Place: People, Connections and Stories You Can Touch
Learners zoom in on the place they live: the people who work and help there, the reasons families visit some places every day and others once a year, and then zoom out to follow a banana, a t-shirt and a video call to discover that their little community is connected to places all over Australia and the world. They go looking for history they can touch — an old building, a name on a sign, a story from someone who's lived here a long while — and learn that this place had custodians caring for it long before any building stood, and that those First Nations custodians' connection continues today. It all wraps up with a Then-and-Now Community Show, powered by a real interview with someone who remembers life before smartphones.
🧭 Why it matters: You already live in the middle of the most interesting place you could study: your own community. After this unit, a trip to the shops turns into a detective mission (who grew this? how did it get here?), a walk down the street turns into time travel (what's the oldest thing you can touch?), and a chat with Grandma turns into a real history interview. Knowing your place — who works here, whose care for it goes back longest, and how it's changed — makes it feel like YOURS.
Big ideas
- A community is people and places helping each other — and everyone in it, including kids, is part of how it works
- Our community is connected to other places near and far, through the things we use every day and the people we care about
- History isn't only in books — it's on our streets, in our buildings and place names, and in the memories of people we can talk to
- The local First Nations custodians have cared for this place for a very, very long time — and their connection to it continues today
- Technology has changed how people in our community work, shop, talk and play — asking older people is how we find out
Curriculum alignment (AC v9)
AC9HS2K02 · AC9HS2K01 · AC9HS2K03 · AC9HS2K04 · AC9HS2S01 · AC9HS2S02 · AC9HS2S03 · AC9HS2S05
Start this unit →Good Games, Big Feelings: Playing Fair and Feeling Strong
Some of the biggest learning of Year 2 happens nowhere near a desk. In this unit your learner plays minor games and invents brand-new ones, discovers why rules make games MORE fun instead of less, and practises changing a game so a little cousin, a grandparent or a friend with a sore leg can genuinely join in. Along the way they meet the big feelings that games stir up — the hot face of losing, the butterflies of joining in, the fizz of almost-winning — and build a calm-down toolkit of naming, belly breathing and movement breaks that works far beyond the backyard. Lessons run about 30–35 minutes, get the learner moving within minutes, and need nothing fancier than rolled-up socks, a balloon and a washing basket. A helper joins in as teammate, opponent and umpire — partly for safety, mostly because games are better with someone in them.
🧭 Why it matters: Kids who can play fairly, fix a broken game and ride out a big feeling can play with ANYONE — the new kid at the park, a wobbly-legged toddler, a grandparent in a chair. That's a superpower for life, not just for lunchtime. Coaches, teachers, umpires, paramedics and team captains all use exactly the skills in this unit: agree the rules, change the plan so everyone's in, notice what a body is telling them, and say the thing that helps instead of the thing that hurts. And the calm-down toolkit? Grown-ups use belly breathing before job interviews. True story.
Big ideas
- Rules don't spoil a game — they make it fair, safe and worth playing
- A game belongs to its players, so players can change it — a good change means everyone gets a real go
- Feelings show up in the body first, every feeling is allowed, and what we do next is up to us
- Being a good teammate is a skill you practise, just like catching
- Playing actively every day — the sun-smart way — helps your body, your sleep and your feelings
Curriculum alignment (AC v9)
AC9HP2P01 · AC9HP2P03 · AC9HP2P02 · AC9HP2P06 · AC9HP2M01 · AC9HP2M02 · AC9HP2M03 · AC9HP2M04 · AC9HP2M05
Start this unit →The Big Little Show: Performing, Patterns and Picture Stories
Learners spend three weeks being working artists. First they discover the performer's three tools — voice, body and stage — and use a rehearse-perform cycle to get a short piece genuinely better. Then they chase patterns into two art forms at once: rhythms they can clap and stamp, and printed patterns they design with a rule (their maths brain is quietly invited along). Next they study how Australian picture-book artists tell stories in pictures, and make a comic or illustrated page with a proper beginning, middle and end — starring a tale from their English learning. It all builds to the Big Little Show: a curated family showing where they choose their best work, hang it, perform their piece, give a tiny artist talk, and take questions from their favourite audience in the world.
🧭 Why it matters: Here's a secret about the concerts, books, murals and shows you love: every single one was made by a person who started small and kept going. This unit hands you their actual tools — how performers use their voice and body, how artists build patterns, how illustrators make you feel things with a few pencil lines — and then gives you a real audience. By the end, 'I can't draw' and 'I'm too shy' get replaced with something much more fun: 'Would you like a ticket to my show?'
Big ideas
- Everyone can make art — artists aren't magic people, they're people who make things and keep practising
- Performers have tools you can learn: your voice, your body, and knowing how to use a stage
- Patterns live in music AND pictures AND maths — the same clever brain-move (repeat by a rule) works in all three
- Pictures can tell stories all by themselves — simple drawings that show feelings beat fancy drawings that don't
- Artists share their work: rehearsing, choosing, arranging and showing are part of making art, not extras
- When we respond to other people's art — including art by First Nations artists — we look closely, enjoy what's shared with us, and let it inspire art about our own place
Curriculum alignment (AC v9)
AC9ADR2E01 · AC9ADR2D01 · AC9ADR2P01 · AC9AMU2D01 · AC9AMU2C01 · AC9AMU2P01 · AC9AVA2E01 · AC9AVA2E02 · AC9AVA2D01 · AC9AVA2C01 · AC9AVA2P01 · AC9AMA2C01
Start this unit →Recipe Robots: Instructions, Machines and Making Things Better
Learners discover that a recipe, a game rule and a computer program are all the same thing underneath: an algorithm — a list of steps someone follows exactly. They write real instruction cards and test them on a human 'robot', fixing the bugs when the robot gets gloriously stuck. They spot the repeated parts and shrink long instructions with loops, walked out with the whole body. They hunt the secret computers hiding in the washing machine and the microwave, playing inputs and outputs as a game. Then everything comes together in a capstone with real stakes: interview a family member about something that genuinely annoys them, design a fix, build it from junk materials or drawn 'app' screens, test it with that person, and make it better. No screens required — the thinking is the technology.
🧭 Why it matters: Every game you play, every machine in your kitchen and every app your family uses started as somebody's list of steps — and somebody's problem that needed fixing. When you can write instructions so clear a robot can't get them wrong, you can teach anyone anything, from card game rules to the secret family pikelet recipe. When you know machines only follow instructions, they stop being mysterious — you become the boss of them, not the other way round. And when you learn to listen to a real person's problem before you build the fix, you're doing exactly what real inventors, engineers and app designers do at work every day. This unit makes you one of them.
Big ideas
- An algorithm is just a recipe: steps in order that someone follows exactly
- Computers and robots only do what the instructions say — the cleverness comes from people
- A bug is a normal part of making things: find it, fix it, test again
- When steps repeat, you can say them once with 'repeat' — shorter and safer
- Good designers make things FOR someone: listen first, make second, test always
Curriculum alignment (AC v9)
AC9TDI2P02 · AC9TDI2K01 · AC9TDE2K01 · AC9TDE2P01 · AC9TDE2P02 · AC9TDE2P03
Start this unit →Full year scope
English
Reading fluency, paragraph craft, poetry and traditional tales
Mathematics
Place value to 1,000, multiplication foundations, money
Science
Growth and change, mixing materials, pushes and pulls
Humanities and Social Sciences
Our local community, its past and its connections
Health and Physical Education
Games, teamwork and emotional literacy
The Arts
Performance, pattern and visual storytelling
Technologies
Algorithms as recipes; designing for a user