What do children learn in Year 2 in Norway? Put last year's exercise book next to the new one. The old one is half full: wobbly letters, a cat with five legs, numbers running in a circle. The new one is empty and smooth under your hand. Many parents expect more of the same, and on paper they are almost right. Something is still different this year, and it is written into the aims.
What does the curriculum say about Year 2?
Norway's curriculum, LK20, sets no competence aims for Year 1. The first two years are one stretch, like a marked trail with a single cairn at the end, and the first checkpoint comes after Year 2. For children starting Year 2 this autumn, the cairn is just ahead.
In mathematics, science, art and craft, and music there are 36 aims after Year 2. It is the same list as in Year 1, and each school decides how to spread it across the two years.
The most common verb in those aims is "explore", in 11 of the 36. The word that often follows it, "describe", is also in 11, and four aims use both in the same sentence. In science, children should present their findings and describe how they arrived at them.
What is new in Year 2 is not a new list. It is the second half of the sentence.
Finding out and explaining are two halves of the same work, the idea behind STEAM learning.
Why it matters for children
A child who explains how they found something out has to retrace their thinking. "I made two piles. No, wait, the smooth stone fits in both." That "no, wait" is not a mistake. It is the child noticing their own reasoning.
A Norwegian school year has about 190 school days. No single day carries much on its own, and the cairn stands at the end of the year, not at Christmas. For why the curriculum chooses fewer aims and more time, read deep learning for parents.
Try it at home: the kitchen museum
Suitable for ages 6–8. You need 8–12 objects from a walk or a drawer, a tray, small labels, a pencil and an audience.
- Let the child collect 8–12 objects.
- The child sorts them into groups they choose.
- Make one label for each group.
- Set up the museum on the tray.
- The child gives a tour: what is in each group, and how did they decide?
- The audience asks: "Could anything fit in two groups?"
An adult checks that nothing is sharp and that mushrooms and berries stay outside. In Year 1, sorting was the task itself, as in what first graders learn. Now the tour is new.
What happens if the child gives the same tour over the phone, to someone who cannot see the objects?
Questions to wonder about
- Which object was hardest to find a place for?
- Is it easier to find something out, or to explain how you found it out?
- If two children sort the same objects differently, and both can explain why, are they both right?
The cairn just ahead
The empty exercise book will not fill up with new aims this year. It will fill up with the child's own explanations.
Every child is made of good atoms. See how Good Atoms builds on this topic.