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Y2 – Spring 1

Week 6

Congratulations to our stars of the week!

 

In Maths we have continued with multiplication – learning all about the ‘times’ x sign and practicing counting in 2s, 5s and 10s.

 

In English we have written a diary! We have learned about how to change tenses from present into the past and we have learnt about contractions.   Changing I have to I’ve  and I am to I’m.

We finished our Art using wax candles and watered down paint to create paper batik. We then used our paper batik to create our own art work inspired by African art. We used black wax pastels. (We practised our designs first in our Art books using pencil.)

In P.E. we did even more gymnastic and tried to improve our balancing!

 

 

 

Week 5

What a fun filled and busy week we’ve had! Where do we start?

Congratulations to our Stars of the Week!

We would also like to say congratulations and well done to the children who visited Mrs Hodgkinson (and Freddie the dog) to receive a Golden Ticket for their fantastic hard work and behaviour. We are very proud of you all!

In English this week we have been learning about contractions, suffixes and writing in the past tense. We played a sentence generator game and had to write sentences with contractions and suffixes. We also became diary detectives, read lots of different diary texts and identified their features.

Have a watch of this video to help you learn about contractions!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gubPH3WEurg&ab_channel=ScratchGarden

You might even want to play the sentence generator game at home!

In Maths, we have been doing lots of counting in 2s to help with our learning of multiplication.

Here are some songs you might like to sing to help us learn how to count in 2s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wwydguSKOU&ab_channel=HaveFunTeaching

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hae10bsW_CM&ab_channel=Mr.R.%27sSongsforTeaching

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvTcpfSnOMQ&ab_channel=ScratchGarden

We have been learning how to write multiplication as an equation and using our knowledge of counting in 2s when solving multiplication equations. We have also learnt the word commutative!

On Monday morning we enjoyed attending the Green Football Weekend Live Lesson. It was great to explore the world of football and how it’s shifting to a sustainable future as well see a friendly face (from the school playground) on the screen! We learned about Forest Green Rovers, the greenest football club in the world! We learned about energy, food, transport and nature around Forest Green Rovers.

In Art, we have been enjoying learning about repeated and symmetrical patterns linking to our Ugandan Art topic. In this week’s lesson we printed a symmetrical and/or repeated pattern on a textile surface and discussed how it was different to printing on paper.

Our Real PE lessons have been fun – we have been learning about how to develop our stance skills when standing on a low beam.

In RE we enjoyed sharing our special books with each other and reflecting on why they are special to us. We also looked at the Torah Scroll and learned about why it is special to Jewish People.

A very small group of children in Year 2 were asked to hold a meeting with some girls in a Kenyan school this week. This was an opportunity for both sets of children to ask questions about what life is like in schools in a different country. Our children were so well behaved and incredibly polite and respectful. They learnt a lot about what the Kenyan girls like to do at playtime, their favourite subjects, how they get to school and what they do when they go home after a day at school. The girls sang a song of welcome in Swahili to our children. It was all very fascinating.

To finish the week, we had a visit from Caroline and Harold (the Giraffe) from SCARF. SCARF is the program that we use for our PSHE curriculum. We love hearing about Harold’s adventures during our lessons and it was fantastic to see him again in person! We talked about mental health and learned all about our brains and things we can do to be calm. We also talked about being thankful for things that our friends do for us as well as grateful for things that we are learning.

Week 4

It’s been another busy week in Year 2. We have been working hard and learning lots.

Congratulations to our Year 2 Stars of the Week! We are so proud of you all.

In English, we started a new learning journey this week. Our new book is Big Bear, Little Brother. We have been using inference to determine the thoughts and feelings of the little boy, Minik, at different points in the story. We have sequenced the story and had lots of fun using Book Creator on the ipads to retell the story through the eyes of Minik. We ended the week by writing a letter as if we were Minik’s dad to thank Big Bear for saving his son and looking after him. We ensured our letters contained subordinating conjunctions, suffixes ending in -er and -est as well as commas in lists. All skills we learnt in our last learning journey!

This week we have started multiplication in Maths! The children began by learning what equal and unequal groups looked like. We then introduced them to the fact that multiplication was repeated addition before introducing the X symbol. The children have learnt that X means ‘groups of’. There will be lots of repetition over the next three to four weeks to ensure this difficult mathematical concept is embedded.

To help your child at home, please practise counting in 2s, 5s and 10s (and if you want a challenged also in 3s).

These are the questions and discussions we have with the children when they are looking at a slide such as the one above:

What do you see? “There are four groups of five.”

What does the 4 represent?

What does the 5 represent?

Explain we can write this as repeated addition: five plus five plus five plus five.

We can also write this as four X five.

The ‘4’ represents the number of groups.

 

In Art, we continued our topic on African printing this week, making our own repeating patterns on paper. Some of us tried really hard to print symmetrical patterns because we had been learning all about the English, Victorian artist William Morris. We learnt that he took inspiration from nature and used block printing to create patterns on fabrics, wall paper and carpets. We had lots of fun.

We had lots of fun using the Beebots again this week in Computing. We had to make up our own algorithms on paper and then make predictions on where we thought the Beebot would finish. We then tested out our predictions.

We have been thinking about landscapes in Geography. We first thought about all the important landscapes we have in Petersfield, like St Peter’s Church, the William III statue in the Square, the war memorial and the Heath pond. Can you think of any more? We then looked at landscapes in London and Kampala and had to sort them into the correct city.

This week in Music we learnt all about the Apollo 11 mission which sent Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon! We learnt a song about Michael Collins because he is the lesser known astronaut. We heard guitars, trumpets and trombones in the music and enjoyed pretending to play them during the musical interval. We then layered our own sounds (body percussion) on top to represent the rocket blasting off into space.

Did you know that Michael Collins flew the Apollo 11 command module around the Moon in 1969 while his crewmates, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, walked on the moon? WE thought it was sad that he didn’t get to walk on the moon as well.

We have learnt that the Torah scroll is the special book for Jews in Religious Education. It is so special that no-one is allowed to touch it, even the Rabbi! We were lucky because we were able to look at a real Torah and we all had a go at using the Yad to try and ‘read’ it. (Nobody could read it because it is written in Hebrew!)

Please remember to bring in your own special book next week so we can all learn about why it is so special to you!

 

In Science this week we have been finding out how the shape of solid objects made from materials can be changed by squashing, bending, twisting and stretching. We started by doing some materials drama in pairs! We had to (gently) perform different actions on our partner like pulling, pushing, rolling, twisting and bending. We then played a game whereby we threw a dice and had to perform a given action (eg. push, pull, stretch, roll, squeeze) on a lump of Play-doh. The aim was to make a duck!

 

Week 3

  Here are the Year 2 stars of the week for this week! Well done!

In English this week we have been working hard to complete our learning journey on The Clockwork Dragon by writing letters of thanks to Max and Lizzie, the main characters of the story, as if we were the Mayor of the town that they saved!

In science we have been material explorers – hunting around the school for objects made of many different materials and using our clipboards to record our observations. We have had to think hard about the properties of the materials and why they are suited to their purpose.

In PSHE this week we have been talking about scenarios that make us feel safe or unsafe. We also discussed what we could do in situations where we feel unsafe and the special people we have around us who help to keep us safe like family members, teachers and police officers.

PE has been heaps of fun this week, practicing our Gymnastics shapes – tuck, pike and straddle – whilst using the apparatus. We have also hugely improved on working together as a team to safely get out the wall bars, apparatus and mats as this is important to make sure that we are all listening to each other and keeping safe when doing Gym.

What’s that sound? Is it Aliens? No – its just year 2 practicing their alien chant in music lessons! During music this week, we have have been learning about layering sounds and creating different textures. We have then been trying to recognise and respond to different layers of sounds used in pieces of music that we are listening to.

In computing this week we have been continuing with our Robot Algorithms topic. We have been carefully considering instructions and how we can order them to create different sequences. We have had a brilliant time testing out our sequences using the Beebots or programming people!

Week 2

  Here are the Year 2 stars this week!

In English we have continued with our story of the Clockwork Dragon.  The children have been using it to help learn how to use subordinating conjunctions, suffixes and writing with commas.

In Maths we have been bridging 10 in adding and subtracting.  Using tens frames and number lines to help.

In Art we have been creating simple patterns with crayons and felt tips.  Then we have used paint and objects to create more marks!

In computing we learnt about making instructions and following them.

In Music we carried on with ‘Man on the Moon.’ We practiced our chant and created alien voices!

 

In P.E. we carried on with Gymnastics

In Science we have been learning about materials and their properties! What a busy week!

 

Week 1

Happy new year to you! We hope you had a fantastic Christmas and a well-deserved break!

We have had a wonderful start to 2024, the children settled tremendously well into school life again and have enjoyed getting back to their learning!

Congratulations to our first stars of the week this year!

In English this week, we have started a new learning journey, the naughty teachers did not tell the children the title of the book or what is was about… they had to guess! Can you guess what the book might be about using the clues below?

In Maths, we have been learning how to add and subtract two digit and ones. We have been drawing dienes to help us solve these number sentences for example 35 + 4 and 47 – 6.

In PE, we had fun using the low apparatus to develop our balance skills. Have a look at ‘what’ we have been up to and ‘how’ we achieved this safely!

 

In Computing, we learned examples of information that is personal to someone (e.g where someone lives and goes to school, family names). We also about the importance of asking a trusted adult before sharing any personal information online, belonging to others or ourselves. We had fun creating our own ‘poor’ and ‘strong’ passwords.

In Music, our new topic is Man on the Moon. This week we learned that music can be made of layers of sounds played together. We enjoyed chanting the words to ‘Alien Hello’ rhythmically, whilst quietly tapping a steady beat on our knees. We thought about how we could make our voices sound like aliens. We explored making sound effects, using our voices and instruments to create space and rocket sound effects.