Spring Term 2

This term our writing theme has been pirates.  We have written a losing tale all about treasure and ensured that we have included an interesting opener to the story and thought very carefully about the ending.  They have shown their knowledge of punctuation and the use of interesting vocabulary to enhance the writing for the reader.  We have also begun to edit our own work.  We finished with instructional writing linked to our wonderful DT project of how to make a keyring pet.  They have really enjoyed using bossy verbs both in their writing and around the classroom!  The Indoor Pirates has been our class read which has brought a chuckle to all of us this term and the children have decided that they would much better pirates than the characters in the book.

We have continued to work on our addition and subtraction skills using lots of different resources to help us calculate.  We have found fractions of number and shapes and are now very aware of the need for ‘equal’ parts linked to fractions.    Lots of fun has taken place during the last week of learning finding the length of different objects in both cm and m.  We have added in the picture cards to our card decks to increase the totals we can create when adding our playing cards to generate our own learning.  On ongoing tally chart is present in the room as the adults compete against the children.

As scientist we have consolidated our knowledge of plants and set up a fair test to find out what plants need to grow.  Unfortunately the one they selected to put the freezer didn’t do very well!  Material investigations have also taken place as we have thought about the different properties and how they are linked to their functions.

Our cut, stich and sew topic for D.T. has been fantastic.  We have found out about designers, planned made and evaluated our keyring pets.  The children were amazing at cutting and stitching for themselves, with the only bit of help from the adult was threading the needles ( both Miss May and Miss Peerman struggled with this bit!).

We have collected data for our computing lessons and then used this to create both paper and computer-generated pictograms.    We have also used our tally skills in our maths learning as well.

Every Wednesday tennis has taken place at the local Markwood Park on the lovely new facilities that are there.  Whilst the long hill back has been a struggle they have really enjoyed their sessions and have been so animated on their return to school.  Thank you to all the parents that have helped us with this as without you we would not have been able to go.

Spring Term 1 

The children have really enjoyed reading stories all about The Lighthouse Keeper.  This has been our starting point for our defeating the monster stories.  When writing we have consolidated our use of full stops, capital letters, question marks and how to use a comma in a list.  They had fun adapting the story and changing the monster that liked to eat the food! 

Mathematics has been linked to our knowledge of counting in 2s, 5s, 10s and 3s.  We can now use the multiplication and division symbols to read number sentences and use select the resources that we need to complete our calculations.  The children have noticed that the price of bagels and fruit in the classroom fluctuates and that now they have to pay using the  least number of coins!  We have created clue cards to identify 2D and 3D shapes and have had fun investigating symmetry in shapes. On Numbers Day they had lots of fun investigating odd and even numbers. 

As scientist we have consolidated our knowledge of plants, enjoyed drawing bulbs and investigating whether cress needs water to germinate.  Quinn did a fantastic job of looking after our investigation over a weekend! 

Art work has been inspired by flowers and plants linked to our science topic. We have looked and colours, shapes and textures and then used this ideas to make our own 3D sculptures that look lovely outside our classroom door. 

Our topic learning has been all about coastlines.  We have identified human and physical features of the local area.  Maps and atlases have been out to find places around the UK that are costal, and we have used the keys to read the maps. Using this knowledge we have designed our own islands with different human and physical features. 

The beebots have been out for our computing lessons. They have been following instructions and planning their own routes around a grid using forward, backwards and left or right turns. 

Autumn Term  2

We have continued our English journey this term and have enjoyed reading The Owl how was afraid of the dark by Jill Tomlinson as our whole class text.  This inspired us to write firework poetry where we concentrated on including interesting adjectives.  We have written an alternative ending to the the story Little Red Reading Hood. 

Mathematics has been all about addition and subtraction this term.  We are able to add and subtract using a range of manipulatives to support our learning.  We continue to count in 2s, 5s and 10s as this has supported our use of base ten.  We have been recognising different coins and using this knowledge to buy our fruit and bagels.

As part of our science learning we have identified living  and non- living things.  We have looked at different habitats and identified plants and animals that live in these habitats.  Whilst out at forest school tree identification took place and they enjoyed bringing back into the classroom lots of nature that they had found! We have talked about food chains and how important it is to look after the environment.

We unpicked the question Why do we remember?  The children learnt all about Poppy Day and how we remember those that have given their lives to make our world a better place.  Following on from this we have found out about two significant explorers this term so do ask about Christopher Colombus and Neil Armstrong.   This topic has lead to lots of discussion about the impact that these explorers have had on us today and whether they were justified in taking artefacts and interesting  finds back to their home countries.

A lot of time has been spent on speaking and listening and our singing skills ready for our performance of The Nativity.  The children have enjoyed working on their speaking skills and the excitement of being on stage.  With all the illness we have had their have also shown their resilience and ability to adapt as they have often had to take on speaking parts when someone has been away.

Autumn Term 1

The children have made an amazing start to Year 2.  They have developed their independence and are now willing to ‘have a go’ at all challenges they are presented with.  As part of our geography learning this term, we have been using an atlas to locate the continents and oceans and they have been finding out lots of different facts about the number of countries in each continent.  We have compared Somalia with England and identified similarities and differences.  Our reading and writing of Handa’s surprise inspired our art work where with a focus on lines and proportion. 

While on our visit to the Ploughing match we discovered that farm machines were enormous and the wheels were taller than us!  They all enjoyed watching the birds of prey and were amazed at how fast they fly.  We saw lots of hounds and some extremely big horses.  But of course, a packed lunch eaten early is part of every trip out of school. 

As part of Black History Month we learnt about Rosa Parks and her fight for equality for all.  She inspired our art work as we used our knowledge of primary and secondary colours to illustrate her in a ‘Pop Art’ style.  The children then evaluated their work and their friends giving clear oral feedback as to what they liked about the portraits. 

Science has been all about human survival.  We have found out what we need to stay healthy and how we change as we grow.  Lots of fun was had when we discovered that germs can be passed very quickly using glitter – we found it on pencils, books, clothes, hair, carpet, backs of chairs!  This helped the children to understand the need for good hand hygiene!  They have also carried out a fitness experiment over 5 days to see how many star jumps they could do.  We talked about how to record, make simple predictions and the need for fair testing!