Year 2 w/b 11th October
Date: 15th Oct 2021 @ 5:11pm
What a busy week of wonderful learning we have had in Year Two! On Monday, we learnt all about verbs and adverbs. As the photos show, to learn about verbs, we played a guessing game. One of the children would secretly select a verb from the basket (e.g. nod, clap, jump, skip) and then act this out. The children would then guess the verb, using the phrase “I think the verb is…”. We then added adverbs into our game. The children would all begin acting out a verb (e.g. clap) and then would modify their actions according to the selected adverb (e.g. clap quickly, loudly clap). Learning about adverbs also involved a new spelling rule for adding the ‘ly’ suffix. We discovered that, for most words, we could just add the suffix e.g. ‘careful’ became ‘carefully’. However, if the word ends in ‘y’, we discovered that we needed to change the ‘y’ to an ‘i’ before we could add the suffix e.g. ‘happy’ became ‘happily’. The children were experts at this and were able to add the adverbs that they had created to some command sentences. On Tuesday, we analysed our model text to show our understanding of the language and structural features of instructions. Using a new colour each time, we highlighted the following features: numbers, bullet points, question marks, headings, conjunctions, adverbs, time adverbs and commands. Across Wednesday and Thursday, we planned our own instructions for building a habitat where our own unusual creatures could live. These plans look excellent and I am very much looking forward to reading these instructions next week, after a few days of writing. We have also filmed our text map this week. This video is on our Year 2 class page; the children performed this text map wonderfully.
In maths, our first lesson of the week focused on using number facts to check a calculation. We learnt that, the best way to check a calculation is to do the opposite (the invers). We knew that the opposite of addition was subtraction and vice versa so, for example, 6 + 7 = 13 could be checked using the calculation, 13 – 6 = 7. On Tuesday, we were finding related facts to help us to add tens. We realised that, because we know that 3 + 5 = 8, we also know that 30 + 50 = 80. The children very much enjoyed this concept and agreed that they had been expert mathematicians. Later in the week, we revisited the concept of finding ten more and ten less using a 100 square. We remembered our top tip from Year 1; to find ten less we look at the number above on the 100 square and, to find ten more, we look at the number below on the 100 square. On Friday, the children were also introduced to number bonds to 100 e.g. 87 + __ = 100. Mr Cotton taught the children to first find the next ten (90), find how many ones they needed to add to get to the next ten (3) and then find the number of tens needed to get to 100 (1); 1 ten and 3 ones is 13 so 87 + 13 = 100. This is a tricky concept and we will, of course, practise this throughout the year.
Our big question in science this week was: ‘Which drinks have the most sugar?’; everybody very much enjoyed this lesson. The children first looked at a variety of foods, thinking about which ones contained sugar. They were most surprised to learn that sugar is in most foods - baked beans were particularly surprising! The next activity involved predicting how many sugar cubes were in a range of different drinks. After learning that the recommend daily sugar intake for children is 6 sugar cubes, Year Two were shocked to discover the amount of sugar contained in some drinks.
We all enjoyed our PE session this week, where we were able to return to our gymnastics sessions. This week, we used the apparatus to demonstrate all of the skills that we have been practising – balancing, twisting, turning, spinning and rolling. As the photos show, the children were excellent gymnasts and used the apparatus very sensibly.
In DT, we were absolutely delighted to finish our puppets. After last week’s wonderful sewing, this week, the children used glue to attach their decorations. As the photos show, these puppets are simply superb! We will be evaluating our final products next week.
In geography, we were learning all about the United Kingdom. We studied a map which helped us to discover the four countries of the UK (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland), their capital cities (London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast) and their flags. We then used an atlas to locate the countries and capitals and add them to a blank UK map. As an extra challenge, some children added the surrounding seas to their maps.
On Thursday morning, we enjoyed a visit to church, alongside Year 1. We walked beautifully down to church and then enjoyed learning all about baptism as we experienced an example service.
I hope that you have a restful weekend and I shall look forward to seeing you all again on Monday.
Miss Witham
