Year 2 w/b 13th September
Date: 17th Sep 2021 @ 3:46pm
We have had another wonderful week of learning in Year 2. The children are full of enthusiasm for our story, ‘The Bog Baby’ and it has been lovely to see how this enthusiasm has transferred to breaktimes, where the children continue to search for the Bog Baby or incorporate him into their play. We were very excited to be introduced to our text map this week. Please find a video of the children performing this text map on our class page. The children retold this rather long story wonderfully – what super storytellers! For the first half of the week, we focused on identifying structural and language features in the model text. The children worked hard to analyse the text and colour code these features to demonstrate their understanding. For the remainder of the week, we have planned our own finding narratives. To demonstrate our skills of innovation, we have planned stories with our own: magical creature, characters, exciting setting, problem and solution. These stories look like they are going to be fantastic; I can’t wait to read them after a week of writing next week.
Our Bog Baby learning continued into Forest School, where we made Bog Babies using clay and pinecones, then added features using nature. The children were then keen to design and make their own traps for the Bog Baby. I wonder if Mr Simmons will return to school next week to find any trapped Bog Babies?
In maths this week, we began our first Year 2 Power Maths unit: ‘Numbers to 100’. We have been focusing on: counting groups of ten objects; recognising how many tens and ones a number has; partitioning a number into tens and ones; representing tens and ones in a variety of ways, including: Base 10, on a number line, place value arrow cards, and on a part-whole model.
Our big question in science this week was: ‘What are the differences between toddlers and babies.” In this lesson, we were thinking about the different needs of humans depending on their age, using vocabulary such as: baby, toddler, child, teenager, adult, elderly. Next week, we will think about how animals needs change as they grow and develop.
The children were, once again, superb gymnasts in our PE lesson. This week, we focused on rolling. The children worked through a carousel of stations, where they practised log rolls, dish rolls, teddy bear rolls and forward rolls. It was great to see such confidence and determination from Year 2 as they challenged themselves to perfect each roll, or their chosen adaptation of the roll. On Wednesday, we also had a visit from Multiflex; we engaged in a range of activities to assess our fitness. As the photos show, the children very much enjoyed participating in the activities and cheering their friends on.
In RE, we revisited the Bible story, ‘Healing of Jairus’ daughter’. It was wonderful to see that the children had remembered this story from the New Testament in such a lot of detail and could show a deeper understanding through discussion and questioning. Our written task followed a discussion around a key question: ‘How did Jesus make Jairus’ daughter feel both on the inside and outside?’. We discussed how being healed by Jesus would make Jairus’ daughter feel, both physically (strong, healthy, pain-free, energetic, warm, healed) and emotionally (peaceful, thankful, amazed, loved, faithful, overjoyed).
In geography, we continued to think about plan view maps. This week, we have drawn our own plan view maps of our local area surrounding the school. The children were able to draw the roads and then add key features, such as: The Bear’s Head, the park, the post box and the school. We focused on colour coding each feature and then adding these colours to our key so that we would know what each coloured shape represented.
Our DT lesson for the week was met with much enthusiasm. Last week, our research helped us to conclude that we would be making hand puppets and using sewing as a joining technique. This week, half of the class designed their puppets. The children will be creating a puppet of the magical creature that they have created for their story in English. They have drawn a picture of what they expect the puppet to look like and have added labels to show: joining techniques, the fabric needed, the coloured thread needed, which side of the puppet will be open etc. These designs look excellent. The other half of the class have been practising their running stitch technique. At the moment, we have been using blunt, plastic needles to practise the action of the stitch but will later move on to using fabric and a sharp needle. As the photos show, the children were very proud of their running stitches. Next week, we will swap over so that everybody has had chance to both design their puppet and practise their running stitch.
In our PSHE HeartSmart lesson, we have been thinking about how each of us is powerful. We have the power to be kind, but we also have power to make others feel unhappy, left out or small. Being HeartSmart means choosing to love ourselves and others.
In our collective worship, we started at the beginning of the Bible and listened to the story of creation. We thought about how we can be like God and put effort and love into the things we do to make them good. We then watched David Attenborough’s video, ‘What a Wonderful World,’ and discussed how it made us feel and what we were thinking.
Thank you for your continued support; it is so lovely to see that the children have been reading so much at home. I hope that you have a wonderful weekend.
Miss Witham
