Year 2 w/b 14th February
Date: 18th Feb 2022 @ 5:44pm
What a super week of learning we have had in Year Two. The children have been so proud to write and publish their twisted tales. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading each and every one of these stories full of imaginative ideas. It was delightful to notice Year Two’s aspiration and endeavour to include a variety of narrative features identified in last week’s ‘analyse’ stage, such as expanded noun phrases, adverbs, interesting openers, repetition, similes, adventurous verbs and exclamation sentences. It is always wonderful to see children feeling so proud of the final outcome of the writing sequence. Well done Year Two authors! I wonder which book will capture our imaginations next half term?
Our spelling rule this week has been: if the ending sounds like ‘igh’, it is usually spelt ‘y’. For example, horrify, butterfly, reply, cry, sky, drying. We also focused on the red words: Tuesday, anyone, money, people, kind, both.
The children have made excellent progress with their understanding of fractions this week. On Monday, we recapped our work on recognising quarters, which involved recognising shapes that had been split into four equal parts and drawing what a whole looks like from ¼. On Tuesday, we moved on to finding one quarter of different amounts by sharing them into four equal groups, using manipulatives and a ‘one for you’ strategy. On Wednesday, we were introduced to unit fractions; we know that unit fractions have 1 as their numerator. We learnt to recognise the unit fractions ½, ¼ and 1/3 of different shapes and amounts. On Thursday, we were introduced to non-unit fractions (fractions in which the numerator is not 1), such as 2/3, ¾, 2/2. On Friday, we learnt that ½ and 2/4 are equivalent fractions and proved this using physical resources and different numbers of objects. Year Two, you have impressed me with your confident improvement to identify and find fractions. We will have another week focusing on fractions when we return to school. It would be very useful to talk about fractions at home and see what you can recognise. This may be an excellent excuse to enjoy a pizza!
In geography, we enjoyed the chance to demonstrate what we have learnt about weather patterns in the United Kingdom and in places near the poles and equator. First, we completed a quiz, answering questions about: seasonal weather; the difference between the weather in coastal and inland areas; weather forecasts and satellites; the differences between weather near the equator and the near the North Pole or South Pole. We then enjoyed the chance to be weather forecasters! The children worked beautifully in groups to add a variety of types of weather to a UK map and then present this forecast to the class as weather forecasters. I was so proud to see every child stand up and present to the class, demonstrating both wonderful confidence and secure geography knowledge. This was a lovely way to conclude this half term’s geography learning.
To conclude our music learning for the half term, we were composing music to represent the journey of the mouse through the woods in The Gruffalo – what better place to hold this lesson than in Forest School! The children loved using nature to create music and engaged in wonderful discussions about the different sounds that would appropriately represent the different animals. They created rhythms, using sticks to draw the crochets and quavers in the ground. This was a thoroughly enjoyable musical Forest School session.
In RE, the children demonstrated an excellent understanding of the Kingdom of God by answering the question: How can Christians help God’s Kingdom come to earth? These answers explained what is meant in the Lord’s Prayer by ‘your kingdom come, your will be done’; described what Jesus taught about God’s Kingdom; and finally suggested some things that Christians could do to help God’s Kingdom grow on earth.
In PE, we enjoyed our final ‘Invasion Games Skills’ lesson within which we applied our learning within a game. It was wonderful to see how the children developed a greater understanding of the importance of using the space, marking opponents, accurate passes/throws and teamwork!
In science, the objective was to explain the results of our investigation. The children compared the bean plants that had been growing in the classroom to those that had been growing outdoors. This helped them to write up the results of the experiment and draw a conclusion.
The title of this week’s HeartSmart lesson was, ‘HeartSmart on the playground, HeartSmart online’. We were learning that the rules we follow online to keep safe are similar to the rules we follow in real life. This discussion helped us to recognise how amazing it is that we can do so much on one device whilst reinforcing the idea that it is important that we learn to use them carefully and have rules about using devices. Being HeartSmart online is as important as being HeartSmart on the playground. There are some ways to behave online that will help us to protect ourselves and others, just like there are on the playground. You may find this short video of Internet safety tips from Common Sense Media to be useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9Htg8V3eik.
Thank you so much for your wonderful support this half term. It is a pleasure to see children working hard at home to improve their spelling, reading, maths and times tables. This support is invaluable and is helping the children to make excellent progress. I am so very proud of them all. I hope that you all enjoy a fun-filled yet restful half term and I look forward to seeing the children again soon.
Miss Witham
