Year 2 w/b 22nd November
Date: 29th Nov 2021 @ 9:38pm
What a busy week of superb learning and exciting Nativity preparations.
In English, we have focused on improving our vocabulary, using a thesaurus to find adventurous synonyms for adjectives and verbs. We started by ‘improving’ the adjectives ‘big’ (e.g. mammoth, huge, gigantic) , ‘fast’ (e.g. swift, speedy, super-sonic) and ‘mean’ (e.g. merciless, selfish, malicious). The children then created their own bank of adjectives to describe their superheroes and villains, using the thesaurus to help. Later in the week, we moved on to verbs. This began with a recap of verbs and adverbs, including a few rounds of our ‘verb and adverb charades’ game. The children were then able to complete a SPaG task, identifying the verbs and adverbs in some sentences. We then ‘improved’ a selection of verbs: ‘walked’ (e.g. strolled, tiptoed, marched), ‘put’ (e.g. placed, threw, piled), ‘jumped’ (e.g. leapt, pounced, bounded), ‘said’ (e.g. exclaimed, declared, commented), ‘looked’ (e.g. peered, gazed, stared), ‘ran’ (e.g. sprinted, dashed, zoomed). I shall look forward to seeing some of this wonderful vocabulary in the children’s story writing.
Our spelling rule this week has been: ‘or’ spelt ‘a’ before l and ll. This rule applies to words such as: ball, tallest, falling, walk, talked, stalking, altogether, always, almost, already.
In maths, our addition and subtraction unit came to an end with some problem solving lessons, requiring us to be maths detectives as we looked for clue words (e.g. total, altogether, difference, fewer) to help us to decide whether we needed to add or subtract. We continued to use the column method, including exchanging, to support us with this. It is important that the children continue to revisit column addition and subtraction throughout the year so that it remains familiar to them; we will, of course, continue to recap these strategies within school and it would be very beneficial for the children to continue to practise at home. Towards the end of the week, we started our ‘money’ unit as we focused on coin recognition and used a number line strategy to find total amounts of coins.
On Monday, the children were excited to focus on their kicking skills within our PE session, following a clear progression of skills. We started by kicking the ball to a friend, focusing on accuracy in both kicking and stopping the ball. We talked about the importance of our body position, using the side of our foot, remaining focused on the ball and its intended direction and thinking carefully about the power of our kick. We then moved onto kicking the ball off the ground so that our friend could catch it which eventually progressed to ‘punt kicking’. The children’s kicking skills were so excellent that it was difficult to capture some action shots!
Our question in RE this week was: What do Christians do within church and in the community? We revisited our learning from Year One as we discussed what happens within a church, particularly on a Sunday. We identified that Christians: pray, sing hymns, listen to Bible stories, give money to a collection, share bread and wine, light candles to remember that Jesus is the light of the world. We then considered what a Christian may do in their community, looking at some examples of Christians and their contributions to their communities. This included: visiting poorly people; donating to/working for charities (such as Christian Aid and Operation Christmas Child), supporting food banks and helping those in need.
On Wednesday, we returned to our self-portraits. After completing the sketch last week, it was now time to add colour. We added colour in the style of Roy Lichtenstein, using dots of felt tip pen to create this effect. Next week, we will experiment with paint and then compare and evaluate the two different effects. These portraits are looking wonderful!
The children enjoyed a fun-filled, autumnal morning in Forest School this week, as the photos show. The combination of the parachute and the autumn leaves resulted in lots of fun, laughter and teamwork!
Our HeartSmart session helped us to reflect upon the importance of our names and how they are part of who we are; each of our names are very special and were carefully chosen by people who love us. To show our understanding of the importance of names, we each created an acrostic poem comprised of positive adjectives to describe ourselves.
Much of our week has, of course, been dedicated to our Nativity preparations. It was most exciting to rehearse with Year One as we enjoyed the opportunity to practise on the stage for the first time. We look forward to more rehearsals next week. If you have any queries about the performances or need assistance with a costume, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Miss Witham
