Year 2 w/b 27th June
Date: 1st Jul 2022 @ 5:31pm
What another busy yet lovely week we have had in Year Two! In English, it was at last time to write our own explanation texts. Year Two worked hard to explain each element of their inventions clearly and used very positive language to describe them. There were some wonderfully creative ideas and I thoroughly enjoyed reading each text to understand how all of the inventions work. We then published our work in our most beautiful handwriting.
Our spelling rule this week was: the ‘ee’ sound spelt ‘ey’ at the end of words. We looked at lots of words ending with ‘e’' including: key, honey, donkey, turkey, monkey, valley, hockey, money. Our red words of the week were: says, water, there, what, break, why.
We have completed such a lot of excellent maths work this week! On Monday, we continued our work with mass as we measured and compared the mass of objects that are over 100 g using scales, giving the mass to the nearest 100 g. On Tuesday, we were introduced to kilograms and we explored measuring and estimating mass using both grams and kilograms. On Thursday, we explored and used millilitres (ml) as a standard unit of measuring capacity and volume. We used scales that were marked in increments of 100 to link millilitres and litres (l). This supported us on Friday, when we were introduced to litres as a standard unit of measure and carried out a variety of calculations using litres. We also completed a second maths lesson on Friday as we moved on to the temperature element of our measuring unit. We read temperatures from a thermometer and used temperature to make simple comparisons and to carry out calculations.
On Wednesday, it was National Mud Day. I think this needs no further explanation than these joyous photographs from Forest School!
In science, the objective was to test the suitability of materials for a coat. After predicting whether materials would be waterproof, the children then conducted an experiment, using water to test which materials would be suitable for a waterproof coat.
In geography, we recapped our understanding of human and physical features and the differences between cities and villages. This week, we were exploring two cities: Manchester and Nairobi. After finding out lots about each city, we looked at their features and worked with a partner to classify them as human or physical. This helped us to write about the similarities and differences between the two cities.
On Tuesday, we continued to develop our understanding of Judaism. With Mrs Taylor, we looked at a Torah and yad, mezuzah, a tefillin a tallit and a kippah. We learnt more about each of these objects and explored their significance. This helped us to create a leaflet to explain how Jews show love for God in their everyday lives.
In music, we continued to journey around the world, stopping first in Ghana. We listened and sang along to the song Kye Kye Kulay; this is a call and response song and its translation reminded us of ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’. We split the class in half to create this call and response and we thoroughly enjoyed this activity! Here is the link if you would like to sing this at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_59QYVqzBTI . We were lucky enough to stop in a second country … China. After learning a bit about Chinese New Year, we listened and sang along to a song, focusing particularly on the chorus ‘Gung Hay Fat Choy’ which means ‘Happy New Year’. Here is the link if you would like to sing this at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D5afVVBjY4 .
In DT, we have been evaluating our moving monsters, allowing them to at last be brought home. There were lots of successes to celebrate and some wonderful learning opportunities to evaluate, such as the positioning of the pivots, thickness of the card and the weight of excessive decorations!
During our My Happy Mind session, we were learning more about happy breathing and how it helps us.
We thought about activities that make us feel nervous and those that make us feel excited and happy. We realised that some situations that make some people feel nervous make others feel excited (e.g. riding a rollercoaster) – it is not the same for everyone! Even though our brains look the same, they all think and behave differently. Our Team H-A-Ps may react differently in different situations but they all love happy breathing.
In addition to more athletics practise with Multiflex in PE, this week brought another exciting sporting activity…swimming! Year Two were very grateful for the opportunity to enjoy a fun swim session on either Wednesday and Thursday and the pure joy that ensued was infectious.
I hope that you all enjoy a wonderful weekend and shall look forward to seeing many of you at the garden party.
Miss Witham
