Year 2 w/b 27th September
Date: 2nd Oct 2021 @ 6:55pm
It has been another wonderful week in Year Two. I have been so proud of each and every one of the children for their excellent attitude and effort across all areas of their learning this week.
After last week’s super stories about finding an unusual creature, this week, the children applied their learning in order to independently write a story about finding a magical object. For the first two days of the week, the children planned their stories; it was wonderful to observe lots of imagination and creativity in action. On Monday, Mr Cotton also taught the children all about nouns. After learning about nouns, the children were then asked to spot the nouns in some sentences. This is an important area of SPaG which we will continue to revisit and reinforce throughout the year. We then spent Wednesday and Thursday independently writing our stories. The children had remembered to use lots of fantastic story language in their writing, alongside their own unique ideas. This made the stories most enjoyable to read. To end the week, the children were very excited to publish their stories. First, we responded to marking to edit and improve our writing. It was great to see how this week’s homework task supported children with this. We then published our writing in our very best handwriting. These published stories are fantastic; I was very proud to display them in our classroom. What wonderful Year 2 authors!
In our first maths lesson of the week, the children practised counting in 2s, 5s and 10s, recapping their learning from Year 1. Mr Cotton was very impressed! We then moved on to counting in 3s. To support our learning, we have been singing a new song, counting in 3s to the tune of ‘Jingle Bells’. I am sure the children would love to teach this to you at home! Towards the end of the week, we revisited another concept from Year 1: writing addition and subtraction number sentences from a part-whole model. We will continue to practise this next week.
Our big question in science this week was: ‘How do we care for animals?’; the children completed activities to show their understanding of the different things that animals need.
This week, our RE learning focused on the Harvest service. We considered, ‘What is the significance of harvest for Christians?’, relating this discussion to our reflection time from Mrs McLean’s previous worship about the story of Creation. We then worked in groups to write Harvest prayers, giving thanks to God for some of our favourite foods that the harvest provides. Please see the photographs below. These prayers have now been published and will be displayed in church. There will be an All Age Harvest service tomorrow (Sunday 3rd October) at 10:30am at St Oswald’s Church. Reverend Sandi would be delighted to see you at this service. Can you spot our Year Two prayers while you are there?
Once again, our geography learning took place during our Forest School session. This week, our objective was to learn the 4-points of a compass. We learned the mnemonics: ‘Never Eat Shredded Wheat’ and ‘Naughty Elephants Squirt Water’. Mr Simmons showed us how to remember which direction is North when we are at school. From this, we were able to find East, South and West. We will apply this learning in later sessions, using compass points to give more complex directions when working with maps. Mr Simmons was so impressed with our excellent focus and effort that he awarded us this week’s Forest School certificate. Please see the photographs below. Can you spot our human compass?
In DT, we completed the first stage of our ‘make’ process. We referred to our designs to create a template for our puppets. After choosing the most appropriate fabric for our design, we then cut out the templates and pinned them to our chosen fabric. Next week, we will join our fabric together, using the running stitch technique that we have practised. There will be lots of photographs of this to follow.
In our PSHE HeartSmart lesson, we continued to think about our hearts. We thought about the feelings that we would like to spread from our hearts and why, relating this to our understanding of the ‘Colour Monster’ story.
Throughout the week, we have continued to practise our songs for our Harvest service: ‘Harvest Song’ and ‘Thank you God for our wonderful food’. This week, we were introduced to our Year 2 song: ‘Harvest Samba’. It would be wonderful if the children could continue to practise these songs at home. Reverend Sandi would love to see lots of Year 2 children at St Oswald’s church tomorrow to sing along to these songs at the Harvest service.
Many thanks to those of you who have brought in toiletries and personal hygiene products, if not there is still plenty of time next week.
A warm reminder that there will be no PE on Monday as the children will be having their photographs taken. Please send children into school in their full uniforms, ready for their photographs.
I hope that you have a wonderful weekend. If you are coming along to church tomorrow, I will see you there!
Miss Witham
