Year 2 w/b 3rd October

Date: 6th Oct 2022 @ 5:02pm

We have had another wonderful week in Year Two.

In English this week, we had an unusual discovery. We had been sent a letter from ‘Save Our Bog Babies Society’. Enclosed in this letter was a sample of a set of instructions for creating a suitable habitat for a Bog Baby. The S.O.B.B Society requested that we write a similar set of instructions for our own unusual creatures. Our learning over the last weeks of half term will support us to do this. We then began to learn our text map for the set of instructions which we will film next week so that the children can share this with you at home. As part of this learning, we explored new vocabulary in the instructions, such as: tranquil, murky, odour, succulent, thoroughly. We worked in groups to discuss and clarify the definitions of these words. On Tuesday, we used our comprehension skills to further analyse the set of instructions, referring to the text to answer some questions. To end the week, we learnt all about commands. The children very much enjoyed ‘being bossy’ to verbally rehearse some commands, which then helped them to write some of their own. We discussed the importance of commands when writing instructions. I am sure that the children would love to give some ‘bossy’ commands at home!

This week in PSHE, we have focussed on Black History Month and how it is celebrated. This is a time to celebrate the achievements of Black people in the past and present. We discovered that this all started when Carter G Woodson, who was born in the USA almost 150 years ago, noticed that there was almost no mention of Black people in history books and wanted to change this. Carter started a magazine about Black history and in 1926, he announced the first ever Black History Month. He encouraged schools to learn about some of the important things Black people had done in history. As a class, we have been learning about why we celebrate Black History Month and the significant black people in history such as: Ignatius Sancho, who wrote letters campaigning for Black people to be freed from enslavement. Mary Seacole, who used her own money to open her own hospital in Crimea and Alice Coachman, the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal.

In science, we have looked at how babies can grow and double their weight in a short amount of time compared to children. Mrs Oldham kindly brought in her daughters red book (My Personal Child Heath Record), which showed her weight and length increasing each month. We later compared this to an average 7-year-old child and were amazed at how quickly a baby can grow! After looking at physical differences between babies and children, we discussed what things we were able to do as babies, toddlers, what we are now able to do as children, and what we hope to be able to do as adults.

In geography this week, we looked at human and physical features and created a map of our very own towns. We then colour coded our key and added different key features such as ‘park’, ‘church’ and ‘school’. We later discussed what makes a great town by questioning if it is a good idea to put a park next to a busy roundabout or houses next to a landfill site. I have really enjoyed looking through these maps, they really do look fantastic!

We have continued to look at our Power Maths unit, ‘Numbers to 100' in maths this week. At the start of the week, we looked at comparing numbers using the ‘greater than’, ‘less than’ and ‘equal to’ symbols and vocabulary. Next, we ordered numbers from greatest to smallest and smallest to largest and used base 10 to help us. We are looking forward to starting our next unit ‘Addition and Subtraction’ next week.

We have been thinking about ‘The Parable of the Good Samaritan’ in RE this week, and how we can help other people. We created posters to show God loves everybody. In DT, we continued our lessons on making hand puppets. First, we drew around our hands to ensure our hand puppet were going to be big enough. Next, we drew the outline of our puppet and transferred this onto fabric and cut this out ready to start sewing next week.

Finally, it was fantastic to share our Harvest service with you today. We really enjoyed sharing our harvest thoughts and celebrating the great work and passion of the farming community. We were also incredibly proud of our children too, what super voices they have!

Have a wonderful weekend! If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask via email, Dojo or through a note in reading diaries.

Miss Roxburgh and the Year Two team.