Year 2 w/b 24th April

Date: 28th Apr 2023 @ 11:50am

We have had another fantastic week of learning in Year Two.

We have been particularly busy in our English lessons this week, starting with planning our narratives, taking time to discuss the events of our stories and finding pictures particularly useful to record this chronological sequence. Across Wednesday and Thursday, we started to write our banning narratives and we look forward to finishing these next week. It was an eye-opening experience to discover what each child had chosen to ban!

Our spelling rule this week has once again involved adding the suffixes ‘er’ and ‘est’. This week, we have focused on swapping the y for an i before adding er and est (e.g. ‘tricky’ becomes ‘trickier’ and ‘trickiest’).

In maths this week, we have continued with our unit on ‘Fractions’. We have been learning about:

• Identifying which objects have been split into two equal parts and looking at ½ as a written fraction with a numerator and denominator.
• Finding one half of different amount of objects, shapes and numbers.
• Recognising shapes that have been split into four equal parts and identifying one quarter. Then, splitting shapes into quarters and recognising shapes that do not show quarters.
• Finding one quarter of different amounts by sharing them into four equal groups.
• Considering thirds as three equal parts of one whole.

We have enjoyed a very exciting science lesson this week. This all started when we looked at a new habitat, the pond. We then looked at a variety of creatures that live in and around ponds, for example moorhens, mallard ducks, frogs and toads. After a brief discussion, we noticed ducks live both on water and on land. However, we were very curious as to how ducks keep warm when they don’t have a towel to dry themselves, so we decided to do an experiment. First, we cut out two paper feathers. Next we covered cover one of the paper feathers with wax crayon on both sides, making sure there are no gaps. Finally, using the pipettes, we dropped water droplets onto each feather and watched. We noticed that the water sat on top of the feather coated with wax, but the droplets on the uncovered paper feather disappeared as it was absorbed by the paper, making it wet. As a class, we agreed that it would be a disaster if a duck’s feathers got waterlogged every time it took a dip. So, to keep them dry, ducks collect oil from a gland near their tails, then ‘preen’ with their beaks to rub the oil all over their feathers. This is due to oil repelling water, allowing the inner feathers to stay warm and dry. What super scientists we have in Year Two!

In history on Thursday, we were introduced to the Great Fire of Nantwich in preparation for our trip at the end of this half term. We also investigated the factors that helped the fires to last for so long and spread so quickly, for example, the houses were made from wood and straw, they only had buckets of water to put out the fires and they pulled down the houses too late. We are all looking forward to our trip to Nantwich museum to learn even more about the Great Fire of Nantwich.

In RE this week, we continued our learning about the Holy Spirit.  We learnt that Christians believe that several different symbols represent the Holy Spirit, we designed our own for God The Father, God The Son and God The Holy Spirit and then we wowed our teachers with the most amazing prayers asking God to guide us, help us or teach us.  

We spent our afternoon learning about King Charles III and then used our amazing artistic skills to draw the King himself.  We certainly have improved our sketching as the resemblance between our artwork and the portrait were just outstanding!

We have a very busy week next week to look forward to, ending with a huge Coronation Celebration on Friday.  Children are welcome to wear red, white and blue or Royal attire on this day.

We look forward to seeing you all next week, have a wonderful long weekend.

Miss Roxburgh and Mrs Taylor