What an amazing week we had last week! As it was British Science Week, we crammed in as much science as we could including doing some fun things that we don’t usually get to do. We started the week by carrying out an investigation into the best material to make teddy a waterproof coat or an umbrella. The children made their predictions then carried out a fair test with a range of different materials that were available to them. They were then able to make their conclusions. We then moved onto investigating wind powered energy and made individual windmills followed by a whole-class production of a working wind turbine that could lift a load. This was inspired by the work of teenager William Kamkwamba from Malawi who came from a very poor family but built a working wind turbine from scrap that was able to generate electricity for his family’s house. He went on to become an engineer. The video of our wind turbine in operation is on our class Seesaw. Next we used the microscopes that were on loan from the British Microscopial Society. We went on a scavenger hunt first in the Wildlife Garden to collect samples to look closely at. The children were amazed by the level of detail the microscopes provided and loved this activity. We were also visited by Mr Carey who works for Indivior as a chemist. He taught us all about acids and alkalis and how to test the ph value. Again class 2 were really enthusiastic about this activity. Finally we used some questions from the Explorify website to develop the children’s critical thinking and vocabulary. They worked in small groups and tried to come with a range of answers for questions like ‘what if we were green?’, ‘what if we never went to sleep?’ and ‘what if dinosaurs still roamed the earth?’ All of the class had lots of possible answers to these questions and enjoyed sharing them with the other groups. For further information about the whole school science week including air powered racer and science selfie winners, the science pop-up shop and the tree panting and Wildlife garden, be sure to check out the school STEM blog later this week. The link will be on this week’s newsletter.
Homework:
Some maths homework this week to consolidate our work on understanding and using money.
There is also a range of money games on this website. If you follow the link you can scan to QR code on most devices to access. https://www.topmarks.co.uk/money/coins-game
For spelling please revisit the year 2 common exception words and check which ones you find tricky to read and then tricky to spell. Pick five and practise them daily until you can read and spell them confidently then move onto another five.
