Class 2 Blog

This week has been a week of very mixed emotions. Although we have all been excitedly looking forward to our Summer holidays (and perhaps even some sunshine), we have to say goodbye to class 2 as it currently is and also a big goodbye to Mrs Osborne. Mrs Osborne has been a student teacher at Brandesburton Primary School since the beginning of the Spring term and she has been in class 2 since the start of the Summer term. She has worked extremely hard to create engaging lessons, resources and activities and she has had the children at the heart of everything she has done. The class have loved having her and we will all miss her very much as she moves onto the next stage of her teaching career. We wish her every success and look forward to her paying Brandesburton School a visit in the future to tell us how she is getting on.

Last week we had our annual Summer Fair. Rain most certainly did not stop play as everything was moved to take place inside. The school was a hive of activity and it was a very successful event. Thank-you to all who attended, sent cakes or bought raffle tickets, your support is very much appreciated by the PTFA and the whole school. Thank-you to the PTFA for the overall organisation, they will let us know in due course just how much money was raised.

This week we have had special visitors in assembly from the National Coastwatch Institution. Ron and Andrew are based at Coastwatch Hornsea – you may have seen that the Coastwatch office has recently been ‘yarnbombed’ and is now covered with over 4000 knitted and crocheted flowers which makes it a real talking point and has drawn much needed publicity to a very important service. The pupils were told how to keep themselves safe on a visit to the seaside and each pupil was also given an activity booklet and a sticker. We are very grateful to Ron and Andrew, who are volunteers, for giving up their time to deliver such an important safety message.

We also joined with class one to have a little disco in the hall on Wednesday with some party games too. All the children enjoyed dancing, doing some action songs. playing musical bumps and musical statues. We finished the afternoon with some juice and crisps.

Final message from Mrs Platten

I really can’t believe we have come to the end of the year! I know I have said this lots of times but the time has absolutely flown by. I feel as if we should still be somewhere in the Autumn term and here we are with all of you about to start Key Stage Two. You have all risen to the challenges you have faced this year and have absolutely blown our socks off with your attitude to learning, your determination and your resilience. We have seen you consistently using your Brandesburton Toolkit for Life. You have been kind and caring and have looked out for one another like the team you are and you are now all year-3 ready. I really hope you have an amazing summer holiday. Class 2 Seesaw will still be available until September so feel free to post some photos of what you get up to as I look forward to seeing them.Parents and grandparents, thank-you so much for your support, it really does make a difference. Take care everyone, Mrs P x

Final message from Mrs Joplin

I can not thank the children (or Mrs Platten) enough for the warm welcome I have received during my first year at Brandsburton. It has been a pure delight to watch all of the children blossom and grow, and to be part of their learning journey this year. We have done some really fun things that I know we will all remember: trips to the farms and to see the bridges in Hull; making clay tiles and building bridges; cooking soup and baking bread, and much much more! Each and every one of the children has made me smile in their own special way. I have loved learning about all of their hobbies, pets, holidays and crazy family antics (yes, they tell us everything)!!! I can not wait to see how they continue to mature as they head into next year as BIG keystage 2 children! I hope you all have the most magical summer! See you all in the autumn! Mrs Joplin xx

This week class 2 have been working on their Design Technology Project to design and build a bridge. They have thoroughly enjoyed identifying and testing different materials to make their bridge and discovering how much weight their bridges could hold. They have also considered which materials the bridges that they saw on their trip to Hull were constructed from and why. All of the chldren have shown great teamwork skills and it has been lovely to see them work together on what will be their last big project of year 2.

In maths, the pupils completed their unit of work on money and started work on their remaining unit which is 3D shape. They have been getting to grips with shape names sucn as square based pyramid, cylinder and cube and they have been learning about faces, edges and vertices. They have also been completing their original journey stories in English.

On Wednesday the pupils got to spend the morning in what will be their new class in September. They all came back very excited at lunchtime having had a successful morning, They have been well prepared for the next stage of their learning and were able to find out about some of the the new routines of Key Stage Two and were excited by the fact that they will be learning French!

There is no reading homework this week as we are staring to collect inand sort readng books for next year. If you would like to test your mental maths skills then you can access the Hit the Button game on Topmarks. You can challenge yourself with your multiplication and division facts, doiubling, halving and number bonds. https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

For our last spelling pattern of the year we will be investigating the /s/ sound spelt with a ‘c’ before ‘e’, ‘i’ or ‘y’.Four of the words on the list are rhyming words, can you think of a short rhyming poem that uses these words?

We are very much looking forward to spending our last week with our class two pupils next week. Hopefully the sun will be shining and we can go outside for some fun and games and also reflect on what a fantastic year we have had together. Next week will be our final round up post!

Well after today we will only have two more Fridays left and then school is out for Summer! The year has certainly flown by. Our children will all get the chance to spend the morning in their new class on Wednesday morning so they can meet the class team, investigate the classroom and find out what exciting things they are going to be learning as part of Key Stage Two in September!

Last week was our really enjoyable sports week. We were incredibly lucky with the weather in the end and thoroughly enjoyed our Euros football competition, non-stop sports, traditional sports afternoon and our trip to Brandesburton Bowls Club. This last activity was a real community event – you can see some photos below.

This week has seen the last visit from our music specialist. He has visited class 2 every Friday this term and the children have really looked forweard to his visits. It has been a fun way to enrich our curriculum.

Next week we will be working on our final Design Technology unit which will be a bridge building challenge. The children will be applying some of what they learned when they were on their school trip to Hull visiting lots of different bridge structures. They have also completed research work in geography on bridges to support their learning. We would be extremely grateful if you have any old newspapers that you could donate to help us with our making!

Reading: A BIG plea from Mrs Platten and Mrs Joplin! Next Friday will be the last occasion on which class reading percentages will be collated and shared in the Special Mentions Assembly. We would really LOVE this to be our best week ever! we have been lagging behind some of the other classes recently. All the children love sharing and reading stories in school so please all try your very best to get a minium of three reads with three signatures at home.

Diary Dates:

W/c 8th July: Class 2 Design Technology week

W/c 8th July: Last week for school reading scheme and school library books. Books will then be collected in on 15th July.

10th July: All classes (except year 6) have a transition morning with their new class.

11th July: Brandesburton school reunion with afternoon tea.Tickets still available, please see the school office for further information

Friday 12th July: 10am The children will enjoy a performance from Mrs Creswell’s music groups.

12th July: School Summer Fair 2.00pm-4.30pm – please do come and join us!

18th July: PTFA After-school disco

19th July: School finishes for the Summer break

Congratulations!

We would also like to say a huge congratulations to Mrs Osborne this week. She has been working incredibly hard over the past term in class 2 and we are super proud to say that she has successfully achieved QTS. We really don’t know what we would have done without her! She has been a fabulous addition to the class 2 team!

Spellings

The /dʒ/ sound spelt as ge and dge at the end of words, and sometimes spelt as g elsewhere in words before e, i and y

This week has been another fun filled week!

In English, they have been practising their story writing techniques, in order to prepare them for writing their own journey story, over the next couple of weeks. This week in maths, the children have been finishing off their position and direction unit. They not only had to explain direction of movement but also had to be able to describe turns, using quarter, half and three-quarter turns. We found out that clockwise and anti-clockwise is a little bit trickier when the object begins facing east or west!

Geography

In geography, the children are consolidating their map reading and locational skills by discovering the location of significant bridges in their local area. In order to put their practise into action, the children participated in a fieldwork trip to Hull. On this trip, the children visited more than 8 different bridges. At each stop, they had to complete an observational drawing, count the traffic crossing the bridge and think about the bridge’s purpose! Everyone who attended was so well behaved and worked so efficiently that they even had time to play on the park below the Humber Bridge. It was a real treat for us all!

Thank you again to all of the parents who supported on the day and to the PTFA for supporting with the cost of the bus.

Spelling

This week in spellings, the children have been learning how the ‘oo’ – look at a book – sound can be written as ‘o’. We talked about all of the words we could think of with this sound and noted how some people say these words differently. We would love you to practise spelling some of these words at home. If you get the chance, we’d love to see your efforts on Seesaw!

Reading

We are still hovering around the 74% mark for class reading for this week. I know that lots of the children were hoping that we could make it to 100%. Please could you try your hardest to ensure that your child reads 3 x or more next week! Let’s see if we can once again be the reading champions!

Class Two are superstars! They have worked incredibly hard this week undertaking their SATs tests in reading, spelling, grammar and maths. All of them gave their very best and can be very proud of their attitude to learning and their resilience. We are certainly proud of them too. The outcomes of the SATs tests do sit alongside the teacher assessments for the whole year but the children have certainly performed to the best of their ability this week. Of course we did reward them with biscuits when the last test was completed!

They have also been working hard writing and presenting their pyramid poems! They used some doodling skills that they had acquired when they visited Wassand Hall.

Here you can see just a small selection of the children in action!

This week we also waved off our year 5 and year 6 pupils on their residential visit. Some of our class have older siblings going on the visit and we had happy tears and sad tears waving them off. The pupils will have the most amazing learning experience and it won’t be long before our year two pupils are further up the school and getting ready to attend their own residential visit as time certainly does fly.

We are very much looking forward to our own Key Stage One visit to Hull next week for a geography fieldwork visit to look at different bridge structures. It will be a very different trip to Wassand Hall last week, but hopefully equally fun and worthwhile. Please remember to send your child with a waterproof coat (even if it is very sunny first thing in the morning) and a packed lunch and drink in a small rucksack. Children will wear their normal school uniform and will need trainers or comfortable shoes as we will be walking for a large part of the trip.

There is no written homework for this week due to the children having worked very hard on their SATs. Plesase do keep on reading though so we can improve our class percentage for getting a minimum of three reads each week. Please do upload any photos to Seesaw for #30DaysWild (see last week’s school newsletter) or email them to the school office for our in school display. Some new activities that can be undertaken are displayed in the school reception window along with some of the photos from our Wassand Hall trip.

Reading

As always, we were aiming for 100% in our reading this week. Unfortunately we missed the mark slightly! 72% of us read regularly (3 times or more) at home. A big well done to Nancy, who was nominated for her fantastic reading and can now sit on the golden table for lunch, next week!

Diary Dates:

Month of June:

Ongoing #30Dayswild

Wednesday 19th June Key Stage One fieldwork visit to Hull

Friday 21st June: Football tournament – see last week’s newsletter and recent email for further information

Thursday 27th June Sports afternoon and PTFA bingo

Dear parents,

Next week our year 2 pupils will undertake Standard Attainment Tests (SATs) in reading, writing, spelling and grammar. The tests will take place on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning and the normal school curriculum will be taught at all other times.
The outcomes of the tests sit alongside teacher assessment to give an informed overview of pupil progress throughout year 2. The tests are marked by the class teachers.
All pupils have been well prepared for the tests through their usual lessons, practice tests and class homework and all children are familiar with the layout and structure of the tests. There is no need for any child to be worried about the tests and we have had lots of discussions with the children about simply trying their best. Any children who are absent for the tests will need to do them when they return.
If you have any queries regarding the SATs, please do speak to Mrs Joplin or Mrs Platten.

Thank you for your continued support!

This week, the children have had lots of fun whilst learning about the new topics they will be covering this half term. On Wednesday, they also had the opportunity to visit Wassand Hall and work with local artist, Charlotte, for the day!
The children were able to explore the grounds to help them to gather ideas for their poetry unit. They thought carefully about what they could hear, see, small and feel on their sense walk through the woods and made poetry wands from items found in nature. After lunch, the children searched for describing words on their adjectives hunt around the walled gardens and took part in a mindful doodling session.
It was great fun and everyone really enjoyed the day. Therefore, we would like to say another big thankyou to all the parents who supported the children by taking them up to Wassand Hall; the PTFA for supporting with the cost of the day and the staff (especially Charlotte) from the venue!
We have added lots of photographs to Seesaw if you would like to see what we got up to!

D-Day

For the past couple of weeks the children have been learning some war time songs and thinking about all of the brave men and women who supported during the war. On Thursday, the whole school gathered around the flag pole and shared poems, songs and a 2 minutes silence in a private remembrance ceremony. It was very special.

Reading

This week the children have been working hard to read as often as possible at home. Class 2 have achieved a reading percentage of 63% this week. We can do much better than this! Can we have the best week ever next week and achieve a reading score of 100%?

Up and coming events!

Over the next few weeks, we have lots of fun and exciting things in our diary:

Mon 10 June – French Cartoonathon (£3)
Sat 15 June – Colour Run – £7.50 per child 10:30am – Raising money for Talk and Draw and Brick Club for school
Fri 7 June Dress Down Day – Chocolate Donations for Summer Fair
Friday 21 June – BRANDESBURTON CHAMPION LEAGUE : A football tournament 2.30 – 4.30pm
Thu 27 June SPORTS DAY & PTFA Bingo
Fri 12 July SUMMER FAIR
Thu 18 July Leaver’s Disco

In addition, we will also be hosting…

We would be extremely grateful if you could spread the word, in order to make these events as successful as possible!

Wow this half-term has really flown past. Before we know it, class 2 will be in their last half-term of year 2 and will be starting to get ready to ”go through the arch’ as we call it, into year 3. Before that though there will be an action packed few weeks with our SATs, sports week, design technology week, our school trip to Wassand Hall and hopefully a further trip linked to our geography work on bridges. What this space for details of that one!

Here is a brief run down of dates that are confirmed:

Wednesday 5th June: KS1 trip to Wassand Hall for a day of art doodling, treasure hunting, wood walking and gathering inspiration for our new poetry writing unit. Please let us know if you can volunteer to help out for the day or can offer a spare seat in your car to another pupil.

W/c Monday 10th June: Year 2 SATs week. Tests in maths, reading, spelling and grammar.

W/c Monday 24th June: Sports week with our annual Sports Day afternoon events to be held on Thursday 27th June weather permitting.

This week we have been continuing with our sculpture work in art. The children have practised all the techniques they need to make their clay tile and have completed their designs. They are now working on constructing their tile and applying their bridge, train or railway design to it. We have had so much fun with it this week and the children have been really motivated to produce their best work. Do ask your child what the ‘4s’ stands for as it is a critical technique in their work!

Also this week, we were treated to an outstanding performance from the KS2 children who attend drama club with Miss Lisa. They really worked their socks off to perform their version of a twist on The Greatest Showman with amazing acting, singing and dancing. They really are a talented bunch of pupils and so brave to stand up and perform in front of the whole school.

Homework:

This week there will be another grammar exercise for homework which will be set on Seesaw. It will focus on the use of commas in a list as this was one of the questions that quite a few children struggled with in our recent practice tests. Thank-you to all parents who helped with submitting last week’s homework on word classification. This extra practice at home really does support learning enormously. Please also listen to your child read as much as possible over the holiday to help with fluency, reading stamina for longer texts, comprehension and expression. Well done to everyone who got 3 reads or more this week as our class percentage is up to 85% which made us the second highest class. We’d like to be first though!

We all hope you have a lovely half-term break and fingers crossed for some lovely weather so we can get outside and enjoy the fresh air. We will see you back on Tuesday 4th June as Monday 3rd June is a training day and school is closed to pupils.

Class 2 have excitedly begun their art unit this week. The focus this term is on sculpture. The children are investigating different techniques for sculpting before designing and creating their own 3D tile which will feature a bridge. The children are drawing their inspiration from old railway posters and also from their history work on Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his engineering work designing bridges. We are looking forward to creating an impressive display just like the puppet display from our Design Technology work.

We completed our science work on plants this week. The children have enjoyed learning about the differences between seeds and bulbs, germination and the life cycle of a bean plant. They have finished their last entries in their bean diaries and measured their bean plants for the last time before taking them home. We definitely have some green fingers in the class!

This week is the last week of practising telling the time in maths. Next week we will have our end of unit test before completing some revision work on the four operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Some of the pupils enjoyed playing a time board game and using the Chromebooks to consolidate their learning.

Homework:

Please keep reading as much as possible. We really do need everyone to be reading at home at least three times a week. Reading has so many benefits for independently accessing other areas of the curriculum and for firing the imagination for writing. Please also see Seesaw for this week’s homework activity on word classification which will help consolidate learning for the grammar part of the year 2 SATs tests which will be happening in June.

Spelling:

This week we will be consolidating learning on all of the spelling patterns undertaken this half term. Please have a look back through previous blog posts at the different spelling patterns we have covered and also the year 1 and year 2 common exception word lists. Have you updated your common exception word fish recently with the words you can now read and spell?

Reading

This week we had a slight improvement in our reading score: 83% of us read this week. Please keep this up class 2. We know that the more reading we do then better we get in lots of different subjects.

Music

For the past few weeks, on a Friday afternoon, we have been lucky enough to have been taught by Mr Elliott from the Music Service. This week we got to listen to him playing his electric guitar as well as practising singing and clapping in time to the music.

Another busy week in class 2 with hints of sunshine and summer putting in an appearance! As it does start to get warmer, please make sure you have applied sun cream to your child before they come to school and send sun cream with a name label on if your child will need to reapply it at lunchtime. Please can you ensure a water bottle is also sent in, we have had a few children without water bottles and our limited supply of paper cups is now almost gone. Thank-you for your support with this. Finally please also ensure your child has a sunhat or cap but also still send a coat in case of rain!

Our work on telling the time is going well. Please have a go at the time games set for last week’s homework if you haven’t done so already. This week’s homework will be time questions from past KS1 SATs papers and will be on Seesaw for you to respond to.

Next week we will be doing some practice SATs questions for reading, spelling and grammar in order to help prepare the children for the actual tests which will now be in the second week back after the half-term break. Parents you can help with this by asking your child questions about their reading. You could also encourage them to do some writing – perhaps a recount of their weekend, a short story or a diary entry and ask them to proof read it themselves and correct any errors with punctuation. We would love to see you upload some of your writing to Seesaw.

Homework:

Please aim to read and get at least three adults signatures over the week. Recap the time games and complete the time questions on Seesaw.

Our reading percentage dropped again this week to 70%. We know we can definitely beat this. Come on Class 2, we can do it!

Spelling:

This week we will be focusing again on some of the year 2 common exception (tricky) words. Can you use all of the words in one silly sentence? (with correct punctuation too of course?)

This Thursday, Class 2 absolutely loved watching Charlotte, a local artist, painting a fantastic mural just outside of our classroom. Look at what see achieved!