Class 2 Blog

Here is the class newsletter for the Summer term. Hopefully lots of exciting things for use to get stuck into!

I hope you all had a lovely Easter break and got to spend some time outside in the fresh air. Hopefully we will have plenty more sunshine to come. We will hopefully get to take our learning outside as much as possible including planting seeds and growing plants, maintaining and using the wildlife garden and sketching the flowers that grow in the school grounds. We will also have both of our weekly PE sessions outdoors as well.

Our theme this term is London’s Burning! We will be looking at the modern day geography of London and also the history of the Great Fire of London. With this in mind, our first English unit will be a narrative unit based on the book ‘Katie in London’. Your homework for this week will be to take on the role of a teacher and correct the punctuation mistakes in the following sentences. A template has been added to the class Seesaw account.

I will also be setting weekly maths homework in the run up to the year 2 SATs tests. This week’s maths is below and also on Seesaw. There is also a parents meeting this Friday in the hall at 3pm to give more information about the y2 SATs.

Last week saw class 2 start to design and make their moon buggies. They considered what materials a moon buggy should be made out of and how robust it needed to be to travel over rough terrain. This week we will continue to make and then evaluate our models as we learn about how to make axels and a chassis.

In English class 2 have been learning about writing instructions. They designed their own imaginary weather machine and have written instructions to say how to build it. They remembered to include important features such as number or bullet points, time conjunctions and imperative (bossy) verbs. They will put their instruction writing abilities to the test this week when they complete their moon buggies and then write instructions for other children to build one.

In maths we have finished our work on money and had a practical session on Friday giving change from different amounts (See photos below).

We haver also brought our dance unit to a close. Each week the children have been pretending to be a different type of toy in a toy shop, including, a jack-in-the box, play-doh and a bouncing ball. The class always give their enthusiasm and energy and have come up with some very imaginative work over the last half-term.

This week of course we are looking forward to making Easter cards, reading the Easter Story and rolling our recyclable Easter eggs. Many of the class have completed their Easter plate competition entry as well and they are looking amazing. Miss Northen’s office is full of all of the creations. It will be so hard to pick winners.

I have set an optional homework challenge for the Easter holidays and there are some additional Easter themed activities on both Purple Mash and the class Seesaw account if you choose to do them.

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.

Last week we had our excellent Carbon Monoxide awareness workshop which all of the children engaged in enthusiastically. The children learnt lots of important facts about carbon monoxide and safety in the home whilst participating in lots of acting, chanting and a little bit of dancing!

We also held our school Waste week reuse relove swap sale, aimed at preventing unwanted items going to landfill. The class had lots of fun choosing themselves a book, game or toy and were excited to have something new to them to take home.

In English class 2 completed their senses poems using some excellent descriptive language for i can see, I can hear, I can smell, I can taste, I can touch. Everyone had put maximum effort into their poems and can be very proud of their final piece of work.

Having completed our history theme work, we have now moved onto geography and learnt about compass directions and how to remember them. ‘Naughty elephants squirt water’ was a favourite one, along with ‘never eat shredded wheat’! The class them went on to work in pairs on a mapping exercise giving directions to different places on the map and following given directions to find places on the map.

There is no additional homework this week, other than reading (three times minimum please) and going on the class TTRockstars battle to practise times table facts. However, it is British Science Week and you might want to complete one of the home school challenges that have been set such as the science selfie or the balloon powered vehicle challenge.

This week we celebrated World Book Day with everyone coming to school in onesies or pyjamas so they could snuggle down for a story at the end of the day. They all look part in a range of activities including an outdoor book scavenger hunt, a World Book Day themed maths quiz, shared reading of favourite books and compiling an A-Z list of books. All of class two went home with a personalised bookmark with a QR code on which they can scan and listen to a video reading of a story. Lots of children entered the ‘Book in a jar’ competition with our class winner being Zack with James and the Giant Peach. It is fair to say all of the children had lots of fun.

We also completed our theme work on air travel this week by looking at Neil Armstrong, his achievements and his motivation for wanting to be the first man on the moon and in science we looked at what would happen if objects were made from the wrong sorts of materials. Anyone for a bed made of stone or a door made of bubbles or a garden path made of honey?

This week’s spelling pattern is xxxx. Read through the examples words and make sure you understand the meaning of the word and the spelling pattern that is being used, Consider using some of the spelling ideas on the sheet you have to further consolidate your knowledge of the pattern being taught.

This week you have a science activity to complete which follows on from the work you did in last week’s science lesson on the wrong use of materials. There is a template on Seesaw.

We have had an amazing start to the second part of the Spring term. The children have come back so keen to learn and with so much enthusiasm. We have started our Senses poetry unit and the class have already completed an original poem each, using lots of great noun expansion and description.
Presentation has been a big focus for us too and everyone is working so hard on letter formation and the size of their writing. The children are really thinking about how their work looks on the page.
We have also enjoyed investigating different materials and seeing which ones we could twist, stretch, bend and squash! We also completed our coding work in computing which is made so much easier now the children can use a Chromebook each. They really are very lucky.
This week we are continuing to consolidate our knowledge of suffixes focussing on adding the suffix er, est, ed, ing or y to words ending in e with a consonant before, such as the word ‘shine’. Please have a look at the pattern and think about how this rule is applied to words you might need to spell in independent writing.

Homework this week is maths based. We have been learning about odd and even numbers and how to recognise them. Your challenge is now to apply what you have learnt and complete some of the investigations on this sheet. How many can you do?

Welcome back to the second part of the Spring term. This year really is going to fast. it is lovely to have slightly lighter nights though and to see the bluebells, snowdrops and daffodils appear to brighten things up. With this in mind, our English unit for the next two weeks is senses poetry. We are going to get out in the school grounds to see what we can see, hear, smell and touch. We won’t be using our sense of taste outside but we will do when we come back in for our fruit break!

I would like you to have a go at recording some ideas in your own garden or when you are out on a walk for your English homework this week. This will give you some good practice at using your senses and recording your ideas for our poetry work. As a challenge, see if you can extend the ideas that you record to make a creative sentence. For example, you see grass on your walk so you record the word ‘grass’ on your sheet. You might then add an adjective and write a sentence such as ‘I can see green grass’. The finally you could try to be really descriptive and write something like ‘I can see the soft green grass that is still covered in early morning dew’. The templates you need are on Seesaw but here is a screen shot of them.

Our spelling pattern this week is to focus on adding the suffixes ed, er, est, ing to words ending in consonant ‘y’ such as the word happy. Can you see what happens to the letter ‘y’ when we add the suffix|?

Everyone has been working really hard on their story planning for their alternative three little pigs stories: watch out for…. the three little monkeys and the big bad gorilla, the three little salmon and the big bad shark and the three little flamingos and the big bad penguin amongst many other original ideas. The children are really looking forward to being authors and writing their stories next week.

In computing the Chromebooks have been a big hit again and on Friday we used them to do activities in our coding unit on Purple Mash. The screen size is much better than using the I-pads and the class are getting much better with using the track pad rather than a mouse.

We have been having a girls versus boys battle on TT Rockstars this week and the girls were victorious! Come on boys let’s see if it is your turn next week.

Also on Friday we participated in a STEM Live! interactive lesson on astronauts in space. This linked to our work on materials in science as we found out about materials needed to make a space suit. It also linked to our theme work on air travel. The class got to share what their favourite food would be to eat in space (chicken nuggets and burgers were popular) and they heard what types of food astronauts actually eat. They also discovered what happens when you clean your teeth in space!

In theme work, we have started to look at comparing Amy Johnson with Amelia Earhart to see how they were similar and how they were different. They were certainly very brave pioneering aviators of their time.

Homerwork:

This week there are no new spelling patterns, but please review all the patterns for ‘l’ sound at the end of a word that we have done recently and have another go at reading and spelling the year 2 common exception words. Are you still colouring in your spelling fish with the ones that you now can read and spell so you know which ones to concentrate on?

For maths homework I really want you to focus on your times tables especially the 2 times tables and complete the sheet below which is on Seesaw as a template for you. There are also some links to some online multiplication games on Topmarks and you can always go on Purple Mash 2dos and TT Rockstars.

Well of course the highlight of the week has been the KS1 trip to Magna. The children were so enthusiastic and so well-behaved. There were several other schools there at the same time and I can definitely say our children were the best behaved. Everyone got to watch a fire tornado and the Big Melt show which re-created how the steel furnace worked, with lots of sparks and noise! The children loved the slime workshop and the opportunity to pay with their slime on the classroom on Friday. They had the chance to listen to building related stories in the story cabin, operate a digger and see how rocks are crushed and transported. The children also loved the water pavilion where they could fire water cannons, float boats at different levels, take part in a true or false water quiz with a surprising way of revealing the answers. There were lots of interactive hands-on exhibits for the children to investigate and it was great to finally get out on a school trip after all of the Covid restrictions. See the bottom of the page for the photo gallery.

Homework:

Spellings for this week focus on another spelling pattern for the ‘l’ sound at the end of words. This week it is /al/. Read the words and focus on how you pronounce the ending, do you say ‘al’ another sound? Why not the spelling quiz on the 2do section of Purple Mash or have a go at some of the activities on the spelling sheet that was sent home to you.

Your other homework is a practical task this week focusing on our work on the Three little Pigs in English and Science. Can you design models of the Three Little Pigs houses using anything you have in or around the house, for example; grass, twigs, straw if you have a pet, cocktail sticks, Lego, K’Nex, straws, marshmallows, in fact anything at all. You could then test them with a hair-dryer (with an adult to help you) to see how strong they are and use some of the adjectives we discussed in science like strong, weak, rough, smooth, transparent, waterproof, flexible. You could even draw yourself a wolf and re-enact the story!

Magna photo gallery from group 2