Class of 2023/24
In Year 2, we have 29 brilliant children who are all kind, caring and loving. We love to learn and find out new things. We have lots of different and unique talents that make us an extremely interesting bunch of people.
Our teacher is Mrs Holmes, and our teaching assistant is Mrs Walsh
Autumn 2
English
In English, we were very excited to hear from Ernie Arbuckle again. He was being very secretive though! He sent us some envelopes with some sections cut out. Inside was a cover for a book. We had to write down what we could see and ask questions about what we would like to find out. It was a great way to develop our prediction skills. We then had a big reveal to find out what the book was. It is called 'Winter’s Child' and we all enjoyed listening to it and making predictions about what will happen.
Mathematics
In Maths, we continued to work hard with adding a 2-digit and 1-digit numbers. We are getting good at making groups of ten ones and exchanging them for one ten. We used base ten to help us with this and began to practise recording it in our books.
We have also been practising subtracting two 2-digit numbers (crossing 10). We have continued to use our base ten to support us with this and to help develop our understanding of exchanging 1 ten for 10 ones.
RE
In RE, we all thought very carefully about Big Questions that only God might have the answer to. We thoughtfully shared our ideas and wondered a lot of interesting things.
We have also been learning about the Holy Trinity. We discussed how one person can be a sister, a daughter and a niece, just as God can be three in one: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. We also enjoyed learning the Glory Be prayer.
During Advent, we listened to the Christmas story and reflected carefully about how the Shepherds might have felt when the angels appeared to them, when they made their journey to Bethlehem and when they met the new born King.
Science
This half term we have been learning about materials and why they are chosen to make different things. We started by looking at the different properties and worked in groups to label items in our classroom.
We then continued to investigate the properties of materials. We wanted to find out if we could change the properties of a piece of fabric. We carried out an investigation by putting drops of water on a piece of fabric and found out that it was absorbent. We then covered a piece of the same fabric with wax and carefully heated it with a hairdryer. We then added water to this. We were delighted to find that the fabric was now waterproof!
Autumn 1
English
Year 2 have been enjoying the book ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ by Julia Donaldson. We ordered the events in the story, drawing a story map and retold the story using actions. We have all been working hard to remember to use capital letters at the start of a sentence. We then focused on different sentence types. We have sorted sentences into statements, questions and exclamations and have written some of our own examples.
We then focused on nouns and adjectives. We practised sorting nouns into group and then spotting nouns in sentences. We then discussed how we can use adjectives to describe a noun. We used adjectives to describe the characters from our text and came up with some fabulous ideas.
We planned diary entries by imagining what the old lady in 'A Squash and a Squeeze' would write in her diary about her day. We used our previous work on thoughts, feeling and the use of adjectives to support us in our planning. Finally we wrote our fabulous diary entries
Mathematics
This half term, we have been developing our understand of numbers to 50. We have looked at different ways to represent numbers using Numicon, Base Ten and Ten frames. We have been looking carefully at the number of tens and the number of ones and remembering that the tens number comes before the ones when writing it down. We have been partitioning numbers using part-whole models with tens and ones counters to make a number and split it into two parts. The children are really beginning to grasp how a number can be partitioned into lots of different ways.
We then moved on to practise using place-value charts to record numbers. We had to think carefully about where the tens and ones needed to be. We then used the symbols < > and = to compare objects and numbers.
RE
This half term, we have enjoyed leaning about the promises God made. We listened to and retold the stories of Abraham, the early life of Moses and Daniel and the Lions. We learnt that the people that God chose were both faithful and brave. We all enjoyed using Drama, group discussion and artwork to develop our understanding and to reflect on what we can learn from Abraham and Daniel.
Science
This half term we have been finding out about living things and their habitats. We started by discussing how we know if a thing is living, dead or never been alive. We looked at the life processes and then sorted different objects into the three groups. As part of our Science work, we went on a minibeast hunt and thought about the microhabitats they live in. We found lots of woodlice in dark, damp woody places and spiders in cool dark dry places. We even found a small toad under and upturned pot which made us very excited! We discussed why each minibeast might have chosen thier micro habitat.
History
Year 2 have enjoyed learning about Mary Seacole
We learnt about the incredible life of Mary and how she grow up helping her mum run a hotel for wounded soldiers. Mary Seacole learnt about traditional remedies from her mother and she used these when she went to the Crimea. Mary had a difficult time trying to get to the Crimea to help the soldiers there. She had to pay for her own ticket to get there and then there was no room in Scutari Hospital for her to stay. Mary decided to travel closer to the action and build her own hospital near the battle field.
When the war was over, Mary was very poor because she had spent all of her money on the hospital, medicine and food. We learnt that a large benefit fundraiser was held to raise money to help Mary Seacole. She was also awarded with a special medal for her work.
We decided that Mary Seacole showed the virtues of determination and perseverance to overcome the many obsticles she faced.
We all enjoyed learning about the herbal remedie Mary Seacole used and so we made some ginger beer which was used to to help upset tummies and soar throats.. We had to work hard to grate and grind down the ginger and lemon zest and then added sugar to sweeten it. Lots of us really enjoyed the taste, whilst others thought it was a bit fiery!
Art and Design
As part of our art work about nature, Year 2 have been looking at a variety of leaves. We had a go at practising drawing different leaf shapes in our sketchbooks and tested different shades of reds, oranges, yellows and browns using different mediums. We make notes around out sketches to expalin what we liked and what we could change when we do our larger sketches.
