Year 2

Summer Term 1

Here in year two, we have travelled back in time over 150 years and thrown ourselves into the Crimean War. Poor Florence Nightingale has had rather a lot on her plate, unlike the wounded soldiers who only have brown water and stale bread! We have been busy researching and creating our own Florence Nightingale fact-files and thinking about the wounded soldiers on the brink of death writing letters home.  Click on the picture of Florence for a great fact-site and interactive quiz...

In science, we have been thinking about life cycles in relation to plants. We have really enjoyed planting our own seeds and bulbs and have set up our own investigations to establish the best growing conditions for plants. Click on the plant image for a fantastic website to investigate what works to make a plant grow!

In art and dt, we have used pencils for effect to make a detailed sketch of Florence Nightingale, joined paper in different ways to make lanterns and joined a variety of materials to make a soldier puppet.

All of this, along with Charangra music, the taking care project, sports day practice and using computers to research, has made for a very busy half term so far!

Spring Term 2

This half term in Year 2, our topic is ‘Pirates’ – Aha me hearties! So far we have found out interesting information about the famous pirate Edward Teach, or more commonly known as Captain Blackbeard. We have been using some of our computing time in the ICT suite, to research him. We shall also be learning about some famous female pirates. They were just as fierce as Captain Blackbeard!

We have written our own pirate ‘Wanted’ posters in our English lessons and have also learnt how to locate pirate items on a treasure map, using mathematical co-ordinates. In English, we have also written some pirate acrostic poems and some pirate riddles, trying to guess what the pirate items are from our clues.

In our English lessons, we are learning lots of new skills to use in our writing, such as the use of possessive apostrophes and how to use exclamation marks more effectively. We are also learning to write words in the contracted form, such as ‘it’s’ instead of ‘it is’.

In science we continue to look at the changing seasons but also looking at local habitats in a bit more detail. We shall be comparing the very different habitats of the Rainforest with that of the Desert.

In Maths, we continue with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. We have been looking at fractions recently. We’ve looked at halves, quarters and thirds, of shapes and quantities. Problem solving and reasoning is a big part of maths in Year 2 and we have started to undertake little exercises to help us with this and to be able to explain our answers.

To show some of what we have been learning this term so far, we have presented a fun and enjoyable assembly to our parents, with songs, dances and jokes – something for everyone to enjoy!

Try out this pirate themed game to help you learn your spellings...

Spring Term 1

This half term in Year 2, our topic is Jurassic Giants so we are busy researching our favourite dinosaurs at the moment! We will gather all the information that we have learned and researched on dinosaurs to create our own information booklet, including contents, index and glossary pages. In our specific topic lessons we are finding out where in the world the fossils were discovered, developing our geographical knowledge of the world as we are looking at continents and oceans. We will also look into the process of how fossils were created and of course learn about the famous Mary Anning!

Click on the link below to find out lots of fascinating dinosaur facts!

In science we are looking at simple animal classification and learning how to group animals according to different criteria. Towards the end of this half term, we will combine our topic and science work with an exciting and varied school trip to All Things Wild!

In Maths, we have joined the Juniors in using Rock Star Maths to help with our 2, 5 and 10 times tables. As well as practising this at school 3 times a week, we are really pleased that many children are logging on at home to practise, and we are already seeing a huge improvement! Click on the link below to access it at home! On top of the ongoing addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, we will also be looking at money, shapes and the new bar method of answering word problems in mathematics.

Autumn 2  in Year 2:  Fire and Festivals. 

We had a busy start to this half term already! Having started our topic on Fire and Festivals by researching Bonfire night and the history and traditions behind this, we also looked at the Festival of Diwali and wrote poems about fireworks. In English, we focused on Journey stories in Talk 4 Writing and linked this with the Great Fire of London as the children travelled back in time. 

In Maths, we continued our work on time tables. It is really important for all the children to become confident with the 2, 5 and 10 times tables so we keep practising! The children were busy measuring items in school in metres and centimetres. They moved on to undertaking some graph work and then finished the half term with deepening their number skills.

The children had an exciting time in the Forest School, where they experienced a real fire, imagining what it would have been like in London during the Great Fire. They talked about the amount of smoke that they would have experienced and how hard it would have been to see, they thought about how the wind encouraged the fire to spread and how the close proximity of the houses to each other, also contributed to the chaos. Discussions were held about the materials that the houses were made of during these times and they saw how easily these burned on the camp fire they had.

Find out more about the great fire with this interactive game (click on the image below)

We thoroughly enjoyed celebrating our Christmas advent service with you on December 1^st, in the Holy Trinity church and hope that you enjoyed it too!

Autumn Term 2016 in Year 2!

After a lovely summer holiday, all the children were busy celebrating Roald Dahl’s 100^th birthday and dressing up! In year two we wrote spells and made potions as well as creating our own wands in the forest school.

We sailed straight into our Seaside Rescue topic and were very excited about our visit from the RNLI (see the photo below!) The children prepared their own interview style questions to ask the volunteers. We had a cake sale later in the term to raise money for the RNLI. In maths we have been using our problem solving skills to work out how many cakes we need to make and how much money we might raise.

Also in maths we looked at place value and ordering numbers. In the next few weeks we shall be looking at the different ways we can add and subtract, such as jumping on the number line, using a number square and column addition. We are very excited to be starting our new Rock Stars programme to help us learn our times tables too.

Here are a couple of games to help develop your understanding of place value... place the penguins and lifeguards!

In science this term we are looking at our different body parts and their functions as well as identifying and grouping things that are alive, dead or have never been alive.

We shall be using the new whole school strategy in English lessons called ‘Talk 4 Writing’ to improve our writing, reading and oral story telling skills. Ask your child if they can tell you the story of The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch…