Wigmore Primary School

We can’t believe how quickly the time is going. The children worked hard on their end of year assessments and have shown progress in all areas. We are very proud or them all.

English

Our book for the start of the term was

which was about a man in the moon who was looking for a friend, which he found in the most unexpected place. The children wrote their own ending, describing what the new friends did together.

We have just started our non-fiction topic of information texts. Today the children worked together to identify the features of an example of this type of text.

Maths

We have completed all the topics that the children need to learn in year 2 and are spending the rest of the term revisiting areas that they were unsure of. We have been working on using concrete apparatus to solve multiplication and division questions.

Computing

The children are really enjoying their cross-curricular work looking at creating digital art on the Chromebooks.

This was impressionist art based on the work of Monet. The children had to create a sunset picture.

This was based on pointillism and the work of Georges Seurat. The children created their pictures using varying sizes of dots.

This was inspired by the work of Piet Mondrian, which uses lines and blocks of colour to create art work.

Science

The topic this term was plants and the children investigated what a plant needs to be healthy and strong.

The children are looking forward to the coming activites for the end of the school year, including our trip to the seaside.

Let’s hope the weather stays fine.

The year 2 team

We cannot believe that the spring term is over. It has gone so quickly. We have been very proud  of the children and the hard work that have done.

English

The children completed their own guides to looking after a monster. Here are some examples below:

We then moved onto study a poem called ‘Into the blue’ by Hilda Offen. This was about a balloon travelling over the towns and countryside. The children then imagined they were holding a balloon and floating across the sky. We were so impressed with the work they produced that we are creating a display in the corridor for all to see. Here is a sneak peak.

Maths

The children have been looking at measurements. They have enjoyed measuring the hall and comparing the capacity of different containers.

Geography

We have moved on to compare the UK with Ghana. The children first looked at human and physical features of any country before moving onto compare those of the UK and Ghana.

DT

The children got straight to work in our Design and Technology lesson as we taste tested different fruits for our fruit kebabs. We tried to decide which of the fruits we would recommend to our client and why. We practiced cutting the different pieces of fruit to get to grips with different tools. We soon discovered that some techniques just made juice fly everywhere! Then the children designed and made their own fruit kebabs. They were given a selection of fruit to choose from and then threaded them on a skewer. The best part was that they got to eat the kebab. They then had to evaluate their product. When asked what they would do to improve their kebab nearly everyone said they would include more fruit.

Here are some examples.

The year 2 team hope you have a great Easter

See you in the summer term.

We cannot believe that it is march already. The children have been working extremely hard.

English

In English we have started our new topic of explanation text. We have been reading Monsters: An owner’s Guide by by Jonathan Emmett and Mark Oliver. The children had to write a description on one of the monsters and the rest of the class had to guess which monster they were describing.

Maths

The children have been investigating the topic of multiplication and division. They have been using inverse operations to work out missing numbers in a calculation.

Geography

We have started our new topic of Around the World. We started by identifying the 7 continents and the 5 oceans of the world before looking at the locations of the hot and cold areas of the planet.

Art 

Welcome to the first year 2 blog of the school year.

All the children in Poplar, Rowan and Yew have settled into year 2 brilliantly. They have been enthusiastic in lessons and have started well on their learning journey for this year. Here are just a few highlights of what they have been finding out about so far.

English

The children have been looking at the story “Meerkat Mail”.

We have been looking at the author’s use of alliteration, conjunctions to join sentences, adjectives that add impact and how exciting verbs show movement by the characters. They wrote their own page of the story where Sunny visited another place, he did not want to live in. Why not ask your child what habitat they wrote about?

We have just started our next topic of non-chronological reports. The children started by having some information about meercats that they had to sort into sentences.

The children will be working towards writing their own report about an exotic animal.

Maths

We have been looking at place value. The children have been investigating number bonds to 10 and 100, counting in 2s,3s,5s and 10s, looking at how to tell if an amount is greater than, less than or equal to another amount before moving onto ordering numbers in ascending and descending order. Have a look at some of the work they have been doing.

The children have just now started to look at addition and subtraction. They have been looking at related facts, for example:-

9 + 8 = 17          17 – 8 = 9

8 + 9 = 17          17 – 9 = 8

17 = 9 + 8           9 = 17 – 8

17 = 8 + 9           8 = 17 – 9

History

Our topic at the moment is The Great Fire of London.

We have been finding out what caused the fire, why it spread so quickly and how it eventually went out. The children have looked at sources of evidence that tell us about the fire and are excited to continue with the topic after half term when they will be having a visit from the Local Fire Service and creating some art linked to the topic.

RE

In RE we have been looking at special books from a range of religions. The children have been finding out what makes the books special and how they are looked after. They were all keen to share their own special books and the reasons why they were important to them. The children then wrote a set of rules for how their book should be looked after.

These are just a selection of the books the children brought in.

Reading

The children have enjoyed our first shared reading book of the year. They found out lots of interesting facts about space and next week they will be finding out about our Black History Month person, Mae Jemison, who was the inspiration of the child in the book. Why not ask you child who Mae is.

Reminders

Reading is very important. Please spend some time every day listening to your child read and sharing books with them. The children need to have their reading books and records in school every Tuesday and Friday.

The children are able to visit the school library and borrow books from there to take home. Year 2 visit on a Tuesday.

Finally, we cannot believe how quickly this half term has gone and are looking forward to sharing the highlights with you at parents evening next week.

Thank you for all your support and if there are any questions, please ask one of the year 2 team.

Mrs Owen, Miss Gilbert and Mrs Bainbridge

English

In English, children have completed writing a twisted tale of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. Their creativity and imagination were evident through their fantastic ideas. They have used expanded noun phrases, embedded relative clauses, subordination, parenthesis among many other grammatical features. Why not ask your child how they have twisted their story? How can they twist other traditional tales? Read a particularly good example below.

We have now begun our new unit of work on persuasive speech. The children have learnt the definitions of key vocabulary that will be used throughout this unit such as pollution, fauna, prospect and endangering.

Maths

The enthusiastic mathematicians in year 5 have enjoyed learning about different types of angles. Ask your child if they can explain the difference between acute, right angle, straight line, obtuse, reflex and full rotation. Children have also learnt to use protractors to measure and draw angles accurately.

We will be continuing to work on angles over the next few weeks. Children will learn to recognize and draw parallel and perpendicular lines and develop their reasoning about 3D shapes.

Science

We have just started our new unit of work on Living Things and Their Habitats. The curious scientists have learnt about the process of metamorphosis and have begun comparing different life cycles of insects such as honey bees, butterflies and damselflies. Have a look at a few life cycles below.

Over the next few weeks, the sequence of learning will focus on:

–        In English, we will be studying the skills needed to produce a persuasive speech.

–        In maths, we will be solving questions related to position and direction.

–        In science, we will continue to explore the life cycle of different animals and plants.

–        In Geography, we will learn to read maps and investigate countries in different continents.

Reading and writing

The children have just completed their unit on information texts. They researched endangered animals during their ICT time, finding out about where they live, what they eat and why they are endangered. They then wrote a report on their chosen animal. Why not ask your child what they found out about their animal? Here is a particularly good example.

We are now working on twisting the traditional tale of Red Riding Hood. The children have looked at the tales of Goldilocks and The three little pigs and how they have been twisted. Ask them about the two stories below.

Maths

For the past few weeks the enthusiastic mathematicians in year five have been investigating the relationship between decimals, fractions and percentages. They then moved onto calculating with decimals. Have a look at a couple of pages from the children’s power maths books to show some examples of the types of questions they have been solving.

Monarchy

The children have continued looking at significant monarchs of the United Kingdom. They have compared the lives of our two longest serving monarchs, Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II.  They then wrote a diary entry as if they were present at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Below are two examples of the many excellent pieces completed.

Passport to the World

As the ‘wow’ factor introduction to our geography based unit we will be studying in the coming weeks year 5 had some crew from EasyJet visit on Monday 16^th May. As you can see from the pictures below great fun was had by all, with the children learning about aircraft safety, first aid and how to become cabin crew.

Over the next few weeks the sequence of learning will focus on:

* Completing our twisted tale and moving on to writing persuasive texts to encourage people to protect the environment.

* In maths we will be moving onto look at geometry, studying angles and the properties of shapes.

* In French we are looking at food and how to order what they would like in French.

We are pleased to welcome all students back to school after the Easter break, relaxed, refreshed and raring to go!

Reading and Writing

Since our return from the Easter break, we have started our new topic of information texts. The children wrote their cold write about the house elves from Harry Potter and we have been learning how to take notes whilst finding out about whales. The children have been surprised by some of the facts they found out. Why not ask them what the size of a whales heart is and how old was the oldest known whale?

The children have continued with reading their class books. We are all enjoying the stories and can’t wait for the installments each day.

Maths

In maths, we have continued our work on decimals. The children have been learning to convert fractions to decimals and decimals to fractions. They have just started to compare and order decimals. Below is an example of one of the pages they completed in their power maths books.

Topic

We have just started our new topic of the Monarchy. The children completed a time line of the key events in British history and the Monarch’s who were on the throne at the time. They have then studied Henry VIII, finding out about his life, wives and achievements. They then worked in pairs to produce a book all about his reign. Here are a couple of pictures of the work produced.

Over the next few weeks, the sequence of learning will focus on:

–        In English, we will be focusing on information texts

–        In maths, we will be continuing our work on decimals by looking at the relationship with percentages, before moving onto to problem solving with decimals.

–        In topic, we will be continuing our new module on the British monarchy by looking at the coronation of the kings and queens.

–        In Music, we will start our unit on Dancing in the Street.

Spellings will be on a Wednesday and the children will be set 4 Mathletics lessons and 2 Reading Eggs lessons each week for homework to prepare them for year 6.

Reading and Writing

The children have enjoyed writing an action scene using all of the different techniques we have learnt from studying Beowulf by Michael Morpurgo. We have now begun to learn about characterisation and scene setting. This week we have written a character description from a picture and another child from another class will attempt to draw the character from the anonymous description.

Here are two descriptions

Can you draw a picture of the character?

How accurate do you think your drawing will be based on this description?

In Reading, the children are continuing to read the class book to help master the skills of inference, prediction, summary and the retrieval of information.

 Maths

In maths, we have continued to learn about fractions. We have been learning to add and subtract fractions with mixed numbers and different denominators. Next week, we are moving on to decimals.

 Science

We have completed our topic on Earth and Space. The children have finished the unit by learning about day and night and the seasons. Ask your child if they can explain the difference between rotate and revolve.

Over the next few weeks, the sequence of learning will focus on:

–        In English, we will be focusing on characterisation

–        In maths, we will be focusing on decimals

–        In topic, we will be starting our new module on the British monarchy

–        In Music, we will continue to practice The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and use glockenspiel to perform.

Don’t forget the music marathon on Thursday the 31^st when the children are encouraged to come to school dressed as their favourite musician. In the next few days, we will be asking them about their favourite songs to include in our singing marathon.

We look forward to seeing you next week on parents evening (Tuesday the 29^th and Wednesday the 30^th) to discuss your child’s progress.

The children have worked incredibly hard this term and we are proud of all their achievements. We hope you and your families have a wonderful relaxing holiday.