ENGLISH: In English, the children have been looking at list poems. They read a poem ‘Things a princess fears’ by Clare Bevan and identified all the adjectives. The children then chose their own character, nouns and adjectives and wrote their own list poem.

We have started our new unit ‘ Overcoming a villain’ story. To hook us into the unit, we designed our own superhero masks and chose our super powers.

MATHS: In Maths, we have been adding and subtracting in tens and ones using a selection of concrete objects. We have also been looking at reasoning questions and using sentence stems to explain or answers.

TOPIC: We had an amazing day going back in time to the year 1666. We became apprentices in different workshops learning to be bakers, weavers, writers and surgeons. we enjoyed the day very much!

SCIENCE: We have started our new topic, ‘Every day Materials’ and wrote questions that we would like to find out about as we investigate different materials and their uses. We will also look at how materials can be grouped using their properties.

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

We have had a jubilant start to our final term in Year 2!

English

We have been having lots of writing opportunities. We enjoyed writing our own versions of the stories of Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk. We then used our own imaginations to write an adventure story about Ted (the teddy) who got left behind. Ted had an adventure trying to find his way home.

Maths

In maths we have been working on telling the time. We are practising using o’clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to the hour. We have been working practically using small clocks to help us. We have also been able to play some challenging games. We are moving on to reading the time to the nearest 5 minutes and looking at the duration of events.

In other subjects…

In topic we have been on a virtual visit to Clacton-on-Sea. We used this information to write a letter to our friend pretending we had been on a day trip to the beach. This is in anticipation of our up coming trip to experience the seaside for real. We hope you are looking forward to it.

In Science we have written an information text about an ocean animal. We included titles and subtitles, facts and technical vocabulary. We have learnt a lot about ocean animals and we enjoyed writing our texts pretending to be a professor!

Coming up before the end of term …

• Solving word problems in maths, putting to use everything we’ve learnt this year to help us solve everyday mathematical challenges.
• Sewing puppets in DT.
• Making clay sea creatures and
• Our trip to the seaside!

It has been a FANTASTIC start to the Summer Term for the children in Year 2. Everyone has been working tremendously hard!

English:

We have began our new topic in English. On Monday, we came to a disheveled classroom and went on a trail to find out who did it. We discovered some clues whilst walking ‘in the woods’. A red cloak, a basket filled with delicious food and some large pawprints with claws were spotted.

Our intrepid investigators quickly worked out our new story was ‘Little Red Riding Hood’.

Please find attached our Story Map below:

Watch out for more exciting updates!

Marvelous Maths:

In Maths, children have been recognising 2D shapes. Children will be counting the sides and vertices on 2D shapes.

Super Scientists:

In Science we are learning all about “Ocean Animals” this half term. Children will think about what an ocean is before thinking about which animals live in oceans and which don’t. They will then start to identify a variety of ocean animals. They will also look at different broad groups of animals, such as mammals, fish and birds, and consider why some are suited to living in the ocean and others aren’t.

Topic:

Our new topic for this term is “Seaside Holidays in the Past”. This week children have been identifying the human and physical features of a seaside holiday. We have been using photographs to find clues as to what seaside holidays were like in the past. We will be finding out when and how seaside holidays became popular. We will also be ordering seaside
holidays in chronological order.

We are working tremendously hard preparing the Year 2 children for SATs. These will be taking place week beginning Monday 16th May 2022.

Please find attached a link to the KS1 SATs 2022 Parents Guide in case you missed out on Parents Evening: https://www.theschoolrun.com/system/files/attachments/articles/ks1_sats_2022_guide_for_parents.pdf

For KS1 SATs Past Papers click on the following link to download past papers: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum-assessments-practice-materials#key-stage-1-past-papers

On a final note, for any other questions that you may have please feel free to speak to your child’s class teacher. We thank you for your continued support with your child’s learning.

Many thanks,

The Year 2 Team.

There has been so much great work in Year 2 recently, we don’t know where to start!

In English we completed our work about the Storm Owl by writing our own non-chronological report about our own owl. We worked hard to include lots of features of a report text, for example titles and subtitles, technical vocabulary and generalisers (usually, mostly etc.) The children worked so hard and were rightly proud of their work.

Next term we are moving onto the story of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’.

In maths we have been working on the unit of statistics. We have been making and interpreting tally charts, pictograms and block graphs. In Aspen class the children had to complete their own individual tally and block graph for the counters they had in their envelope. Look at the awesome job they did!

We are now moving on to measuring length and comparing lengths. We will be working with both centimeters (cm) and meters (m).

In science we have been working on our unit of plants. We have learnt that all plants need sunlight to grow. We did an experiment to show this. We put some cress seeds in the cupboard where there was no sunlight and left one on the table near the window so it had plenty of sunlight. Look at the photos below. Can you guess which of the cress seeds were in the cupboard?

We have also found out about how plants grow, from seeds to growing plants, flowers and flowers with seeds.

After Easter we are beginning our new topic in science which will be all about ocean animals which ties in nicely with our new topic for the summer term –  ‘Seaside Holidays in the Past’. In DT children will be creating their own sea creatures using clay. In RE we will move on to ‘Inspirational People’.

Thank you for your continuing support.

The Year 2 team.

In English we have been looking at the ‘Supertato’ story. It has been very exciting, especially when we got to make our own superhero masks. Take a look at some of our alter egos!

We have been practicing our use of adjectives to describe our superheroes and villains and learning about how to add commas to a list to separate the different items. We have also been learning about adverbs. They are words which describe the verb (the doing or action word). We found three in our model text – they were gingerly, carefully and silently. We noticed they all ended in ‘ly’ – so we thought of some more: proudly, calmly, sadly and greedily. May be you can think of some of your own?

In maths some classes have been working on our money unit and others have been working on our multiplication unit. In money we have focussed on learning the different values of the coins and notes as well as adding them together to find the total amount. We’ve also been using the coins to make the same amount in different ways – for example can you make 15p in 3 different ways?

In the unit of multiplication the children have been finding out about equal groups and about how to make an array. They will be moving on to recognising that 2×3 is the same as 3×2.

In other lessons we have begun our science topic of habitats. The children have been able to define what a habitat is and the types of animals that might live there. To develop our learning further we are going to be looking at how the different animal species found in some habitats have adapted to their surroundings. This might include camouflage or adaptations to their body.

Our Geography topic is ‘Fruits of the World’. We are taking a look at the continents and oceans of the world as well as how some parts of the world are hotter than others and why. We will be moving on to look at the physical and human features of a place and also where different fruits are grown around the world. We will be making links to our habitats topic in science.

In our art work we have finished our unit on colour creations where we have been able to work in the style of some famous artists, as well as mix primary colours to make new colours. Look at our amazing work in the style of Piet Mondrian and Wassilly Kandinsky. Both artist liked to use bright, bold colours…so did Year 2!