Welcome to Year 2!
The adults working in Year Two are:
Miss Monaghan (Mon, Tues, Wed AM and Fri)
Mrs Butterworth (Wed PM and Thurs)
Miss Nicoll and Mrs Bulbulia will be working in Year Two at various points throughout the week
PE Days
Tuesdays and Wednesdays
Homework
This is set on a Wednesday and is to be completed by the following Wednesday.
Welcome to our class!
Can you use our artwork to find out about our interests, families, hobbies?
School Councillors
In Year 2, our school councillors are Ivy and Jasper. They meet regularly with Mrs Sunderland to discuss how they can help make our school a better place.
Autumn 2
Art - We have continued with our 'Artists as collectors and explorers' pathway this week. We collected some of our favourite items that we had found during our exploration work the previous week and took these into the hall. We then used different sketching equipment to create some autumn drawings on our own 'paving slabs'.
English - This half term we are looking at traditional tales and how some of have been 'twisted' over time! We are using the story 'The True Story of the Three Little Pigs' which tells the story from the wolf's point of view. We are then 'twisting' the characters to create our own 'Big Bad Pigs'!
English - We designed our own 'Big Bad Pig' characters as we continued with our 'twisted tales' work. We thought of some really interesting ideas to make our pigs different from each other and how we could include their personalities in our drawings. We then labelled the parts we wanted to talk about in our character descriptions.
Author workshop - Today we joined a virtual workshop with the author, Vashti Harrison, who wrote the Little Leaders books. She talked about being an author and an illustrator and then shared her new book ‘Big’ with us. We enjoyed listening to it and learning a really important message of acceptance at the same time. We then had a go at sketching the character - some of us chose to draw her small and some chose to draw her big. We really enjoyed it!
Our art pathway this half term is ‘Artists as collectors and explorers’. Last week we looked at artists who collect items in their environments to create pieces of art work. This week it was our turn to be ‘collectors’! We worked together to collect different things we could find outside and then created pieces of art work - sometimes these were patterns, shapes or actual objects we re created.
Geography - Our topic in Geography this half term is ‘Wonderful Weather’. During our first lesson we thought about all the things we already know about weather and then thought of our own questions about what we want to find out about over the next few weeks. We had some really interesting ones - watch the video below!
Maths - We have been learning to use the column method to add and subtract two 2digit numbers together. We have become really confident in using the method independently and using it to solve word problems.
PE - This half term we are exploring dance in some of our PE lessons. The theme is the ‘Secret Garden’. Our first lesson focussed on learning to create sequences in counts of 8 and putting 4 of these together to create a simple dance. We then partnered up and used our ideas to then work in groups of 4. We performed our dance sequences to the rest of the class - they were fab!
Music - This week we continued learning about West African call and response. We looked at what call and response means and then had a go at doing our own. Here is an example of the children's fantastic efforts at a call and response!
Science - This week we continued our work on habitats and began to look at how living things are suited to their habitat. The children played a game to show what they know about the ways living things survive in their habitats.
The children were encouraged to discuss the features of the living thing that make them suited to that habitat, the needs of different living things and how they can survive in its habitat. After each child had discussed their animal or plant, they then decided which habitat it belonged in and the rest of the group decided if they agreed with their choice. The children had a great afternoon playing this game and didn't want to stop!
Autumn 1
English
Our focus text in English for the first few weeks is 'The Great Explorer'. This ties in with our History topic of Significant Explorers! We will be using this story to plan our own Explorer adventure stories later in the term.
We have been looking at emotions in PSHE and in particular, worry. We made a list as a class of things we could do if we are worried and then spent time creating posters to display our knowledge for the younger children. We made some wonderful ones!
Science - Living things and their environment
Over the last few weeks, the children have really enjoyed using the wildlife garden for our science topic, all about habitats. During our time in the wildlife garden, we have learnt how to recognise things that are living, dead and never alive by thinking about the seven life processes. We then looked at where we could find microhabitats around the school and thought about some of the minibeasts we might find there. This week, the children enquired if all minibeasts like to live in the same places and recorded the information they collected.
Here are a few photos of the fantastic learning they have done so far.
Design Technology - In DT, we have been looking at the mechanisms which make a Ferris wheel work. We then designed our own and thought about suitable materials. During the making process we had to be very resilient when things didn’t always work how we wanted them to. At the end of the process, we had lots of wheels which actually spun and worked as we had planned!
Maths - We have been learning about place value during the first half term in Year Two. We have used lots of concrete resources to help develop our understanding of tens and ones, partitioning and number patterns.
History - This half term we have been learning about significant explorers. We learnt about two polar explorers - Matthew Henson and Felicity Aston. We recorded videos of Matthew’s life and then we compared their explorations in groups. We looked at how clothing, equipment and recording devices have changed between the two expeditions.
All Around the World Day!
Music - This half term we are learning about West African call and response. We have looked at different animals we would find in West Africa and thought carefully about how we could represent these animals using different types of instruments and with short rhythms. Here are a few examples of the fantastic work the children have done so far.