Saturday 31 January 2015

Maths Learning This Week - 26th Jan

This week the children have been learning about division by sharing and grouping quantities.  Linking to our multiplication topic from the last few weeks the children have begun to see how division and multiplication are linked and are becoming more confident at the process of dividing equally.  Some children were aware of the division symbol and many are now using it independently.  At home you could practice your times tables such as 3x2=6 and ask the children: "How many 2s in 6?"

Literacy Learning This Week - 26th Jan

This week the children have been putting finishing touches to their own non-fiction books.  Inspired by our Victorian Day and additional research about Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole the children have written their own texts.  Look out for the books on our Victorian learning wall in the classroom, they will hopefully be there next week!  To be successful in their learning this week the children have been concentrating hard on their handwriting and spelling.

Tuesday 27 January 2015

Parent's Information Session - Rearranged

The parent's information session for year 2 will now be held next Tuesday 3rd of February at 9am in the school hall.  I will be running through the topics for the term as well as talking about our goals for the term.

Super Victorian Day

What a wonderful day year 2 had on Monday!  The children thoroughly enjoyed their time as Victorian Cooks, School Children and Nurses in the Crimea!  Some Victorian Games have become firm favourites, especially cup and ball - we have a few experts at this in the class now.  The afternoon ended with polite Victorian conversation over a cup of tea and a slice of cake!  We are looking forward to sharing the photos soon and seeing the day have an impact on our writing in the following weeks.

Tuesday 20 January 2015

Magnificent Mathmagicians

I've been really pleased to see how many children are using Mathletics at home.  I have been printing off lots of certificates for children who have reached their rocket target in the past few weeks.  Keep up the hard work!

Victorian Day

On Monday the 26th January year 2 will be having a Victorian Day in school!  They will be attending lessons in a very strict Victorian Classroom, Baking Victoria Sponge Cakes for our afternoon tea party, Visiting Florence Nightingale's hospital wing and playing Victorian Games.  For the day we are inviting them all to dress up in the costumes they wore to Priest House Museum in the Autumn term, but this is not essential if your child isn't one for fancy dress!  We are also looking for a couple of parent volunteers to come and help us on the day, so if you are free and would like to join the fun, come and speak to a member of the team.

Friday 16 January 2015

maths learning this week

We have been continuing to work upon our multiplication skills this week. Lots of mental practice as well as using number lines to count up in even steps to help the children solve the multiplication questions posed.
We have also been recapping skills such as telling the time to the half hour and quarter past and quarter to. Looking also at the five minute intervals on the clock face. Reading the time and try to spot the correct time amongst those clock faces which were not correct. The class are doing well with this skill, plenty more practice telling the time is always needed though so please assist!

Victorians writing...

The children have been working hard this week researching facts to do with Victorians kitchens and recalling what they learned about Victorian Christmas when they visited Priests House. The children were set the challenge of writing interesting sentences which contained connectives to join two phrases together.

All the class have done amazingly well this week in trying to join some of their cursive letters. I was so impressed with their spelling sheets today, beautifully presented by some!

We have been focusing on Nouns this week, finding them within sentences, matching words to pictures, etc. The 'term' itself seems to 'throw the children', but once they hear the clue ' name' they all remember! See if they remember at home!


Sunday 11 January 2015

End of the week's learning...

The presentations went well, the children had planned well and some interesting items were brought in too! Well done all of the class for speaking aloud in front of the class.

In maths we have been focusing on multiplication in the terns of looking at rows of items and figuring out that adding them all up is time consuming so using multiplication is a lot handier! We've been using the terms ' lots of', 'times' and 'multiplication'. We've been looking at lots of different arrays and working out the answers. The children have also worked through a Measures 'check up' in the form of questions this week with Miss Johnson or myself, seeing what has been remembered since before Christmas!

Thank you also for the Victorian books sent in this week from Abi and Ruby, we very much welcome all materials to do with our topic, so please send in (named!). 

Tuesday 6 January 2015

Sharing our news

Year 2 are busily preparing presentations to give to the rest of the class on Friday this week.  The children have been set the challenge of talking in front of an audience for up to 2 minutes about what they got up to during the Christmas Holidays.  They have thought carefully about how they will present their work and will be perfecting it in time for Friday's "Big Show and Tell".  Some children have mentioned that they would like to bring in things that they had for Christmas.  I have explained that it is completely up to parents if you let them bring things in, but I have said "no" to extremely precious, expensive and impractical items - we've found and drawn pictures instead!  If your child does bring something small in, then please make sure it is clearly labelled.