Wednesday 30 September 2015

Beautiful Bread 30-9-15

We hope you enjoyed the bread roll that the children brought home today.  The bread was made in yesterday's DT lesson where the children are learning about healthy diets, special diets and breads from around the world in preparation for designing and making their own healthy sandwiches.  Also this was good practice for the Harvest Home Learning Bake Off Challenge for next week - make your own bread.  The children will be tasting and judging all entries brought in across the week next week. 

An Island home 30-9-15

The children have now completed their unit of work on "An Island Home".  We have looked at islands, real and imaginary including the island of Coll in Scotland on which the Katie Morag books and TV series by Mairi Hadderwick was based.  The children have created their own island which will soon be displayed in the classroom, this is a replica of the Isle of Struay in the Katie Morag books.  Last but not least we have looked in more detail at the British Isles and the children have really impressed me with how quickly they have learned and retained the names of the different countries that make up the UK and their location!  Why not quiz them at home?

Saturday 26 September 2015

Maths Learning - Week Beginning 21st September

This week we have begun to look at addition and subtraction by using our knowledge of place value to add and subtract 10 from a number.  Once children have mastered this skill they are then able to add and subtract other multiples of 10 from numbers quickly.  For example 98-30=.  It is important when doing this that the children understand which is the tens and which is the units digit in each number.  We will continue to build on our addition and subtraction skills next week with basic number facts and inverse operations. 

Literacy Learning - Week Beginning 21st September

This week we have been looking at poetry.  The children have had the opportunity to read and write their own poems that follow different patterns.  We have been sharpening our rhyming skills and using these rhymes to write our own poetry.  Why not share your favourite poem with your child at home?  Please bring in examples of poems you have shared together at home.

Friday 25 September 2015

Praise assembly 25.09.15

In Praise assembly today these children were praised for super shared writing this week. Altogether they wrote a poem 'The sheep and the mouse' which had rhyming couplets in it, very funny and all making sense!'

E.g.

The sheep's friend was a mouse
It lived in a house
The sheep had a bone,
and the mouse had a phone



Well done to:

Edward
Henry
Poppy
Andrew
Skye
Scarlett
Lewis
Finley
Alfie
Odette

Super rhythm work today. 24.9.15

Year 2 class have worked super hard in their music lesson today, they all used a system to write their own 8 beat rhythms!
We also sang some fun songs and moved a lot too! Ask them to sing to you 'Down in the jungle!'

Home Learning across the school!


Home Learning  - Harvest celebration

(week commencing Monday 5th October)


 
During the week of Monday 5th October as usual we have planned opportunities throughout the week where the children learn about: food and where it comes from, visits to Maiden Castle farm, creating art pieces, cooking, thinking about seasonal food, creating goodies for the Harvest café using our orchard goodies, looking at India farming and of course the reason behind Harvest itself!

 
We thought this year we would have a ‘Bake off’ format to the week as the ‘Great British Bake off’ has been inspiring staff as well as the nation!

 
So, if your child wishes to, the Home Learning for the children is to…

 
 
Create their own bread and bring into school through the week leading up to our Harvest celebration! The class will taste it and talk about how it was made.
 
Everyone will need to share the ingredients and how they made their bread (write down or be able to talk about).
 
‘Bread’ products are wide and varied across the world, so experiment, create!
 
 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
Through the week each class has also been set the challenge of creating a ‘master piece!’

 
These will be displayed outside of the hall for our Harvest celebration.

 
We will have our very own ‘Mary and Paul’ to taste each class’s efforts and decide upon a winner! Be ready to ask your child all about it!

 

Monday 21 September 2015

Mathletics


Very exciting news… your child now has home and school access to Mathletics!  Mathletics is an online maths learning site that allows children to practice their Maths skill and learn new concepts through games and tutorials.  They can also play games against school children from our school and other countries in the world developing speed and accuracy in Mental Arithmetic.
As the teacher I can monitor all of the children’s progress and help them to access the levels the teaching programmes that are appropriate for their ability.  We will be using it in school as part of their Maths Learning.
Your child’s login details, a username and a password are on the card sent home and written in their home school diaries, so they can go online, sign in and play at home.
The children have already had a couple of sessions using it in school and have set up their account so that they are familiar with the website.

How to access Mathletics
1.  Go the website www.mathletics.com
2.  Click on the tab called sign in
3.  They will then be prompted to type in their username and password.
4.  Once they are logged in, they can access the games and tutorials.
5.  There are options when they access the activities to click on buttons to make it easier or harder.

With Mathletics comes a free parent account where you can find out about your child’s progress.

How to access your free parent account:
2.  Enter your details along with your child’s username and password.  You will be emailed your own username and password for the mathletics site.
3. To access the parent console, simply go to the Mathletics website and use your parent username and password to sign in.

If you have any questions regarding Mathletics then please do come and ask.

Year 2 Spellings

Children will be bringing spellings home each week on a Friday, to be learned for the following Friday.  The children will copy these into their home learning diary as well as bring home a full copy of the list.  There are lots of fun ways to learn spellings at home, try making learning spellings into a game, hunting letters and sounds around the house to build a word or a quick game of hangman can be great fun.  I will be monitoring how the children get on with these spellings each week and adjust the level of difficulty according to need and also in respect to how the children apply these spellings to their daily written work.

Maths Learning - Week Beginning 14th September

This week we have continued to look at Place Value, the children have been reading large numbers and ensuring that they can say what each digit represents.  A resource we use in school is Place Value Cards.  Using these cards the children can build numbers by lining up the arrows on the card, but can also see how each digit is made - eg a number of tens, hundreds, units or thousands.  Why not try printing some out at home and making some three and four digit numbers!
Try this online version:
http://www.topmarks.co.uk/place-value/place-value-charts

Literacy Learning - Week Beginning 14th September

This week the children have been creating their own Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch Story.  They began the week by creating their own puppet shows with characters from the books.  We then looked at planning stories to ensure they had a beginning, middle and end.  Then the children wrote their stories thinking about the words that they used to make it interesting for the reader.  We used Violet Vocabulary to help us!

Friday 11 September 2015

Parent's Information Session

Please come along on Wednesday 16th September at 9am to find out more about what is going on in year 2 this term. 

Literacy Learning - Week Beginning 7th September 2015

This week we have been acting out the story of "The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch".  Using our Superhero powers of Punctuation, Connectives and Vocabulary we have written and improved sentences to retell the story.  At home can your child retell the story to you?


Maths Learning - Week Beginning 7th September 2015

This week the children have been learning about the value of numbers, they have really impressed us with their knowledge and enthusiasm for number!  We have explored the use of inequality signs > (greater than), < (less than) and equals to compare numbers of increasing value.  We have also been developing our mental skills to quickly calculate totals, and count in 2s, 3's, 5's and 10's.  The children have also been using their counting skills to work out how many items are in given collections.  At home you could practice counting in 2's, 3's, 5's and 10s and reading 2, 3, 4 and 5 digit numbers!

Thursday 3 September 2015

Welcome to year 2

What a wonderful start to year 2!  The children have returned to school with excellent attitudes and have been fully engaged with their learning.
We have kicked off with our superhero skills for learning and will soon be into our first topic about "Our Island Home".  The children have been learning about how the classroom works and how they can collect superhero praise points for excellent attitudes to learning and for the work that they produce.  Mr Martin and Miss Johnson were teaching today, Mr Martin is helping while Mrs Mewett is taking on head teacher responsibilities.  In future weeks Miss Johnson will be teaching on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and Mr Martin will be covering Thursday and Friday mornings.
We are looking forward to a fun packed year!  To infinity and beyond!