The year 2 team send their warmest Christmas wishes to all of the children and their families. We hope you have a fun filled Christmas break with just a little bit of time to relax, even though you are all probably really excited! 
Now you are all into the Christmas Holidays and you will have nothing much going on over the next few days I would like to set all of the children in year 2 a challenge! I have sent home two group reading books for the children to read during the holidays, please find time to read these or other books during the holidays and write down what you've read in the
Year 2 have the highest attendance for November across the school!
We didn't think it could get any better, but year 2, year 1 and Reception managed to perform to a really high standard today in their performance of "The Sleepy Shepherd". Great singing and actions, wonderful narration and acting and lots of smiling faces! Year 2 managed to double their marble total to 12! I don't think I'll have enough marbles for tomorrow!
Please remember to bring along your party food tomorrow, 15th December 2016. The children are really looking forward to a fun packed and afternoon.
Tomorrow your child will be bringing home the letter that they wrote
for their Big Write this half term. They
worked extremely hard writing addresses; learning how letters are laid out;
thinking of questions that they could ask real people and improving their
work. Please have a look at how
successful they have been and it would be great if you can post the letter with your child. We will see if we get any replies next term!
What a brilliant performance of "The Sleepy Shepherd" we had this morning! Well done everyone for your effort and enthusiasm. Year 2 got 6 marbles in the jar today because of this and they think they might even be able to get more tomorrow! We are all looking forward to performing it again tomorrow.
It is time once again for our Christmas productions!
A ‘Christmassy, art and crafty’ day was enjoyed by all on
Friday 9th December. It was the POW school annual ‘Technology day’
when children select three activities in which they wish to create a Christmas
themed piece of art/ design work. The
manner in which children moved around the school, worked well within the mixed
up age groups was superb. All children were displaying our resilient tortoise in
tackling activities and the older children were lending a hand in helping organise
the younger children’s work, showing the next steps in how to produce an item. Super
skills from one and all! Some products made have been added to this blog. 
Thank you finally to all parents who managed to join for
some/ or all of the day, the extra pairs of hands very much helped!
As you are aware we are busily preparing for our Christmas productions. In year 2 we will be performing the nativity - "The Sleepy Shepherd" along with the Reception and Year 1 children. In year 2 we are responsible for telling the story and singing lots and lots of brilliant songs! As the story tellers the children will need a white shirt with a collar (long sleeve or short sleeve) to wear along with their usual school trousers or skirts (no pinafores though please as we cannot tuck the shirt in). We will provide any extras to the costume and we do have a few spare shirts if you are really struggling. Please provide your child with a shirt in a named plastic bag by Monday 12th December. Many thanks.
An extra excitement for the class this week was a visit from Wessex FM! 
We have had some wonderful results from the Big Write this week. As you know the children were asked to write a letter to a person of their choice. We have had some inspired writing. Lots of brilliant questions and I was particularly impressed with the children's handwriting. The children will be bringing their letters home next week for you to have a look and send off in the envelope provided. It will be really great to see if we get any replies after Christmas. Well done year 2. 
This Monday (5th December) we will be taking the children to the Priest House Museum in Wimborne. This is a lovely trip where the children get first hand experience of a Victorian Christmas and it acts as a fantastic way for us to introduce the topic to the children. We have asked all of the adults and children to dress up for this trip as it makes the day so much more memorable and helps to recreate a real Victorian atmosphere when we are taking part in some of the activities at the Museum. If you are struggling to find a costume over the weekend please don't worry as we have a few bits and bobs at school that we can lend you for the day. Whilst there the children will be taking part in four activities: Cooking in the Victorian Kitchen; Visiting the Victorian Stationers and making a Victorian Christmas Card; Taking part in a festive tour of the museum and playing Victorian games. Many thanks to all of the adults who have given their time to come along with us, we look forward to seeing you on Monday.
A special Christmas challenge this week for spellings. I have given the children some Christmas words, but sadly some of the letters have fallen off. Have a go at filling in the blanks at home to earn a superhero point. There will be no spelling check next Friday as it is Technology Day, but please return finished sheets so that you can claim your well deserved reward.
What a busy, Christmassy feel to the school yesterday evening! The school
was full of children and our families making the realisation that Christmas is
nearly knocking on our doors!
This week we have begun our new topic of Victorians, for the week's leading up to Christmas we will be looking at how the Victorians celebrated Christmas. The classroom is festooned with lovely Christmas evergreen and we have begun making all sorts of Victorian decorations, cards and keepsakes. Just a reminder that we will be going to Priest House Museum on Monday 5th December. The children and adults will need to wear their Victorian Costumes (don't worry if you are short of items - we have a few at school). Please make sure your child has a few layers underneath because it can be quite cold.
Wow! Well done year 2, you have worked hard as a team and managed to fill the marble jar! That is 75 times we have noticed you showing us exactly the right attitude to your learning. As a reward on Friday 2nd December we will be having a PJ and teddy party. Please bring along your favourite teddy, a pillow and your pyjamas in a bag. After lunch the children will snuggle down with popcorn, hot chocolate and cookies to enjoy their reward! 
This week we have been looking at measuring the height and length of various objects. We have started looking at metres and centimetres as standard units of measurement. We have talked about how we can be accurate and careful in our measuring and had a go at using various equipment to measure objects in the classroom. At home you could use a tape measure to find things that are more than, about the same as or less than a metre. When measuring anything in metres and centimetres check that the 0 on the ruler is lined up with the end of the object you are measuring - this is the concept that the children find trickiest!
This week's spellings are as follows.
On Wednesday we will write our letters in our
Big Write session and after they have been marked and a best copy made we will
send them home for you to see and actually post with your child if you wish!
This week we have been looking at subtraction and how we can use counting backwards and our knowledge of tens and ones. At home, try counting back in 10s from any two digit number: 84, 74, 64, 54 and so on.
This week we have continued to look at our topic of Islands. We have used our sentences to describe islands and write a report about an island of our choice. We have also spent some time rehearsing our class assembly. We hope you enjoyed it.
This week's spellings are as follows:
Well didn't the children do well this morning? We have been super
impressed with how quickly the children have picked up their words this
week and have been successful in reading these out and performing them
with such confidence. 
This week we are looking at the sound ue as in glue and tissue.
This half term we have started our new topic of "An island home". During this topic we will be looking at islands and island life through factual and fictional perspectives. 
For home learning this week I would like the children to design their own island treasure maps to inspire their writing in school. Please encourage your child to be as creative as possible. I have included some pictures to help ; or they may prefer to do their own design completely; if they prefer ICT then this link to the cbbc website might be more their thing...
Just a reminder that it will be our year 2 class assembly on Friday 11th November. Please come along and see what we have been learning about so far this term. 9:20am in the school hall.
Thank you for coming along to our Pop Up Indian Restaurant last week. We had a lovely time and all of the food and dancing went down a treat. What a great ending to our first topic! Pictures to follow on the school website.
All of the children did wonderfully well in their big write last week. We had some lovely jungle stories, lots of great description and use of characters and setting. The children also showed understanding of creating a story with a beginning, middle and end. Thank you very much for supporting them at home with this, it does make all the difference. The children have since gone back to their stories, shared them with their friends and peer assessed them. 
Sorry for the late posting of the half term spellings! Your child should have brought home a sheet that contains common exception words for year 1 and year 2. Initially the challenge for the children is to read these words. When your child can read all of these tricky words they then need to see if they can spell them. Maybe take a couple of the words a week, as we will in class, pop them on the fridge and each time you come across them ask your child to spell them, find fun ways of remembering them, make them with magnetic letters, put them into a sentence, etc. On Friday 4th November we will be checking how far the children have got with the reading and spelling of some of these words, we will then check near the end of term to see how much progress we have made. Hope you are all enjoying the holidays - and don't forget the royal visit tomorrow!
As part of our India day and as a reward for the hard work that the children have put in over this half term I would like to show them the new Jungle Book film. This film is a PG and as such I need to ask your permission. If you have any objections, please let the year 2 team know.
This week we have continued to look at addition, applying our knowledge of place value to help us to add quickly and efficiently. We have investigated how you can add numbers in any order and that if you know one fact such as 4+3=7 you also know facts such as 40+30=70 and 400+300=700. One of the key skills for addition is knowing which strategy is going to be the best to use. If you are adding a small number you could count on or use your number bonds, whereas if you are adding two two-digit numbers you may want to use 10s and 1s or a vertical method. Children tend to favour one method even if it isn't the most efficient, as your child becomes more confident the greater the range of strategies they will use. 
This week we have been writing thank you letters to our recent visitors and looking at how to plan a story. We joined in with a BBC live lesson on Tuesday where the children were shown how to plan a three part story and describe the characters and settings. If you would like to see the lesson it is still available at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2vFlVBFPCdFGXkbMQg5BwZJ/cbeebies-stories-by-the-sea-live-lesson
Next Thursday 20th October year 2 will be visiting Maiden Castle Farm. The children will need to wear old play trousers and suitable footwear along with their uniform top, jumper and a coat. The children will be walking from school during the morning, if you are available to help on the trip please see a member of the year 2 team.