Year 2 - Maths Learning - Week Beginning 25th September 2017

This week we have been revising and consolidating our understanding of place value.  Understanding the way that numbers work underpins the ability to calculate and is necessary in all areas of mathematics.  On mathletics there are a number of activities to support children's understanding of place value.  By logging on at home and completing some of these activities your child can earn points towards a certificate.  Why not try a few place value activities and remember to point out which is the tens digit and which is the ones.

Year 2 - Literacy Learning - Week Beginning 25th September 2017

This week we have become authors and have written our own non-fiction books about India.  We have written facts and statements about India, Indian Animals, Indian Villages and games.  We have also researched further facts about The Taj Mahal, Indian Clothing, Food and Maps of India.  The children have been working really hard using our superheroes to help them improve their writing.  See if your child can remember each of our writing superheroes:

Year 2 - India Day, Advanced Notice - 29th September 2017

Our India topic will be coming to an end in the week before the half term holiday.  To celebrate this we will be inviting Mr Farrington in to share his interest and expertise about India, Indian Farming and Indian Food.  We will also be having an India Day.  On this day we invite the children to come into school dressed in Indian Clothes.  During the day the children will be taking part in a range of fun activities and the day will culminate in a pop up Indian Restaurant to which you are all invited!  There will be some wonderful food to taste that the children have made and some entertainment - Bollywood style!  Please put Thursday 19th October in your diary. 
If you are stuck for costume ideas for your child please come and see us as we have quite a few costumes that they could borrow.

Year 2 - Spellings - 29th September 2017

Due to the Harvest Celebrations we missed giving the spellings out today.  They are ready and waiting for Monday, but if you want to get a head start here they are:
Red Phonics Group: The "ee" sound including: ea, y, e_e.  Also the children will need to know the difference between peace and piece.
peace, memory, piece, tapeze, delete, believe
Orange Phonics Group: More "ee" sounds including: y, ee, e_e and eo.
angry, sorry, screen, queen, these, people
Yellow and Green group: ar as in car.
car, star, hard, park

Year 2 - Happy Harvest - 29th September 2017

Well done everyone for a great harvest celebration.  Year 2 managed to earn seven marbles for the jar for their performance of Let's Harvest.  They did a fantastic job of learning the song and signs for our song this morning.  We will be using another Al Start song with signs when we come to our Great Fire of London topic later in the year, so look out for that one!  Thank you all for providing the children with produce for our celebration, the food bank were very pleased to receive your donations and there was a wonderful atmosphere at the harvest cafe this afternoon.  Please see the attached photos if you missed seeing them today.

Year 2 - Amazing Home Learning - 29th September 2017

What amazing home learning we've seen this week!  The creativity and effort put into producing vegetable and fruit people and animals, fruit and vegetable alphabets, beautiful sketching and awesome facts about fascinating fruits and veg was brilliant.  We hope you managed to spot some of them in our Harvest display in the hall today.  If you weren't able to come along, please have a look at the photos below.  Thank you for supporting your children at home with their learning, you could really see how proud they were of their work when they brought it into class.

More photos on the way!  See our harvest blog!

Year 2 - Maths Learning - Week Beginning 18th September 2017

This week we have been refining our place value skills.  The children have been confidently moving into 3 digit numbers and have begun partitioning two digit numbers in different ways.  This means that they can say:
42=40+2, but they can also say 42=30+12. 
We use 10s and 1s to show this and children seem to pick up the pattern of moving a ten across quite quickly.  Next week we will continue practicing this skill as it is very important when we come to addition and subtraction.
If two digit numbers are a little tricky you could try partitioning smaller numbers in different ways.  Use bricks, pasta, stones, whatever you have to hand to make a group of say 8.  How many different ways can you split 8 into two groups?
8=4+4, 8=3+5, 8=2+6, and so on...  praise the children each time they make a new grouping.  Once confident at single digit numbers try the teen numbers!

Year 2 - Literacy Learning - Week beginning 18th September 2017

This week we have been using our research skills to find information about India.  The children have gathered information from a range of sources including pictures, from the internet, books and real artifacts.  The children have made their own notes which will be used next week in order to write statements about India in their own non-fiction books.  We are encouraging the children to give answers to questions in full sentences when talking about what they have found out, this will help them next week when they will be writing in sentences.  At home you could encourage the children to answer you in a sentence instead of giving one word answers.  For example:
"What would you like for breakfast?"
Instead of answering "Toast please!" you could try encouraging them to say, "I would like some toast please!".  Good luck!

Year 2 - Spellings - Week ending 29th September 2017

The spellings for this week are as follows:
Red Group:  Looking at adding ing to verbs.
hitting, putting, jumping, standing, joking, sliding
Orange Group: Revising the ea / ey sound.
read, treat, least, money, honey, donkey
Yellow and Green Group: oo as in book.
book, look, took, shook
Superhero points will be given for practicing these as well as getting them all right in the check next Friday 29th September.

Year 2 - Fun at the Farm - 22nd September 2017

We had a lovely morning at the farm on Friday.  We noticed all sorts of interesting things on the way and Hazel taught us all about the harvesting of crops at the farm.  We learned the difference between straw and hay, how crops were harvested and saw a real combine harvester.  We looked at grain and how it is mashed for the animals to eat at the farm.  Hazel showed us the big food mixer for cows and how the food could be measured to make tasty food for the cattle.  We smelt silage, got licked by cows and saw Tom's very cheeky pigs!  Many thanks to Hazel and Phillippa for showing us around and teaching us so much about harvest time on the farm!