Welcome to Year 2!

18 March 2022

‘Treemendous’ Trees

We had a dramatic start to our new topic, Forests, with the falling of the tree on the mound after the high winds. We took the opportunity to take a walk around the school grounds to look at this tree as well as the many different trees that we have at Summercroft. The children enjoyed sharing their knowledge about evergreen and deciduous trees and despite the lack of leaves on the trees were able to make some identifications. We continued our work in class by sketching trees in our art books.

These observations in art and the vocabulary discussed in our English and topic lessons are helping to embed our habitat learning in science. We have looked at polar habitats and are now comparing these to forests around the world, including microhabitats, before finally looking at urban and coastal areas.

You may have seen the new addition of growing beds and a sensory path next to the playground and we also have a new potting area with gardening tools and greenhouses in the courtyard. Over the weekend Mr Jess, teachers and parent volunteers, led by Human Roots, worked hard to create the new area allowing children in Year 2 to grow vegetables from seed to plant and eventually eat their own produce. The aim of this is to bring their learning to life with hands-on activity, getting children outside and promoting a healthy lifestyle.

In maths we have focused on position and direction and are soon to be recapping our addition and subtraction by using the column method to help with our calculations.

3 March 2022

We’ve Reached the End of Our Polar Expedition!

What a brilliant mini topic! After an exciting start with our ice sculptures, we have continued to develop our understanding of the polar regions and the threat to the animals that inhabit them.

Our science work has involved looking closely at animal features and how certain animals have adapted to their environment. Our main focus has been on penguins; we used all of the knowledge that we have collected to write and publish fact files about them.

We have also compared the two regions in geography and we located them on a globe and then tried hard to make our own globes. The balloons were a bit tricky and some continents had definitely travelled to new locations by the time they were stuck on!

Our maths work this week has linked to our geography as we have been learning about position and direction. We are still trying to master the concepts clockwise and anti-clockwise so this is something you could practise at home.

11 February 2022

There’s a Hole in My Bucket!

Our work on materials concluded last week with an experiment to find out which would be the best material(s) to make a bucket to use for the Great Fire of London. This required us to use all of the knowledge we had gained about materials and their properties during the half term. We also decided it would be a good idea to test different materials to check their resistance to water before we began. Once armed with this information, we worked in pairs to choose our bucket materials and planned how to join them.

The children worked hard and in the end we had all sorts of shaped buckets and a variety of handles too. But to be successful the bucket had to hold the water for at least 30 seconds with no spillages or leaks. Unfortunately not every bucket was successful but we had good fun trying!

It was sad to say goodbye to the Great Fire of London, as the children really enjoyed it as a topic. They completely immersed themselves in it and many created drawings and Lego buildings in their free time too.

We have now started our new mini topic on the polar regions. The ice sculptures made by the children were absolutely brilliant and a great hook into our learning!

Our English work is currently linked to our topic and we have been reading a book called The Emperor’s Egg which is about Emperor Penguins. We have enjoyed watching penguins and moving like penguins in order to gather information for writing. Hopefully by the end of the unit we will be experts, which will enable us to write brilliant fact files!

21 January 2022

What Time Is It?

Year 2 have begun 2022 with learning to tell the time. We thought about how time is measured and talked about all of the different units of time. There are so many facts to remember and so many numbers but we did our best to remember them all. The Year 2 team were impressed with how many children knew what a century is, a millennium is and some even knew what a decade is! We have been practising with clocks to tell the time to o’clock, half past and quarter to/quarter past. Please keep working on this at home as there is never enough time to do it at school (excuse the pun!).

Our Great Fire topic has continued into the spring term and we have begun to build our Tudor houses in preparation for our ‘Meet the Experts’ online presentation. We will hopefully send details out at the end of next week. Our English work has linked to our topic this week, focusing on the diary of Samuel Pepys. We will be applying what we have learned to our own diary entry.

In science we have continued our materials unit, this time looking at changing shape. After we’d investigated which materials we could and couldn’t change the shape of we then put our learning into practise to attempt to break the Guinness World record for stretching a Curly Wurly! Although the children made valiant efforts their longest Curly Wurly at 1 metre 20 centimetres was still a way off the record of over 4 metres!

Our learning in computing has focused on algorithms and the children had great fun making an algorithm to create a creature. This week they put their skills into action to complete challenges by programming Beebots.

21 December 2021

Christmas Superstars

The Christmas show, Hey Ewe, was a fantastic success and we would like to say a huge well done again to the children for their amazing, singing, dancing and acting performances. We hope you have enjoyed watching the video of the show and thank you for any donations towards funds for KS1.

This week we are celebrating our Interfaith Week, looking at all the different festivals and celebrations that are celebrated around the world during the year. Year 2 have focused on the Hindi festival of Holi and we have had great fun recreating the colourful experience of paint throwing.

In maths we are looking at division and using a bar model to help us solve problems. We will then be linking this learning to our previous multiplication work to see the correlation between the two and discover fact families.

This week we have continued using The Dark as our inspiration for our English work. We will be continuing with this after the Christmas break and would ask that the children bring in a clear glass jar (such as a jam jar) when they return to school in the New Year.

Our topic of The Great Fire of London will also continue where we will compare how things have changed in London and the Fire Service since the Great Fire. Another plea – could you also bring in some cereal boxes after the Christmas break so that we can build our own Tudor Houses.

In science we have begun a new topic, materials. We have identified different materials in our environment and the properties of these. We will look at how their properties make them more or less suitable for different uses and how they can be manipulated.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish all our families a wonderful Christmas break and Happy New Year.

Ms Lynch & Mrs Fuat

3 December 2021

Year 2 and the Great Fire!

The children are loving our new topic about The Great Fire of London and are completely immersed in their learning. Many are following up their learning at home and producing pictures and information leaflets. We are enjoying seeing their efforts in class.

As part of our topic work, we have been exploring the reasons why the fire spread so quickly and why it took so long to get under control. We have also been painting and collaging the scene of the Great Fire and look forward to building our Tudor houses after Christmas.

Talking of Christmas, our rehearsals for our Christmas play, Hey Ewe!, are going well and we hope to record a performance for you all to see next week.

Our new book in English; The Dark, has inspired some very thoughtful writing to help the main character overcome his own fear of the dark.

In maths, we continue to focus on multiplication and would appreciate if you continue to practise counting in 2s, 5s and 10s at home.

Tying into our Great Fire of London topic, we’re focusing on materials for our science unit, looking at the different materials in the world around us and why some materials are more suitable for uses than others.

12 November 2021

A Royal Return in Year 2

 
This half term we have begun with our new mini topic ‘The Monarchy’. The children enjoyed learning about the line of succession and debating whether it should be the eldest son or daughter. They also enjoyed making their crowns and pretending to be a king or queen. They wrote rules that they would make if they were the monarch. Some were very interesting!

Our story focus in English at the moment is a book called Halibut Jackson by David Lucas. It is giving the children lots of opportunities to think and write about a character. We are also enjoying lots of drama activities.

In maths we have introduced multiplication and drawing arrays. We will be encouraging the children to learn their 2, 5 and 10 times tables, so please help them to practise.

Finally, we thought you would like to see some of our Arts Week pictures. We had a lovely morning walking around Birchanger Woods, collecting things along the way. The artwork the children produced was amazing! We also wrote poems about ‘How to be a Bee’ and printed honeycomb to write them up on.

22 October 2021

All About the UK

As the half term draws to an end we have been pulling together all our learning about the UK, the different traditions and cultures  and all the tasty food we have sampled from each of the four countries! Inspired by the Welsh flag, the children designed their own dragon and painted them with water-colours whilst enjoying a yummy Welsh cake.  Next, we looked at Scotland, ate some buttery shortbread, and learnt about traditional kilts. The children then wove their very own tartan designs to make their own Scottish kilt. 

Linking our geography and PE learning, the children also had great fun learning to dance the Highland Fling and doing some English country dancing.

We have been reading a modern version of the Rapunzel story in English,  which sees a twist to the traditional tale's ending. The children have been making wanted posters to catch witches and writing in the first person, imagining they were Rapunzel and what it would feel like to spend a day in her shoes, locked in a tower. 

In maths we have focused on money and recognising and adding coins. It would be great if you could keep this learning going by involving the children in using coins when shopping or counting any money they have in their piggy banks at home.

The children have had a amazing first term in Year 2; we wish you all a great half term break.

1st October 2021

The UK Tour Continues in Year 2

We have been enjoying learning about the UK, with England being our focus for the past week. We have written recounts about London and looked at the famous landmarks we might see in London. We decided to make line drawings of them, creating a London skyline piece of art.

Our artwork has continued, with a study of the sculptor Anthony Gormley. First we drew the human body, focusing on its shapes and then we created a clay sculpture in the style of his work, ‘Field for the British Isles’.

The human body has also been our focus in science and we enjoyed labelling our body parts. We have been thinking about the human life cycle and discussing how our bodies change as we grow.

In PE, we have had good fun learning how to country dance. Dancing with a partner has been tricky, but with a lot of practise, we are almost ready for Strictly! So watch this space!

Last week, we decided to try an English breakfast (or anytime treat!)…crumpets. Most children tasted a sample and decided that they would like two breakfasts every day! We will be enjoying a sample of food from each of the four countries over the coming weeks. Hopefully, everyone will find something that they enjoy eating!

17 September 2021

A Great Start to Year 2! 

It has been wonderful to see how well the children have settled into life in Year 2. To welcome the children we read the gorgeous story book, We Are Together, and inspired by this they all painted self-portraits to create a lovely display of their new classes. 

In English, we started the year by sharing the story of Sharing a Shell and the children sequenced the story and joined in with a story ‘whoosh’ to help them to retell the story using conjunctions to extend their sentences. They then painted their very own shells and thought about what they might take with them if they too had to carry their homes on their backs. 

In maths we have been recapping our number bonds to and within 10 and will begin working on place value to be secure in recognising how many tens and ones are within a number. The children had great fun singing along to Farmer Pete who lost his sheep to help them remember their number bonds. If you would like to continue this at home this is the link for the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poJmS5iWfEs 

Our unit for science is ‘Humans and Other Animals’ and we started off thinking about hygiene and the importance of keeping our body healthy by keeping clean and avoiding germs.  The children carried out an investigation using glitter on their hands to represent germs and trialled the best way to wash our hands clean – something we have become pretty good at over the last couple of years! 

Our topic at the moment is ‘The UK’ and to kick it off the children all enjoyed their ‘train ride to London’. We will be learning about the famous landmarks around the UK, the cultures of the four countries and our physical geography.