Year 2 Newsletter

 Whilst it might nearly be the end of term, year 2 have certainly not slowed down! 

In our art and geography lessons, we have been looking at Uluru (Ayer's Rock). We used our printing skills to print our own landscape picture of Uluru.  

In Science we have been testing materials for different properties. We have looked at absorbency, waterproofness and stretchiness. We've enjoyed being scientists and conducting fair tests.  

Year 2 Newsletter

Last week year 2 were finally able to show off their well-rehearsed singing skills at the Bishop's Stortford's Year 2 Music Festival. 

The children have worked so hard, practicing their songs and wow, didn't it pay off!?! For those that were able to come and watch, we are sure that you'll agree that the children were absolutely amazing!

They performed 'water' themed songs as a choir with two other schools, which was no easy feat as they had to make sure that their actions were synchronised and that they kept in time to the music.  

They also performed their very own class song too. They had the audience bobbing along in their seats and no one left the auditorium without a huge smile on their face. 

All the teachers in Year 2 would like to say a massive well done to the children! You were so professional and did a brilliant job! 

Year 2 Newsletter

Last week the children were immersed in our topic of Australia. 

In art, we have been looking at how the Aboriginal people of Australia use natural materials to create beautiful dot work pictures. They used their art work to tell stories. We created our own of Australian stories using the Aboriginal symbols and we also tried printing Australian animals with ink. 

In our geography lessons we have been learning about the Great Barrier Reef. We looked at maps to find out where it was and we imagined we were fish swimming in it. We discovered that it looks quite different today to what it looked like 20 year ago. We found out about pollution and global warming and how it is affecting the reef. 

In writing we are using The Day The Koala Could for inspiration and we are writing our own ending to the story. We thought about what could happen next through drama and we acted out different scenarios. We used these ideas to help us plan our story ending. This week we are going to be writing it. 

Year 2 Newsletter

 

Year 2 have had a very active week! 

We took Maths outside this week and practiced our half turns, quarter turns and explored going clockwise and anti-clockwise. It was great fun giving each other directions on what to do.

In RE we have been exploring Islam and looking at how Mulism's prepare for prayer and what they use when they are praying. We looked at the ritual that they do before hand and copied the different movements.

In Science, we went outside looking for mini-beasts. We couldn't believe how many slugs we found under the logs in the forest or how many ants were hiding in the grass. We discussed their different habitats too. 

In Music we have been learning our songs for the music festival. Today, we impressed our teachers with the songs that we have learnt so far. Keep up the learning at home too, it's really helping!

Year 2 Newsletter

 

This week year 2 kick-started their new topic with a trip to Australia in 1770. We travelled by boat and imagined we were convicts who had been caught and sentenced to 7 years in prison in Australia. We found out that many people couldn't afford to get home and so made a life there.

In writing we are looking at letters from unhappy crayons, inspired by The Day the Crayons Quit. we began by playing the emotions game. Our teacher gave us a word (for example, annoyed or excited) and we had to show that emotion on our face. 

We then imagined how each crayon was feeling in their letter using the feelings words from earlier in the lesson. We roleplayed as the crayons and our partners interviewed us.

In our World Views lesson we explored how different colours depict different moods. We discussed how different colours make us feel different things. We were given feeling words and we mixed paint to create a colour that reminded us of that feeling.

Year 2 newsletter

This week year 2 explored wind up mechanisms in preparation for their D&T project where they will be building a castle with a moving drawbridge. 

We tried two different ways of making a moving mechanism and tested which was easier. We found the mechanism with an axle support was better as it meant you had to move your hands less and you could use the straw as a handle. 

We enjoyed racing each other to see who could wind up the mechanism the quickest. We even tried using our mechanisms to lift up objects like rubbers and glue sticks.

Year 2's World Book Day

 Year 2 had a fabulous World Book Day. 

We started our day off by having a quiz with Bellatrix Le Strange, the Snow Queen and Cruella De Vil. Then we introduced ourselves as the characters that we had come as and the word that we had chosen to describe them.

We then travelled to Narnia to meet the terrifying Snow Queen! She told us her story and we discovered just how deceitful she really was!

Then we explored the book 'Inside the Villains' and talked about what makes a good villain. We then designed our own giant and made it as terrible as we could. 

Throughout the day we shared our favourite books and enjoyed lots of new ones too! 

Year 2 newletter

 This week was kickstarted with the arrival of the duckling eggs for our science topic Lifecycles! The children were so excited to see the first few cracks appear and over the next few days we watched as the ducklings used all their strength to hatch out! We are keeping a duckling diary to closely observe the changes that we can see and they have already grown so much! 

The children have already had a duckling cuddle, but there will be more to come this week and we will even be swimming them! Stay tuned for the blog post! 

Not only did the ducks arrive, but we also had a week of performing our Global Goal speeches. All the children got up in front of their class and did a fabulous job of performing. Everyone did amazingly and should feel very proud of themselves! The children voted for the top 3 speech performers from each class and then they spoke again and the winners were decided by all the children in Attenborough and Greta. Congratulations to our finalists: Sebastian, Stella, Milla, Megan, Eesher and Archie!
 Well done to Stella and Archie for being our winners!

Year 2 Newsletter

Wow! Year 2 have had another fabulous but very busy week. 

In music, we are learning the song 'I wanna be in a rock band' and we have been exploring rock music. We have learnt the lyrics to the song and now we are learning how to play the glockenspiel. 

In science, we are learning about plants and what they need to grow. We are conducting an experiment to find out the answer by planting seeds and giving them different conditions to see which grow best. Here we are in action:

Our new topic is castles and our big question is: 'Is a castle a great place to live?'
To kick start this new learning, we transported back to medieval times and learnt all about the people who lived in castles. We met a lord, a knight and a blacksmith. They told us all about their jobs and showed us where in the castle they lived. Most of us wanted to be lords, as we would be able to tell everyone what to do but some of us wanted to be knights so that we could be brave and protect the land.

Year 2 Newsletter

 Last week was a very busy week for year 2. We enjoyed a visit from Nancy from SCARF and explored how to keep safe with our friends, we challenged ourselves in maths with tricky subtraction problems and recapped all of our last term's learning in science which was all about animals, including humans.

We loved having Nancy and Gerald the giraffe to visit. We helped Gerald and his friends make good choices as he went to the park. We decided that it was a bad idea to talk to strangers and a good idea to let your grownups know where you are. 

In writing, we are writing a non-chronological report on Hibernation. We had two experience days where we learnt about hibernation and what animals hibernate. We used drama to do this. We were interested to discover that different animals hibernate in different ways. Insects bury holes underground, dormice snuggle up in nests and bats hang upside down in caves.

We have been collecting sentences to create our class sentence stack. This is a non-chronological report which includes all of our different sentences that we have written over the last couple of weeks. Our teachers have been so impressed with our writing. We will be adding a how, when and fun fact paragraph this week to finish it off! 

Year 2 Newsletter

 In year 2, we have been enjoying our history topic that is all about the Great Fire of London. We have looked at what the houses were like in 1666 and we drew our own.

Did you know that the houses were built with different levels with the bottom level being the smallest? This was so that more houses could fit in. They got bigger as they went up and the bit that sticks out is called a jetty. 

We used black pen to draw the outline and then created the beams using black paper. We also learnt that windows in 1666 were very expensive because they were made out of lead. As they were so precious, if someone moved house then they would take their widows with them!

After we had created our houses, we used poster paint to experiment with different colour mixing to create the fire. We looked at images of fire and saw that the inside of the fire is much lighter than the outside. We created the fire effect by adding a tiny bit of red to our yellow for each layer of our fire.

We think that you'll agree that the image of the fire that we have created looks great! Imagine what it would be like to be amongst all those burning houses!

Kusama see the sea!

On Wednesday 30th, Kusama had a very exciting trip to Frinton. We had to travel by coach - it felt like a very long journey but we were really excited! We spent the journey playing I-spy to pass the time. The best I-spy was for the letter S......Sea!

When we arrived we rushed to get to the beach. We went on a scavenger hunt to find lots of interesting things like holey rocks and pretty shells and then we made amazing sandcastles. We impressed our teachers by remembering all the facts we'd learnt in our castle topic. Some of us included moats and ramparts in our sandcastles!

We then had our lunch on the steps which was delicious except for the sand in our sandwiches (we finally know why they're called this!!)!

After lunch we had a brilliant time splashing in the sea. We jumped waves and some of us even fell over - we got so wet! We just couldn't stop giggling the whole time, it was great!

We then had some more fun in the sand, adding to our fab sandcastles. Some of us even found some little crabs in some pools of water.

All too soon the trip was over and we were heading home on the coach. What a brilliant day!