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

In year 2 this week we have been very busy with our learning across many subjects. 

We have been celebrating The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Learning all about Queen Elizabeth and how she ascended to the throne. We designed and made our own crowns and wore them during our jubilee picnic. Mrs Price held a special assembly commemorating the Queen and picked a child with an amazing crown to come and be coronated! 

We have been busy in writing this week focusing on colour themed poetry, learning how to describe colours through our senses. To help us with this, we had an experience day, where we went into different classrooms each themed with its own colour, upon entering each room we immersed ourselves into the colour - thinking about how the colour made us feel, how it felt and describing the other senses which we were then able to use for our poetry writing.

In our religious and world views lessons we have been learning all about Islam, with this terms focus being on Ramadan and the five pillars of Islam. We learned what these pillars were and why they are important to Muslim people. We then thought about rules important to us and imagined making our own five fundamental pillars that would help us to become better people. 

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 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

Over the last few weeks, Attenborough and Greta Class have been busy rehearsing for their production of Fire Fire, which will bring all their learning about the Great Fire of London to life in a memorable event. We have been so impressed with how well the children have learnt their lines of dialogue and lyrics in only a short period of time. They are rehearsing with confidence and flair and they are very excited to perform it next week! 

English:

In our English lessons, we've been writing instructions on how to wash a pet rat. We looked at pictures and videos to learn about what rats look like and how they move and we used drama to imagine the steps that we would take to wash our rat. We created a class plan and thought about the language we would need to use.

First we put on our protective clothing. We thought we’d need a flea-proof suit, a bite-proof mask and some thick gloves. Then we tried different ways of catching the rat. We thought the best way was using food and a cage. We imagined our partner’s hands were the rat's paws and filed its nails and polished them with an ear bud. We used a cloth and soapy water to wash the rat’s fur and a brush to comb it. Finally we cleaned the rat's teeth with a toothbrush. We were careful not to get bitten!

After we'd created a plan, we put all the writing skills we'd been learning over the last few weeks into practice and wrote our own set of instructions independently. We all worked really hard! 

Maths:

In Maths, we've been learning about money, including coin values, addition with money and finding the difference. We used Cuisenaire rods to help understand the concept of finding the difference.

Science:

In Science, we've been learning about how regular exercise helps us to stay fit and healthy and the impact exercise has on our bodies, from strengthening our bones and muscles, to boosting our energy levels, to increasing our heart rate. We also learnt that our bodies need lots of sleep and rest in order to grow and repair. 

Year 2 newsletter

This week it is UK Parliament Week which is a celebration of people power – everyone to have their own voice. We looked at individual liberty. Individual liberty means each of us having the freedom to make our own choices and do what we want - within reason. We must respect the rights of others.

We had a class debate to exercise our right to individual liberty. The debate statement was: "Animals should be set free from zoos."

First we decided whether we agreed or disagreed and we discussed our ideas with people who shared the
same opinion as us. We were very passionate!

Each side took it in turns to share their opinion, either with a new idea or building on an idea from the person before. We were all reflective, open minded and listened carefully to what others said. Everyone was able to communicate their ideas clearly and coherently.

 

No:

No! Zoos are good for protecting animals. It means we can keep all the endangered animals safe from poachers.

I disagree because if we let all the animals go back to their homes they wouldn’t actually have anywhere to go to as their habitats are being destroyed.

Yes:

I agree because animals should be able to individual liberty like people. It’s not fair that they don’t get to choose where the live.

Yes, I think they should. The zoo keepers choose their lunch every day and I would hate that. They might even like the food that they’re given. They should be able to catch their own food.

In Science, the children have been learning about the importance of  exercise and how exercising daily helps us stay strong and healthy. We learnt how to measure our pulse by placing two fingers on our wrist, neck or temple. It was tricky to feel it, so we had to sit very still and quiet. We measured our resting heart rate and then predicted whether our heart rate would increase, decrease or stay the same after walking and running on the spot. We completed the experiment and concluded that exercise increases our heart rate and therefore strengthens our heart muscle.