Last week in Year 2
Last week, we were learning about nouns in our writing sessions. The children were able to sort common, proper and collective nouns. They also had a go at writing their own.
Next week, we’re moving onto adjectives.
In living and learning, we reminded ourselves about the ‘vampire sneeze’.
This is helping us to keep everyone safe and not spread germs.
In PE, the children have been practicing their dribbling skills. I’ve been impressed with some of the amazing footballers we have in Year 2!
In our history topic, we’re continuing to learn about The Great Fire of London. Come back next week to see what we’ve been finding out!
Habitats
During this week’s science, we were learnt what a habitat is and named a variety of animals in their habitat.
Looking for minibeasts
As a part of our current science topic, we’ve been learning about habitats and micro-habitats. We searched micro-habitats around the school playground to see what we could find!
Living and Learning: 8Rs for learning
In this half term, there has been a focus on the 8Rs for learning.
During one PE session, we focused on showing resilience. The children were set an extremely tricky task of trying to hit a tennis ball into a box from a distance. What made it unexpectedly harder was the wind blowing the boxes around! The children struggled to get the ball into the boxes but never gave up and some eventually managed it.
They all showed great resilience!
One of your five a day
In Reception, Year 1 and 2, the children benefit from the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme, a government programme that entitles every child to a piece of fruit or vegetable each school day.
Fruit and vegetables are key to a healthier lifestyle for all of us and experts recommend that everyone eats at least five portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables in a day.
Eating fruit and vegetables every day helps children and teenagers grow and develop, boosts their vitality and can reduce the risk of many chronic diseases – such as heart disease, high blood pressure, some forms of cancer and being overweight or obese.
The children enjoy a variety of different fruit and vegetables and these all contribute to their 5 a day. We even tried radishes last week!
To ensure no food waste, sometimes the children may bring home a piece of fruit or vegetables. Change 4 life provides more ideas for achieving 5 a day.
If you would prefer, you are welcome to send a snack with your child for playtimes but this should only be fruit or vegetables.
Numbers to 100
In maths, we’ve been learning lots about numbers t0 100. We’re confindent with tens and ones and know how to represent two digit numbers in different ways.
Colour mixing
We used colour mixing to find out about primary and secondary colours.
Living and Learning: 8Rs for learning
For the start of this half-term, our Living and Learning focus is the ‘8 Rs for learning’. This is about promoting good learning behaviour for your child.
In class, the children will focus on different ‘Rs’. We use an animal to symbolise each ‘R’, which might help your child remember all eight – can your child remember which animal matches the correct ‘R’?
You can support your child at home – we’ve listed a few ideas to help you below. Ask us if you’ve any questions or comments.
Download top tips for promoting the 8Rs for good learning behaviour.
Risk taking
Talk about the difference between a safe and unsafe risk. At school, we want your child to take a safe risk by having a go at answering, even if unsure; trying something new and attempting harder learning.
Responsibility
Provide time and space at home so your child is able to organise themselves: their PE kit, reading book, homework, spellings and tables… Don’t organise everything for them!
Make a link between rights and responsibilities: your child has the right to a great education, but needs to be responsible for their own learning.
Responding
This could be responding to their teacher in class or responding to feedback in their learning.
Ready
Make sure your child is at school on time for a prompt start.
Make sure your child has had plenty of sleep so they are alert and ready to learn at all times.
Encourage your child to ask lots of questions – that shows they want to learn!
Resourceful
Encourage your child to be organised so they can play with a range of different toys.
Encourage your child to try new ways to solve a tricky problem.
Resilience
Encourage your child to keep going! Set a tricky challenge or puzzle for your child to do.
Encourage your child to think of different ways of doing things.
Don’t let your child win when they play a game – they need to experience losing, too!
Celebrate mistakes as opportunities to learn – be happy that your child found some learning hard and encourage them to ‘bounce back’ and learn from the experience.
Relate this ‘R’ to Humpty Dumpty and our current whole school topic, After the Fall.
Remember
Make sure they have time to learn spellings, number bonds and times tables – a little practice daily is best.
Play memory games:
Kim’s game: show them objects for 30 seconds… can they remember all the objects?
Can they build up the sequence, ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple’… ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple and a bike.’… ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple, a bike and a cucumber.’ etc … Take turns!
Reflect
Talk with your child about what they’ve learnt, asking questions about how they learnt, why they learnt it, when they’ll use their learning, how they would teach this to someone else, what learning might link with what they’ve learnt today…
This week, children will have the opportunity to not only reflect on their learning in general but also reflect on how the 8Rs supports their learning.
Of course, these characteristics are referred to throughout the year across all subjects to promote good learning behaviour.
Tennis
Take a look at a few photos from our latest Tennis session.
As you can see, the children are trying really hard to watch the ball onto their racket. The children have been working independently to improve their hand eye coordination. They are trying to position their body and read where the ball is bouncing before striking it again into the air. Soon, the children will move onto playing in pairs to test out these skills with a partner.
Welcome back!
Hello everyone!
What a first two weeks it has been! All the children have settled back into school life brilliantly. I have been really impressed to see how the children have adapted to the ‘new normal’ in school.
Here’s a little bit about our plans for the next few weeks…
In maths, we’re beginning with place value and looking at numbers to 100. We are recapping some of the learning from Year One, to make sure that everyone is confident before moving on to the trickier Year Two skills.
Starting at any given number, support your child at home by counting forwards and backwards within 100. Also, give them a number and ask them to tell you how many tens and ones the number is made up of.
In writing, we’re looking at sentence structure. Again, we’re recapping on Year One learning to begin with. This will help the children become confident writers, for when we begin to write our own short narratives, recounts and diary extracts.
Support your child at home by asking them to write sentences using varied punctuation, including full stops, question marks and exclamation marks.
In reading, we’re using our whole school novel ‘After the Fall’. In Year Two, we practice reading in a variety of ways. We have daily phonics and fluency (ask your child what this is) sessions, one-to-one reading and lessons that teach skills such as RIC (retrieval, interpret and choice).
Please read at home as much as you can. Look out in the coming days for your child’s home reading book. Reading this as much as possible at home, will help build up your child’s fluency.
In topic, we will use the book ‘After the Fall’ as a stimulus which will inspire lots of artwork. The children will take part in sketching, painting and collaging.
