Connect Challenge
Today, the whole school completed our Connect Challenge, in memory of Rob Burrow, by running walking or skipping seven laps of the back playground and the green. All the children gave 100% and were even asking to do extra laps. It was a great active morning!
Thank you for your donations so far. You can still donate on Gateway until the end of the week with money raised to be split between the Rob Burrow Centre for Motor Neurone Disease Appeal and our school charity, The Children’s Heart Surgery Fund.
Watch us while we work
Thank you to those parents who were able to join us for our watch us while we work session this week. It was lovely to see so many.
Here’s a summary of what we covered and how we are encouraging the children to become more responsible for their learning at home.
Spellings – use the spelling guide for ideas to help with learning weekly spellings.
Sentence practice – use a picture as a stimulus for writing sentences including asking questions about what they can see.
Daily reading – we thought about some of the reading skills the children are learning in Year 2 (fluency, prosody (using expression in their voices), retrieval, interpret and learning new vocabulary). Reading needs to happen daily to build up these skills. A brief note in their reading record books is needed after reading at home. We will continue to monitor the use of e-books at home. Please alert us to any access issues.
Maths – our number tennis games included counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and number bonds to 10 and 20. Play these when you’re in the car, walking to school or making breakfast. Hit the Button is a great online game to build up the recall of these facts.
Numbots certificates are awarded every Tuesday and it’s great to see children already achieving their next levels in Year 2.
Finally, here’s the help at home section of the website.
Please get in touch if you need any further support with your child’s learning at home.
PE – Castles and Cannonballs
We are really enjoying our PE lessons this half term. We are learning a new game – Castles and Cannonballs. We are practising our fundamental movement skills by throwing balls, aiming and working collaboratively in a group. Over the next few weeks, we are going to change and adapt the game; adding different rules, using different equipment and using different parts of our body
Connect Challenge Wednesday 02 October
What is it?
The Connect Challenge is in memory of Rob Burrow CBE. It involves a rugby ball being ‘passed’ between local schools and each school taking part in a physical activity event.
When is it?
The challenge will run from Thursday 26 September, (Rob’s birthday) until Thursday 3 October. Our event is in the morning of Wednesday 2nd October.
Why are we remembering Rob?
Rob Burrow CBE sadly died on 2 June 2024, four and a half years after he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Throughout that time, Rob and his family bravely chose to publicly share their MND journey to raise awareness of the disease.
What is our Connect Challenge?
We will complete seven (Rob’s rugby shirt number) laps of the green and the back playground by travelling in different ways – walking, jogging or skipping. Children should come to school in outdoor PE kit on the day.
We will be raising money at the event, to be split between the Rob Burrow Centre for Motor Neurone Disease Appeal and our school charity, The Children’s Heart Surgery Fund.
We request a donation of at least £1. This can be paid online via school gateway.
Help at home: discuss this challenge at home and the reasons why we are remembering Rob. This challenge is also about friendship. Rob’s ex team mate and friend Kevin Sinfield has now raised over £8 million for MND charities. Ask your child how can they be a better friend?
Living and Learning: Manners
Manners are words and actions that we can do to help us be kind and respectful to others. Good manners help us to get on well with others.
We thought about examples of good manners and we did some role play to model these good manners.
We linked our daily poem and our reading fluency text to manners to reinforce this important aspect of Living and Learning.
Help at home: reinforce this message about using good manners at home as well as at school. Encourage your child to greet the adults on the gate as they arrive at school.
Also, have a go at this manners quiz to check your child’s understanding.
History: The Great Fire of London
In year 2, we have started out History topic and we are learning all about The Great Fire of London. We are using a book, Vlad and the Great Fire of London, to stimulate our learning. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.)
We have started by talking about the topic vocabulary, which you can see below. Help your child at home by exploring the information on the BBC bitesize website.
Autumn term clubs
Handwriting and spelling
In Year 2, in preparation for joining their letters, we are beginning to teach the children cursive handwriting.
This handwriting guide, which the children have brought home this week, shows the order in which we will be practising these letters.
Well done to Seerat who has already had a go at writing the alphabet using cursive handwriting at home.
Also, in addition to the weekly spellings, we have been checking the children’s spelling of the tricky words from Year 1. These are words that are commonly used in writing but you can’t always your phonics knowledge to help to spell them.
The children will be bringing this learning home so you can see which of these words they need to work on. Putting these words in sentences would be great practice to do at home.
Any questions, please do come and ask us.
Help at home: use these prompts to ask your child what we have been learning so far in Year 2.
Living and Learning: rules
At the start of the new school year, in our Living and Learning lesson, the children have been reminded about rules and the importance of rules in our daily life. This also links to the British Value of rule of law.
Before focussing on our school rules, we started by thinking about…
Why do we have rules?
What rules can you think of?
What places have rules?
Who makes the rules?
Rules tells us what to do.
We need rules so we don’t hurt each other.
Rules help us to know what is right and what is wrong.
Rules help us to be happy and healthy.
Our reading fluency text for this week was all about rules too.
In our school we have three school rules.
Three, two, one, stop is one of the most important instructions the children will hear at school.
Following our school rules will make our school a happy, healthy and SAFE place to learn.
We also agreed our Living and Learning ground rules.
Next week, we will be thinking about our rules about online safety at school. Your child will bring home their Being online – acceptable use agreement for pupils and parents/carers which should be read through, signed and returned to class.
Any questions, please do ask.
Help at home – think about our three school rules and talk with your child about what that might look like or sound like in the classroom, the playground or at lunchtime. Here are some examples the children thought of. Being ready would mean looking at the speaker, being respectful would mean laughing with not laughing at someone and being safe would mean washing our hands before lunch to stop spreading germs.
School Games Mark Platinum award
We are delighted to announce that we have achieved the School Games Platinum Mark Award for the 2023/24 academic year.
The School Games Mark is a Government-led award scheme launched in 2012, facilitated by the Youth Sport Trust, to reward schools for their commitment to the development of competition across their school and into the community, and we are delighted to have been recognised for our success.
As part of our application, we were asked to fulfil criteria in the areas of participation, competition, workforce and clubs, and we are pleased that the hard work of everyone at our school has been rewarded this year.
Thank you to all the children who have represented school at different inter school events and competitions, parents for their support and staff for accompanying the children. We look forward to more events this year.
We are very proud of our children for engaging with these physical activities both in and out of school to support our ethos of being a happy and healthy school.
