Summer 1 Term

Welcome to Summer term! We cannot believe that Summer is fast approaching already. Year 2 have made so much progress since they started with us in September and we are so proud of what they have achieved. Let us fill you in on what the children have been getting up to this term.

This half term, we have been using our text driver Paddington goes to London to write a narrative about his adventures. We have been focussing on handwriting to make sure our letters are all correctly formed and our letters are correctly placed on the line. We have also been looking at using the suffixes -ment and -ness to create adjectives that we can use to describe Paddington’s adventure. We have also learnt about apostrophes for possession. This skill has been quite tricky but we’ve all done really well at trying to apply this to our independent work.

In maths, the children have been focussing on multiplication and division. We have looked at arrays and using practical objects to share. This has moved on to recording our working using pictures and some of us our now so confident with our 2s, 5s and 10s times tables that we can solve these problems mentally! We have also started to have a look at the TT Rockstars programme to get us ready for KS2. The children have really enjoyed practising their skills and even challenging each other to a battle when they feel ready.

In science, the children have been studying the big question ‘How do objects move?’. Year 2 have really been enjoying this unit so far and have completed a number of investigations to test whether the amount of force we apply to something creates a greater amount of motion. We have learnt that there are two different types of forces which are pushes and pulls. A push moves something away from us and a pull brings something towards us. The children really enjoyed using ramps with different textures to see how this affected the force they applied to their objects. We also looked at nature to see what forces we could see in the natural world.

In music, we have been creating digital music using the iPad. We started by exploring the different feature of chrome music lab and learnt about the difference between rhythm and beat. We then created our own rhythm to represent an animal of our choice. We thought about how our animal would move and adjusted the tempo of our music to reflect this. We then shared this with our partner and explored how successful we had been at creating a piece of music that matched our animal.

In RE, the children have been learning about special food. We began by discussing the food that was special to us and what made it special. We then looked at the special food of Christianity and Hindu’s and compared them. It was really interesting to find out what different religions special food was and why. We then discussed why it is important for different faiths to have their own special food.

Finally, in art we have had a really fantastic unit based around using clay. I promise we are not exaggerating when say that we have a lot of budding artists in Year 2. Our unit started by exploring clay. What shapes could we make? How could we shape it? We then used this knowledge to make a clay pot which we decorated. We practised using the score and slip method of joining decoration to our pots before designing and creating a clay tile of a house which combined all our skills. Hopefully you will see them all make their way home to you in the next couple of weeks!

Thank you for reading and we look forward to enjoying the rest of the summer term.

Spring 2 Term

We can’t believe it is already getting very close to the end of the term! The weather is finally starting to warm up and Year 2 have had a brilliant term so far and have made a lot of good progress. 

In maths, we have been working on adding and subtracting a 1- digit number from a 2-digit using number lines. We have used our number bonds knowledge to partition the number we are adding and subtracting to help us jump to the nearest 10. We have been practising this daily and are now getting rather good! In addition to this we have looked at telling the time to o’clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to the hour. Our teachers have been very impressed with how well we retained our knowledge from Year 1. Next, we are going to be looking at comparing and ordering mass. We will be weighing lots of different items as part of this so it should be a fun and practical session.

In English, we have been studying our new texts all about butterflies. We have learnt about the life cycle of a butterfly and why there are so valuable. We are going to write persuasive letters to Miss Jackson in the hope that she will buy us our very own caterpillars so we can watch them grow and change. The skills we will be trying to put into our letters will be: 

• Using the coordinating conjunction ‘and’
• Using the subordinating conjunctions ‘because’ and ‘when’
• Making sure our upper-case and lower-case letters are of the correct size
• Knowing and using the correct homophones their, they’re and there
• Knowing and use the correct near homophones ‘where’ or ‘were’ and ‘are’ or ‘our’.

Our history unit this half term has been all about answering the key question – How did humans learn to fly? We have looked at the first flight by the Wright Brothers in 1903 and how this has inspired humans to study flying ever since. We have looked at significant individuals such as Amelia Earheart and Bessie Coleman and have had to make a decision on whether or not we think the space landing was a significant event. 

In RE we have been looking at the concept of belief and linking it to the Christian festival of Easter. We have looked at the key events that happen in the Easter celebration and how they link to Christian beliefs. We have also looked at the concept of belief and explained what it means to us. 

Finally, in PSHE, we have spent the last couple of weeks looking at internet safety with a focus on image sharing and using computers safely. We were very impressed with how much the children knew about internet safety and what information they could and could not share online. 

I know this is just a snapshot of all the things we have been up to but we hope you have enjoyed reading it. We hope you have a wonderful Easter break with your family when it comes.