Welcome to Seahorse Class

Week 1 completed and the children have been fantastic. We are so impressed with how the children have settled so quickly in to Year 2 routine and it is great seeing lots of smiley faces.

This week in maths we have been exploring the vast number of ways a number can be represented and shown. The children showed fantastic recall when they used concrete resources such as Numicon, multi link, pegs, and beads to represent specific numbers. They were also able to use different methods such as using a whole part model, bar models, and number lines show how a variety of ways that numbers can be combined to make numbers.

English - Dear Teacher

This week the children have enjoyed using their imagination to show off their writing skills. Using the story Dear Teacher by Amy Husband as a stimulus; the children invented secret agent gadgets - labelling and writing instructions on how to use them, created a disgusting recipe, created lists for a round the world trip and created a superhero story about themselves.

Geography - Catherington and Portsmouth

For their first geography topic, the children built on their learning from Year 1 to locate our village of Catherington and the city of Portsmouth. The children were able to tell us that we lived in England which is part of the United Kingdom. The children were able to locate the UK on a world map and locate the general vicinity of Catherington and Portsmouth on a map of the UK. Due to a technical issue we were unable to use Google maps to place ourselves in the map so we did the next best thing and created our very own United Kingdom on the playground for children to show where we live.

Computing - What is ICT?

This week the children explored what is actually meant when we talk about ICT. The children agreed that it was something that had a computer in it or something that could be connected to a computer. The children were then set the task of coming up with as many examples of "ICT" and "Not ICT".

Week 2 - In full swing!

Phonics - alternative pronunciation and contractions

At the start of the week the children were set the challenge of reading words and sorting them in to groups based on the different pronunciation of the letters "i, o, c, and g". We also looked at how an apostrophe is used to replace certain letters in contracted words and where we put an apostrophe when spelling contractions. 

English - Dougal's Deep Sea Diary - writing journal

This week we started our first writing journal with the book Dougal's Deep Sea Diary. We have focussed on sentence structure this week - remembering the basics of using a capital letter, word/finger spaces, and using a full stop correctly. The children were set the challenge of sequencing the stories main events in the right order and through the use of the most powerful adjectives they could find and write how Dougal felt each day. We then took this further by looking at the illustration of Atlantis and creating a list of expanded nouns to describe what Dougal saw.

Science - Longitudinal study - local environment and life

Over the last two weeks we have been debating what all living things need to survive. Eventually, we all agreed that to survive they oxygen, food, water, and shelter. We investigated the pond and our field to find evidence that supported our thinking. We were amazed at how much we found / noticed!!!

DT- Wheels and Axles

Isn't it annoying when you have something really heavy, that is hard to carry, and you need to move it from one place to another? What could you use? "A trolley, a wheel barrow". What do both of these have in common? They have at least one wheel and an axle. We have found out that it can be really annoying trying to move our table guides and stationary from one end of the table to another - you have to keep getting up and walking down to the other end. We then thought that it would be a great idea to invent something that could move across the table for us!! This has led us to explore everything that moves and discover the importance of wheels and axels. This week the children experimented to see if the length / material of the axle made a difference to how wheels move as well as where the axle is joined to the wheel.

Week 3

Phonics

This week in phonics the children continued to look at alternative grapheme pronunciations focussing on the graphemes "u", "a", "ow", and "ie". We also looked at homographs and how some words can have more than one meaning.

Maths - Number and place value - tens and ones

This week in maths we have been focussing on the different values of 2-digit numbers and how each number is made into either a value of ten or a value of one. We then took this further by counting on and counting back in tens from any given number.

Computing - ICT inside and out

Following on from last weeks investigation of ICT in and around our homes and school, we looked out and about to discover how much ICT is around us and how it helps us. The children looked at a town scene - inside and outside a shop and sorted where they would find different pieces of ICT equipment and discussed how it was used.

English - Features of a postcard

In the story of Dougal's deep sea diary, Dougal sends a postcard to his cousin Bob. This got us thinking about how postcards are used and their features. The children explored exclamatory sentences to show feeling and the use of expanded noun phrases to add more detail. We looked at postcards and identified all the different features we recognised in preparation of writing our own postcards next week.

Week 4

Phonics - Alternative pronunciation of known graphemes.

This week the children have been reminding themselves of phonemes and digraphs they have previously learnt and learnt their alternative pronunciations. The children read and sorted words with the sounds "ea", and "er",

Computing - ICT in and around our school

Following on from our exploration of what ICT is, we went on a scavenger hunt to find examples of ICT around us.

Geography - human and natural features

Over the past two weeks the children have been exploring the human and physical feature that make up the village of Catherington and the city of Portsmouth.

English - publishing postcards

This week the children have worked so hard planning, writing, editing, and finally publishing their postcards from Dougal in Atlantis. Their final pieces were fantastic. 

DT - Chassis

This week the children have been learning about chassis and how wheels and axles can be joined in different ways to enable vehicles to moves.

Week 5

English - Under the sea adjectives and adverbs

This week in English we have looked at how adjectives and adverbs can be used to create descriptive pieces of writing. The children looked at different creatures found under the sea and created word adjectives and adverb word banks before using these to create their own descriptive sentences.

PSHE - How we make others feel

This week the children have been thinking about how they react when they are in different types of moods and more importantly how this can impact on others and change how they are feeling. The children read and performed a short play and discussed how each of the characters felt throughout and what changes could be made to make other people feel happier.

Music - soundscapes

Following on from creating vocal and body percussion to sea chants, the children this week have been looking at "texture" and how layers are used to create a feel for a piece of music. The children were so good at this that not only could they follow a soundscape, they were even able to create their own.

Week 6

Maths - cm measurement

This week in maths we have been learning how to measure things accurately by using rulers and measuring objects to see how many centimetres long or tall they were. Then we used our greater than and less than knowledge to order objects from shortest to longest. The children then helped Mr Dickenson with his wool shop by sorting out prices for lengths of wool that were being charged at 1p per cm. 

DT - Building table travellers

This week we used our research and designs to build our very own table travellers. It was really interesting to watch the children evaluate their prototypes throughout the making process by making alterations to make their table travellers as successful for purpose as possible.

Science - Plants

Having explored that seeds can be found in a variety of different fruits and come in all different shapes and sizes, we looked at how the seeds can be dispersed to enable them to fertilize. The children had a selection of common seed pods and had to decide whether or not they dispersed by floating, being blown, being eaten, exploded, or sticking to other objects.

Music - Sea soundscapes

Having created their own soundscapes last week, the children experimented using different instruments to create to create the right sounds to create their own compositions.

Week 7 - Seahorse Class Assembly

The children were superstars and did brilliantly when having their sections of our assembly filmed. Please see below. 

English - Performing poetry

This week the children have been practising and rehearsing reading their own poems they created inspired from Commotion in the Ocean.