Welcome back

We were so impressed with how well the children have settled straight in to Year 2. During the first couple of days we have been familiarising ourselves with Year 2 routines and reminding ourselves of our values and expectations.

Week 1

Our first full week back, and we are now in full swing. The children have had an amazing week this week. Here are some of our highlights.

Maths

The children enjoyed showing their place value knowledge this week through ordering numbers, showing greater and less than numbers and working out missing numbers on a number line.

PE - Gymnastics

This week the children reviewed how they use their bodies to jump and land safely and the importance of having soft knees. They got to use the apparatus to practise their high and low travelling and creating freeze positions with different high and low body parts.

Rocksteady

On Thursday Rocksteady visited and shared with us what they do and some of the children got to perform in from of the whole school.

Science - Animal lifecycles

This week, the children explored answering two big questions – "What does it mean to be born?"  and "Do bigger animals have more babies?" To help them answer these questions, the children sorted pictures of animals and their offspring into two categories – "Look like their adults" and "Do not look like their adult." 

Week 4

English - Adverbs

This week the children worked on creating sentences using adverbs to help them describe what their chosen sea creatures were doing. We explored the different spelling rules we have to use when we want to change an adjective into an adverb by adding the suffix "ly".

 PE - Gymnastics

This week in PE, the children developed using high and low body parts by completing relay races before exploring different ways of travelling where they shifted their body weight from their feet to their hands. This led to them exploring bunny hops, horse kicks and rolls.

 Science - growing

This week the children explored the questions "when do we stop growing?" and "why do we stop growing?" After lots of discussion, it was agreed that all living things grow until they are big enough to protect themselves and others. We also discussed why we stop growing. Agreeing that living things wouldn't be able to survive if they kept on growing as they would be too big. We then created a chart to record all of Sycamore class's height and age and discussed what it showed us. 

RE - Creation

This week in RE, we explored the meaning of the word "creation". The children started by "creating" something using Lego on their tables. We then went outside and did a scavenger hunt looking for anything that was "created" before coming together as a class and sharing our thoughts about what "creation" means and how it is okay that we came up with lots of different explanations and ideas.

Week 5

Music

This week the children focussed on structure by listening to the “Storm” Interlude from Peter Grimes. The children listened to the music and created their own pictures based on how the music made them feel and what they imagined.

PE

High and low body parts

This week the children explored travelling with different parts of their bodies being the highest part. Different parts of the body were selected and assigned to a number on the die and the children worked on linking their movements with smooth transitions.

RE

The Hindu Creation Story

This week the children developed their understanding of "creation" by learning about the Hindu creation story. The children watched the story before taking on the challenge of sequencing the pictures in the right order. The children then chose parts of the story they liked and thought were importantant, recreated the picture and shared why they had chosen their selected pictures.

English

Performing Poetry

This week the children edited and published their poems based on our book Comotion in the Ocean. The children listened to Joseph Coelho talk about how to emphasise key words for effect and different ways they might choose to perform their own poems.  

Week 6

Maths - Measurement

This week the children developed their knowledge of measurement by helping Miss White set up her wool shop "Wooly Whites". The children had to use their knowledge of greater than and less than symbols to order the different lengths of wool before using rulers and the metric unit of centimetres to measure each length of wool accurately.

Science - Do bigger animals have longer lives?

This was the question the children investigated this week. We look at a timeline and plotted where some of our pets had lived upto before comparing and sorting different animals according to how long we thought their lifespans were.

English - Tidy

This week we started our next writing journey focussing on looking after our environment - Tidy by Emily Gravett. This week the children focussed on thinking about different viewpoints by taking on roles of different characters and orally rehearsing inner thoughts and writing sentences.

Geography - Portmouth City field trip

On Wednesday we got on a train and went into the city to get first hand experience of identifying physical and human features that make up a city and make Portsmouth City unique.

DT - Making our pencil pot carriers

This week we put our knowledge of wheels and axles into practise by using our designs to actually make our carriers.

Week 7

English

This week the children identified and recognised features of an apology letter which they then used to set up success criterias to help them plan, edit and publish their own apology letters as Pete the badger.

Geography - Plastic pollution

This week was our themed week on the impact of plastic pollution on our environment and world. The children did research and then created posters to promote stopping the plastic pollution. They then resused recycable material to produce sea creature sculptures.

Year 2 Class Assembly

On Thursday the children showed what amazing superstars they are when they stood up and shared what we have been learning this half term. Well done to everyone. You showed great courage and were brilliant.