27.03.20

I hope you’re all well and staying safe at home. I just wanted to let you all know that I’ve been thinking about you all through the week and I hope you’re managing well with your home learning packs. I also hope that you’re helping out around the house as much as you can and that you’ve managed to have a little bit of time outside if you’re lucky enough to have a garden to play in.

I just wanted to leave this poem here to hopefully make you worry a little less.

Dear Year 2

Our school is closed just for a while,

But our learning will not stop, just change in style.

There’s a very nasty virus which we don’t want you to get,

So it’s best to stay at home but try not to be upset.

It’s okay if you feel a little scared or sad,

It’s hard when things are different, but not everything is bad.

I will be at my house and you will be at yours,

You will carry on with learning and play and help with chores.

Be sure to write a timetable of what to do each day,

Include our maths and English tasks and don’t forget to play.

Whilst many things are changing, some things will stay the same,

I am still your teacher and Year Two is our class name.

We’ll help support each other and keep in touch for sure,

Once everything is safe again, we’ll run back through the door.

We’ll be back with our friends again at school and parties too,

But whilst things are different, I’ll send you lots to do.

With love,

Miss Kane

20.03.20

Year Two have been amazing this week. Through uncertain times around us, they have remained positive and resilient. I have seen children checking in with others and asking some really powerful questions. Everyone has continued to work hard, putting 100% effort into their learning. For that – well done!

We have had daily circle time this week to ensure that children are able to talk about these worries but also offering support for others.

We are fully in the routine of washing our hands regularly and earlier on in the week, we conducted a little experiment to see the effect that soap has on germs. We used pepper to act as the germs and children could see that once we touched it, we were covered in germs. By putting some soap on our hands, this then cleared the germs away.

On Thursday, we went out into the forest school area and worked in groups to create our own dens. I saw excellent creativity, imagination and, most importantly, teamwork. Afterwards, we sat around the campfire and sang some songs. What a great afternoon!

For those children and families who will be off school from next week, I hope you remain well. Please check our home learning page on the school website to stay informed on the tasks you should be working on.

You have all worked incredibly hard this year and I look forward to us all being back together again.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all Year 2 families for your continued support this year so far.

Miss Kane

13.03.20

This week in maths we have been continuing our work on shape. We started the week by finding patterns using 2D shapes, before moving onto 3D shapes and their properties later on in the week. On Wednesday, we created our own 3D shapes and needed to be incredibly resilient to find the best methods to create the structure.

Our PE lessons continued this week with Charlie. We were practising our dribbling skills and ended the lesson with a cool-down by playing Sleeping Lions.

I have been incredibly impressed with the children’s writing this week. They have all worked so hard to produce a first person narrative from the perspective of Plop, the barn owl who was afraid of the dark. Well done Year 2!

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Kane

06.03.20

This week in maths, we have been exploring 2D shapes and identifying properties, including sides, vertices and lines of symmetry. On Monday, we made our own 2D shapes and explored which shapes we could make and which shapes we couldn’t. Why couldn’t we make a circle?

We started our new RE unit this week. This half-term we are looking at the theme of forgiveness. We started the unit by reading the story of the Last Supper. We then created our own spiritual art, thinking about Luke’s Gospel and the Bible quote, “This is my body, take it and eat it. Do this in memory of me.” We also listened to and learned the words to the hymn, “This is my body”.

On Wednesday, we visited the library to take part on our first Lenten Reflection of this Lent season.

Thank you to everyone who came to our ‘Breakfast with a Book’ on World Book Day. It was fantastic to see so many of you there. The children’s costumes were fantastic and we had a great day exploring the wordless picture book, ‘Tuesday’ by David Wiesner.

Have a great weekend!

Miss Kane

28.02.20

Welcome back everyone!

I hope you have all had a wonderful and restful half-term.

This week in English, we have been exploring poetry to describe settings. On Monday, we explored some well-known poems and nursery rhymes and created actions to perform these to the rest of the class. We also listened to a selection of pop-songs about the stars, the moon and the night to explore similes and metaphors. Using what we had learned, we then wrote our own descriptive poems about the night and published these for our class poetry book.

On Tuesday, to begin our new geography unit, we went on a local area walk to identify some of the human geographical features around us. Who can remember what some of these were?

Thank you to all of our parent helpers who gave up their time to come along with us.

We have also started our new PE unit with Charlie from NUFC. This half-term, we will be developing our football skills. Whenever possible, we will be outside so please ensure children have correct outdoor PE kit to ensure they stay warm. This week we were practising our passing skills, using the inside of our foot and using our other foot as a ‘sat-nav’ to ensure the ball reached our target.

We had a visit from Father Bill on Wednesday who came to perform a small mass for Ash Wednesday. With Mrs Higgins’ help, we got ashes on our head as we thought about the time that Jesus spent in the desert. We spent some time discussing the things that we would give up between now and Easter.

Don’t forget that next week is World Book Day. I can’t wait to see your costumes on Thursday 5th March and hope that many of you are able to join us for Breakfast with a Book before school.

Have a lovely weekend.

Miss Kane

14.02.20

Happy Valentines and Happy Half Term!

We are half way through Year 2 now and we’ve had a great term 🙂

This week in English, we have continued using the wordless picture book, ‘Quest’, as a stimulus to write our own stories. On Monday, we worked in pairs to generate descriptive vocabulary that we could use in our writing later in the week.

We had our last tennis lesson with Charlie from NUFC. We used our skills in a selection of games and I was really impressed at how much the children’s confidence and skill level have improved. Next half-term, we will be developing our skills in football. We will try to get outside as much as we can so please ensure children have a hat, scarf and gloves to keep warm.

In art this week, we finished off our unit on famous artists, by making comparisons between the work of Vincent Van Gogh and Picasso. The children could remember lots of the names of different pieces of art and I know Mrs Clasper has loved teaching Year 2 on a Wednesday afternoon and seeing their wonderful artwork develop.

Year 2 won the Super Mathlete award in our celebration assembly this afternoon, beating all of the other classes! What a huge achievement…well done everyone!

Thank you for all of the donations of cakes for our Valentines Coffee Afternoon!

Have a wonderful half-term break and I can’t wait to see you all after the holidays!

Miss Kane

07.02.20

We’ve had a busy week in Year 2 this week!

On Wednesday, we went on our Healthy Active Lifestyle trip to Walker Dome. When we were there, we took part in lots of different challenges throughout the morning. The children were an absolute credit to themselves and the school and they showed excellent determination and resilience. The way that they cheered each other on was fantastic. Mrs Nealings even came to see us and give us all a Head Teacher’s sticker for our excellent behaviour and attitude. Well done Year 2!

Thank you to everyone who brought in pictures for our science lesson this week. It really helped the children to observe the changes that have happened to them from being a baby, to a toddler and now as a child. They were able to think about the physical changes as well as the changes in what they were able to do at different points of their lives.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Miss Kane

31.01.20

It’s the end of January! It’s also the day that the UK leaves the European Union. We used our RHE lesson this afternoon to explore what this means. We watched a video on Newsround and had some very thoughtful discussions, exploring what this means for the UK. We decided that if we were old enough and had the choice to leave or stay, we would stay in the European Union. 28 children voted to remain and 2 children voted to leave.

Earlier on in the week, we began our new maths unit, where we have been learning to tell the time. We have been practising making times on our clocks, telling the time and drawing the hands on blank clock faces. We can all tell the time to the O’Clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to. We found 5 minute intervals a bit tricky so we will practise this more next week.

In our history lessons, we have been learning about the Space Race and this week we were exploring historical sources. We had to look at a selection of evidence about the moon landing and decide if it is was evidence that it happened or evidence that it was faked. We had some excellent discussions but we all decided that the evidence ‘for’ outweighed the evidence ‘against’.

This week also marked the end of our RE unit on ‘Books’. During this unit, we have been learning about the books that are important to the Church and the parish community. Nyrel, Indi and Zaara helped to plan a lovely class liturgy.

Have a lovely weekend and I’ll see you all next month!

Miss Kane

24.01.20

We are half-way through this half-term already and this week we’ve been developing our understanding of halves, quarters and thirds! If we’ve just finished week 3, how many weeks do we have left of this half-term?

On Monday, we began to look at explanation texts. We worked together to find some of the key features. Who can remember some of them?

On Tuesday, we had our first tennis lesson with Charlie. First, we were shown how to hold the tennis racket correctly and then we had to try to balance the ball on the racket, trying really hard to keep it in the centre. Once we mastered this, we began to travel with the ball and then we practised flicking the ball up and catching it on our rackets.

On Thursday, in music, we continued to learn more about the woodwind family. This week, we all got to practise playing the recorder. We learned how to hold it correctly and the names of the three parts of the recorder (the mouth piece, the body and the footjoint. We learned how to play the note of B by holding our finger over the first hole.

On Friday, we spent some time in our house groups to celebrate Chinese New Year.

Have a great weekend,

Miss Kane.

17.01.20

This week we have been developing our understanding of fractions. We started the week by using cubes to find fractions of sets. Over the course of the week, we have learned how to find 1/2, 1/4 and 1/3 of shapes, sets and numbers. We now know that when we are finding a unit fraction, we have to divide by the denominator! What a long word to learn!

In English, we have been reading ‘The Tunnel’ by Anthony Browne. This week, we have been working on adventurous vocabulary choices and up-levelling sentences, ready to write our diary entry in the role of Jack.

On Thursday, we had a visit from Ms Owens, who came to show us the flute and she also played us some different tunes. She explained to us that the flute plays the tune in an orchestra.

On Friday, we had a visit from Father Bill who came to show us a selection of special books that are used by the Church and the Parish during services.

We also had a visit from Yvonne who came to talk to us about road safety and how we can keep ourselves safe when we are walking, scooting or cycling out and about. She also talked to us about the importance of staying safe while we are in the car and ensuring we have the correct seat so our seatbelt fastens safely. If we are less than 1m 35cm, we must, by law, still have a booster seat.

Have a lovely weekend Year 2!

Miss Kane