Year 2 w/b 26th February
Date: 1st Mar 2024 @ 4:21pm
It has been wonderful to welcome the children back to school this week; I hope that you enjoyed a lovely break.
This week we had an unusual discovery: some tiny, muddy footprints leading across our tables and up our windows. We noticed that the footprints led to our pond area, where we found some unusual signs. One was pointing to ‘Bluebell Wood’ and another read ‘Do not enter unless you can keep a secret…’. We made some predictions about the creature who may have left these footprints, using ‘because’ to explain our thinking. We then received a description of the creature. We used our inference skills to draw a picture of what we thought the creature may look like, based on this description. The next day, the creature was finally revealed. It was a…Bog Baby! After this, we explored some of the new vocabulary in the story and used a dictionary to find definitions.
Our first spelling rule this week was the ‘igh’ sound spelt ‘y’, this rule applies for words such as horrify, reply and butterfly. Our second spelling rule was adding the suffix ‘ed’, this rule applies for words such as stopped, waved and liked.
In history, we were introduced to our ‘Famous Monarchs’ unit and discovered that we will be focusing on three queens: Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II. It was wonderful to hear the children share their existing knowledge of these monarchs and begin to make comparisons already. This lesson involved: defining the terms ‘monarch’ and ‘palace’; looking at the dates when the three queens ruled and how they fit into a British history timeline. We can’t wait to learn about each queen in more depth.
In science this week, we started our new topic ‘Living things and habitats’. During our lesson, we looked at pictures of a variety of things such as a fox, a leaf and a plastic bag and discussed whether these were alive, dead or had never been alive.
In maths this week, we have been focusing on:
- Dividing numbers by 5 by grouping and on a number line
- Representing division calculations using a bar model and using grouping
- Representing division calculations using a bar model and a sharing method.
In computing this half term, our unit will focus on programming, specifically algorithms and debugging. This combination of unplugged and plugged-in activities help to develop an understanding of; what algorithms are, how to program them and how they can be developed to be more efficient, including the introduction of loops. This week, we looked at the website ‘Scratch’ as a class, focusing on a dinosaur game. We completed a ‘decomposition task’ to identify what happens when a certain button is pressed, before focusing on the skill of writing programs by suggesting new commands for the dinosaur.
In art, we were introduced to our artist for this half term: Hannah Dunnett. In this lesson, we explored a range of her artwork and planned our own piece of artwork using lines and shapes.
This morning we were very excited to meet with our Year Six reading buddies. In this session, we shared another favourite book with our buddy and enjoyed hearing all about theirs. We look forward to seeing them again on World Book Day next week.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
Miss Roxburgh
