Category Archives: Year 2 Blog

This week we have been focusing on our topic text ‘Wild’, by Emily Hughes.  Having previously described the main character and setting, this week we started to focus on some of the main events that happen in the story.  We started with the part where the little girl gets caught in a trap by animal hunters, writing letters to the hunters to offer them advice. They wrote back to us, explaining their decision, to which we responded with some further thoughts about the situation.  Later in the week we put ourselves in role as the main character and mapped out the story.  We used our story maps to start rewriting her story in the first person.

In maths we have been recapping and continuing to learn about place value, while in science we have discussed different food groups, identified which foods belong to which groups and then designed a healthy meal.

Despite the heat, the children have tried their best and worked hard!

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Lucas, Mrs Marsh and Mrs Scott

This week we have continued finding out about the book ‘Wild’. We have focussed in particular on the setting of the story and have written our own descriptions of the setting using powerful adjectives and adverbs, and starting our sentences in different ways. We also decided, when creating our success criteria, that we could use similes in our writing. Ask us to tell you some of the similes we used.

In maths we have been looking at mass/weight. We have been learning that we weigh things using grams and kilograms. We have ordered weights from heaviest to lightest and compared weights using <, > and =. Later in the week we looked at scales. We found out that a scale is really a number line represented in different ways. Sometimes scales are straight, in thermometers for example, and sometimes they are round, like a speedometer. We had a go at reading different scales, using different units of measurement.

In science we have started looking at life cycles. We know that animals, including humans, change and grow as they get older. We compared the baby and adult versions of different animals.

In art we were invited to take part in a competition to design a logo for Wallingford’s new children centre. We created colourful pictures of trees, children playing and our hands to fulfil the design brief.

You should now have the new homework menu for our final topic ‘Wild!’ If for any reason you don’t yet have one, please do come and ask for a new one. Also, if you would like to do any maths work based on what we have been doing in school, please feel free to do that rather than a homework menu task.

Have a great weekend!

Class 2, Mrs Marsh, Mrs Lucas and Mrs Scott

Welcome back! We hope you have all had a relaxing half term break.

This week we have started our new topic which is centred around a picture book – but we have not read it yet!  So far we have looked at front of the book and one other illustration in order to deduce as much as we can about the main character.  The teachers kept the title hidden from us so that we could come up with our own ideas about who the character is and what might happen in the story.  We wrote down our initial ideas, then pretended to be the character from the front cover and wrote all about ourselves.  Later in the week we were allowed to read the first few pages of the book but not all of it!  We will continue to find out more about the story and the character next week. Ask us what we have found out so far.

In maths we have been learning to draw and interpret block graphs. Having surveyed the class, we created our own block graphs about our favourite fruits.  We also revisited capacity, deciding on which unit of measurement to use and reading scales carefully.

In preparation for the church flower festival we wrote poems and illustrated them during our art lesson.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Lucas, Mrs Marsh and Mrs Scott

SATs are over!!

We would like to congratulate Year 2 for being such amazing purple learners this week.  They have put in an enormous amount of effort and demonstrated the resilience, grit and determination that we talk so much about in school.  We are extremely proud of their efforts and hope that they now have a really enjoyable half-term break.

While not taking part in tests, we have spent most of our time outside enjoying the fabulous sunshine.  The children have searched for minibeasts, completed shape hunts, looked for things beginning with each letter of the alphabet, played games and enjoyed extra PE and playtimes.

We hope you all have a fantastic break and look forward to seeing you all after half term.

Mrs Lucas, Mrs Marsh and Mrs Scott

This week in maths, we have been learning to tell the time and solve problems involving time.  We know that there are 60 minutes in one hour and have practised counting around the clock in 5s help us tell the time.  When trying to find times to the hour, such as twenty to 5, we have been learning that this is “twenty minutes before the next o’clock/hour.” For these times we can count backwards in 5s from the o’clock time (e.g. start at 5 o’clock and count back in 5s to find twenty to 5).  For times past the hour, such as 25 past 4, we know that this means 25 mins after the o’clock time; so, we can count on in 5s until we get to 25 past.

Our writing this week has been linked to our science work on minibeasts.  We designed our own ‘superbugs’ last week and this week we have written information texts about them.  Having looked at some good and some bad examples of information pages, we decided on what ours should include.  Our success criteria involved: organising our writing into clear sections with headings, using different sentence types, using appropriate adjectives and writing in the present tense.  Some of our information texts are so good that people might believe our superbugs actually exist!

As you know, next week the children will be taking their SATs tests in reading, maths and spelling & grammar.  The tests will be spread out from Monday to Thursday but we have not told the children that they will be tested.  They are used to the kinds of booklets and questions, so will just take part in them like they have been over recent weeks.  We don’t want them to be worried; all we ask is that they have a good night’s sleep, a proper breakfast and arrive on time each day.  If you know your child will be absent at all next week (which we hope is not the case) please inform us as soon as possible so that we can make alternative arrangements for them.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Lucas, Mrs Marsh and Mrs Scott

This week we have been thinking about ourselves and what useful or interesting information we could share about ourselves with our next teacher.  We decided to write some background information about our homes and families, and also included details about our interests, hobbies and likes/dislikes.  In one of the most important sections we wrote, we described ourselves as learners and explained what it means to be a good ‘purple learner’.  We hope that our next teacher will find it useful when start visiting our new classes next term.

In maths we have been practising solving a range of one and two-step problems involving different operations.  We have also been thinking about money and trying to make amounts of money using different combinations of coins.  One of the things we need to remember is that there are only certain coins available – there is no such thing as a 30p coin or a 4p coin! Ask us to practise at home –e.g. can you make 54p using 5 coins? Can you make it using 6 coins?

In Science, we used what we know about the pros and cons of different bug body parts to design ‘superbugs’ that would be able to survival in a range of microhabitats. Ask us about the creatures we designed.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Lucas, Mrs Marsh and Mrs Scott

In English this week we started by finishing our stories about superheroes, then spent time discussing how we could develop and improve them. Having set ourselves some ‘next steps’, we came up with an idea for a different superhero story: imagine that you woke up one morning to find you had developed superpowers! We brainstormed ideas, discussed how we would discover that we had powers and what those powers might be.  Ask us to tell you about the stories we wrote.

We have been learning about inverse operations in maths – ask us to explain what the inverse of addition or subtraction is.  Now that we have a better understanding of ‘inverse operations’ we are able to use them to help us solve missing number calculations:

E.g.  24 + ? = 50          50 –  24 = 26

In Science we have revisited our two contrasting microhabitats to investigate whether different mini beasts live there.  We started to think about why the mini beasts were suited to the different habitats.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Lucas, Mrs Marsh and Mrs Scott

In English this week, we’ve had a writing focus. We have described the new purple super hero in our class. We chose names for him and used really good adjectives to describe him. We tried really hard to organise our ideas into paragraphs and used conjunctions to join our ideas. We also looked at a picture called ‘The Vacation’; it showed some different super heroes playing hopscotch. We used it to plan our own stories about super heroes going away together.

We are having a focus on ‘Purple Learning’ this term. We are trying to make sure we use our ‘Purple Powers’ every day. If we show that we are persevering, putting in effort, being resilient and showing grit then our names will be put on the super hero shield.

In maths we have started to look at different strategies for solving calculations. We have talked about finding the most efficient ways to solve problems. Drawing dots might be a good way to solve 4×3 =, but is it as good a method when solving 25 + 32 =? We’ve looked at drawing number lines, partitioning numbers and counting on or back. We now need to decide which method to use when.

One of the highlights of our week has been The Explorer Dome. We went in to find out all about what happens to our food when we eat it. We found out so much! Ask us to tell you all about it.

Have a good weekend,

Mrs Marsh, Mrs Lucas & Mrs Scott

In maths this week we have been solving a range of arithmetic and reasoning problems – we have been focusing on reading the question or symbol carefully and using what we know to help us solve them.

In English, we read a story called ‘Gobble You Up’ in which a wily jackal gobbles up lots of fellow animals.  Having decided that the jackal must be stopped from doing this again, we planned and wrote instructions entitled ‘How to Trap a Jackal’.

PE kits – please make sure that ALL PE kit is named as we continually have stray pieces that we cannot reunite with their owner!

Homework – please note that next half term we will be giving out English or maths homework each Friday so that the children can practise some key skills.  This will only be for one short half term, after which we will go back to the takeaway menu (following the May half term).

Have a lovely Easter break,

Mrs Lucas, Mrs Marsh and Mrs Scott

This week we have been writing diary entries as if we were a child living in Chembakolli village.  Our challenge was to write more extensively, using adverbs and adjectives to add detail and using time words/phrases and prepositions to help us vary our sentence starters and organise our ideas sequentially.  We hope you will be able to see the effort we put into our writing when you come to open afternoon and parents’ evening.

Later in the week, we read a traditional Indian folk story called ‘The Tiger Child’. We looked at the features of this type of story and learnt that it would have been passed down and told from generation to generation.  We had a go at re-telling the story using a range of conjunctions and time phrases to link our ideas and adding detail to interest the listener.  We are now in the process of planning stories with a similar structure and setting which we will write next week.

In maths we have been developing strategies for tackling word problems: we can use ‘RUCSAC’ to help us. Read (the problem), Underline (the key words), Choose (the correct operation), Solve, Answer, Check.  Try giving us some word problems so we can use RUCSAC to solve them.

In science we have been exploring what happens to different materials when they are bent, twisted, squashed or stretched.

We look forward to seeing you all at parents’ evening next week.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Lucas, Mrs Marsh and Mrs Scott