We have been very busy in class so far this school year!

In maths, Year 1 children have been learning about Place Value and the value of every number up to 10, so they can visualise quantities in their mind's eye.

The Year 2 children have been building on their understanding of Place Value to 100, partitioning numbers into sets of ten and ones.  They have faced the challenge of partitioning numbers into different groups of tens and multiple ones, such as 62 = 6 tens and 2 ones, but it can also be any combination of tens of ones, for example 4 tens and 22 ones, or 3 tens and 32 ones etc. That is a challenge for all of us as it involves very good addition skills!

In the second half of this term, Y1 are now exploring addition and subtraction to 10, while Y2 are adding and subtracting numbers to 100, rooting their learning in their knowledge of bonds to 10.  Please keep practising the number bonds to 10, as they are the key that unlocks so much mathematical understanding.  

In Phonics, Year 1 have been applying their super grasp of letter sounds, digraphs and trigraphs that they learnt in EYFS to read and spell new words and short sentences. They are moving on with their learning of Phase 5, during which they will  revise and learn all the ways to make long vowel sounds in words.  We hope the children will continue to love reading and develop their fluency through reading their home readers regularly.  The digraphs they have focused on during the first half term are:

 ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, wh, ph, ew and oe. 

During the second half term, we will be learning: au, ey, a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e, c, y and al.

Please help your child spot these digraphs in the words as they read their home-reading books.  Being a "digraph-spotter" is a very important skill! 

The focus of the Spelling for Year 2 has been to identify vowels and consonants to see how words are constructed.  The children have been exploring different ways of spelling sounds in words, such as all the ways of spelling the "g" sound - "ge," "dge" etc.  This builds on all the work the children did learning to read these groups of letters in Year 1.  The spelling patterns, digraphs and trigraphs the children have worked on during the first half term are:

soft g, ge, dge, kn, gn, wr, ey, c saying s, il, o saying u, a saying o, and  a/al saying all.

In the second half term we are exploring how to make various "s" sounds in words and how "or" and "ar" can make different sounds, depending on word structures.  There is also a focus on homophones, such as "sea" and "see."

Our work in English started with lots of strange footprints suddenly appearing all over our classroom!  We had to pick them up and find out which creatures they belonged to.  Strangely, there was one set of footprints we couldn't match with an actual creature! It turned out to be the footprints of the long extinct dodo.

Our work has focused on investigating animals that are endangered.  We have read our first book, "The Journey Home," in which five creatures meet and consider what people need to do to care for their habitats, their homes.  This is a super book, and all the children have demonstrated their understanding of the message it contains by completing our writing outcome, a persuasive letter to inform people about what will happen if we don't care for animals' habitats. 

Our second book, "Dear Earth,"  was a beautifully illustrated book which tells the story of a girl called Tessa who decides to write a letter to our planet Earth, to celebrate the wonders of the natural world, and to say how she can help to look after our planetary home in her own small ways.  The children have explored how adjectives are used in the story to describe different landscapes. They have acted out being Tessa in the story, to be able to write about her imaginary adventures in the ocean, identifying verbs and changing them into the past tense.  As the writing outcome, the children have written their own letter to the Earth, thanking Earth for all it gives us, through God's creation, describing where they would like to visit, what they would do there, and how they can help to care for our incredible planet by making small adjustments to their lifestyles.

In this second half term, we have been continuing the theme of caring for our planet by reading and writing from the book "We are Water Protectors" (Carole Lindstom, Michaela Goade).These two women are members of Native American tribes, and have written and illustrated this wonderful, atmospheric book.  Native Americans believe there is a spirit in every single item of nature -  every blade of grass, every drop of water.  Carole and Michaela have actively campaigned against oil companies threatening the purity of rivers running through the American countryside. One of our first writing tasks was to identify the character strengths of these women for standing up for what they believe is right. 

We have been busy thinking about our school pond and have written speeches along with campaign messages to persuade people to restore our pond, so that we can all enjoy it once again.

Our new book is on a completely different theme! Someone has left a box of toys in our classroom, and all the toys have address labels round their necks.  Whatever can it mean?

In our afternoon lessons so far we have been drawing and painting our faces to create a whole school collage and explored Shape through art. We have designed, made and evaluated our own healthy wraps in Food Technology.

We have enjoyed two hours of P.E. each week.

In Geography, we have been drawing maps of the British Isles and learning about oceans and continents.

We are studying important people in History this half-term, looking at the lives and work of Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole.

Our Science lessons have involved labelling parts of our bodies on life-sized cut-outs and exploring how our senses inform us about our lives. We are looking forward to our visit to Eureka this half term! 

We have been finding out about how our brains learn and have been naming the parts of our brain while engaging in My Happy Mind activities, as part of our school focus on mental well-being in PSHE. We are learning about our character strengths, and thinking about how to spot them in one another.

In R.E., we have thought about our own favourite books and about Holy books across different faiths, beginning with the Vedas in Hinduism and then exploring a range of Jewish artefacts, finding amongst them a mini Torah scroll. We have explored the Qu'ran and are going to be looking at the good news brought to us in Christian Holy books in the second half of this term.  This will link with our focus on Gifts and Gift-bringers, as we move into the season of Christmas.

In addition to all this, in Music we have played high notes and low notes on xylophones and learnt a new song about a man falling in a well!  We are now beginning to learn the songs for our Christmas Concert!

We hope that all our children in our class are happy.  That is what we come to school for.

Welcome to our Spring Term!

Our topic question this term is "What can we learn from the Great Fire of London?" This is an intriguing topic which the children always enjoy, and is the backbone for our History lessons.  It is also at the centre of our English lessons.

At the beginning of the term, our whole school has been working on The Snowman (Raymond Briggs) in our English lessons. It was amazingly helpful that the weather obliged us by creating a very appropriate setting for this book!

We wrote questions to display on our Working Wall, in an attempt to work out why and how a snowman had left his hat, scarf and nose in a pile in our book corner.

We have also had a lot of fun making a snowman out of playdough, to work out the order for a list of instructions for someone who has never made a snowman, and then we had a fabulous time testing out our instructions in order to make a snowman out of  - snow!!

We have had a fantastic time writing stories about our own "Snow Creature."  We planned our stories carefully to match the structure of The Snowman, and we absolutely loved adapting the events from The Snowman to relate to our own snow creations.  The children have been delighted to read their stories to the class in our Author's Hoop! 

In Maths, Year 2 has been focusing on 2D and 3D shapes and Year 1 has been looking at place value with numbers up to 20.  Year 2 are now exploring money - adding combinations of coins and pound notes.     

We have been continuing to highlight mental wellbeing in PSHE lessons, using My Happy Mind resources this term.  February 3rd - 7th is Children's Mental Health Week, and we are adding to the My Happy Mind units by using resources from Place2Be, a national charity which specialises in supporting children with mental health needs.

Our R.E. supports our work on mental wellbeing, as we remember that God loves us because he made us and created us.  We don't have to be anything other than the person we are to experience God's love.  We are learning about why Jesus is so special, exploring the miracles through which he showed his divine power and also his compassion for people.  Through his genuine concern for the people he met, Jesus sets the example for us to follow - to be sincere, honest, caring and kind.

In music, we are exploring tempo and dynamics, and we are trying out how these elements can be used to tell a story by creating different atmospheres throughout a piece, focussing on Little Red Riding Hood. We have been painting and printing in Art, exploring colour mixing and developing brush techniques.  

Spring Term - second half

We are continuing to really enjoy our work on the Great Fire of London in our History lessons.  We know so much about it, from how it started, what made it spread so quickly and so far, how people tried to put it out, what people did to save themselves and their possessions, what Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary and how King Charles II was advised to prevent it engulfing any more buildings.    In English, we have been imagining that we were in London during the fire and we have written our own fabulous diary entries, describing what we would have seen, heard, smelt, tasted, touched and how we would have felt inside.  We all took part in a drama workshop during which we were immersed in an imaginary experience of enacting the chronology of the fire from start to finish.

In maths, Year 2 have moved onto increasing our understanding of multiplication and division.

We have been asking "What made Jesus Special?" in R.E.  We have focused on the miracles of how Jesus calmed a storm, turned water into wine and fed 5000 people from 2 fish and 5 loaves.   As we move into Lent, we will learn about the symbols of new life and references to the events of Holy Week that are found in Easter decorations and food.  This year, Ramadan and Lent begin over the same week so we can look for similarities during these times of reflection and thinking about God.

Our PSHE, through My Happy Mind, is about our relationships with each other, particularly through trying to understand others by identifying their character strengths.  This Relate unit is very helpful to us all in highlighting how we need to seek to understand other people in order to build the best kind of relationships we can.

Welcome to our Summer Term in Class 2.

Our topic is all about how different plants grow in different parts of the world.

In English during these opening weeks of term, we are writing our own stories based on The Comet (J. Todd Stanton).  We are planning them pictorially, so we know what we are going to write and how to structure them, and then we will be writing them so they can be read to the class.

Both Y1 and Y2 are learning about Fractions in maths in the first few weeks. Y1 children will be learning about halves and quarters of shapes and other pictures.  Y2 children will be identifying halves, quarters and thirds, and finding halves and quarters of quantities.

In R.E. over the term, we are learning about why holy places are special to people of all faiths, with a focus on Christian, Muslim and Hindu places of worship.  We are planning to visit a Hindu Temple, which will be a new experience for many of us.

In History, during the week 5-9th May, we will be celebrating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.

As always, Mrs. Carins and I (Mrs. Marshall) love our children.  This is why we do our job!