Y2 Weekly News: 23.9.22

We've crammed so much into our four day week and you've all been fantastic learners along the way.

During English this week, we continued our T4W journey as we entered the innovation stage of our text. We used our model text to create our own versions of the three little alien stories. We used our writing toolkit, as well as boxing up, to produce some fantastic stories. They were full of adjectives, capital letters, full stops and each story had a beginning, middle and end. Next week will see us produce some independent pieces of writing where we can really show off our writing skills, I can't wait!

We also spent lots of time this week working on our handwriting. We thought about boat, sun and sea letters and where they sit on the line. Well done!

In Phonics and our reading sessions this week, we continued to recap a range of sounds and spellings. Well done, team. It's also been great to see so many book reviews this week too, please keep it up!

In Maths, we completed a place value assessment this week and we used all the skills we have learnt so far. We then turned our attention to addition and subtraction. We thought about fact families this week and how we can use part part whole models to represent these. You are getting really good at doing this! We also moved into our new blue maths starter books whereby we all had fantastic presentation and showed off our maths skills.

On Wednesday, we were introduced to MyHappyMind. This programme aims to help children understand their brains and the way in which they work. We learnt some interesting facts about our brains in our first session and thought about the three parts that make up our brain – Team H.A.P! We finished by jotting down in our journals all the facts we now know about our amazing brains.

In P.E, we completed sessions with Mrs Jenkins and Ebony. With Ebony, we honed our football skills and worked in pairs to perfect our dribbling. We played a game where we had to avoid the cones!

In R.E, we continued to answer our big question of "What do stories from the Bible tell Christians about God?". We were shining lights this week as we thought about what the bible meant to Chrisitians and how it is a collection of stories. We picked out a stroy to focus on and thought about the message of God within it. We picked Moses and the Burning Bush and thought about what Christians were told about God from the story. We had ideas such as it showed God's power, thoughtfulness, inclusiveness and want to make things better for people who are suffering – brilliant responses team!

Throughout the week we have taken part in a number of worships. On Wednesday, we thought about our school community and what we were thankful for. Children were invited to write a prayer or draw a picture relating to their school community message.

In History, we started our new unit all about Neil Armstrong and his life. We spent the lesson thinking about chronology. We used the phrases timelines, order, past, present and living memory. We created a table and drew in things that were from the past and the present. We then discussed our own living memories and plotted key points in our book. We had some fantastic links back to Y1 learning and lots of us included the Queen's sad death as an important moment in our living memories too.

In Computing, we completed our first lesson of coding. We spent time getting used to logging and understanding the basics of code studio. We used a drag and drop technique to reorder coding blocks and we even managed to complete puzzles within the coding lesson. What a fantastic start to our coding journey!

For our music lesson this week, we counted eight beats whilst slowly raising our arms over our head at steady intervals and clapping on eight. Next, we walked for eight steps, followed by raising our arms for eight beats. We repeated these tasks to see how well we could count aloud, and in our heads. It became harder when we had to listen to, and move to eight beats when Miss Holland played these using claves.

For our first HeartSmart lesson this term we focused on what it meant to get HeartSmart. We looked closely at the power on button and realised that the O represented others and the I represented ourselves. We need to look after others, as well as ourselves. We then spent time thinking about others as we filled up each other's hearts around the room. It was lovely to see everyone's hearts full with messages of kindness! Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Proverbs 4:23

Have a fantastic weekend,

Mr Dale