Year 2 weekly newsletter 09.06.24

What a fantastic week back we have had for our last half term together.

In English this week you have been working hard to plan and write your banning narratives. You thought carefully about what you may want to ban in your stories. You decided between banning the dark, light, school or rain. You thought about why the king or queen may want to ban these and what the consequences might have on the citizens of the land. Whilst writing each paragraph of the story, you thought carefully about making sure you included expanded noun phrases, time adverbials, commas in a list and year 2 common exception words. I am so proud of your stories and can't wait for you to continue these next week.

In steps to read this week you looked at a gardening non-fiction text and answered lots of different comprehension styled questions on gardening throughout the seasons. Your comprehension skills have progressed so much and we focused a lot on what the question was asking us and what words we needed to look for in the text.

What's the time Miss Haynes? We carried on with our time unit this week and you have now mastered telling the time by quarter past, quarter to, o 'clock, half past and even by the 5 minutes. With lots of practise during the day as well as in our maths lessons, you can all tell the time very well. We even moved onto converting hours into minutes. You learnt that there are 60 minutes within an hour and you were able to convert times like 1 hour 30 minutes into minutes to compare different times. I am just so proud of you!

What are landmarks? In your first lesson of Geography this term you learnt what a landmark is. You found out that landmarks can be local or national. You watched a fantastic video of London that showed many of the national landmarks that are recognised by people worldwide. You then recapped the difference of human and physical features of geography. On your boards you wrote down the landmarks that you recognised in London when you saw them and you then made a list of physical and human features of London landmarks. We then went local with our landmark research and you thought about what landmarks do we have in Wybunbury. Using digit maps you mapped out your route that we took through Wybunbury last half term to see some of our landmarks. You then created a page in your book about Wybunbury landmarks and where to find them. Brilliant geography and map skills team!

In DT, you learnt what a sliding mechanism was. You learnt that a mechanism is a set of moving parts that work together to make something happen. You then looked at how sliding mechanisms have got to have a guide and a bar and that they can either go vertically or horizontally. You looked around our classroom to see if we could find any sliding mechanisms. Afterwards, you had a go at creating your own sliding mechanisms. You created the four bears going horizontally through the fire and people popping out of Tudor houses. You had so much fun being creating and using your imagination. I even heard some of you saying how this was the best lesson ever! You creations were fantastic and you should be so proud.

In computing, you continued looking at chrome music lab to create digital music. You created your own piece of music by deciding on the notes, tempo and type of instrument you are using. You then learnt how to save your own music so that we could listen to other peoples.

Why do people of faith have special buildings where they gather to worship? We carried on our research of other faiths and looking at how and where they worship. In this lesson we looked at Hinduism and how most Hindus worship at home in their shrine. We researched what features they have in their shrine and what this symbolises.

In heartsmart, you looked at greetings and how we greet one another. You learnt that manners are free and that we should use them all of the time as it is a way of showing respect and gratefulness. We thought about which different greetings we use to greet different people and how it is not always appropriate to use the same greeting for everyone.

Why did the fire spread so quickly? This was the focus of our history lesson as we thought about what were the reasons for the Great fire of Nantwich spreading so quickly to where. You recapped your understanding of the fire so far and how 200 buildings burnt down in 20 days. We looked at the materials for the buildings at that time and how that was a contributing factor because buildings were made out of wood and straw which are very flammable. You then learnt that most people kept flammable materials in their houses like coal and oil. You learnt that there was no fire engines at the time and that it was up to the people of the town to collect water from the river in small leather buckets. However, with four bears running around most people were too scared to leave the buildings and tackle the fires. We thought about if a house fire happened now and if it would spread so quickly like it did in 1583 in Nantwich. We came up with the conclusion that it would barely even spread to the next house now.

In art, you finished painting your Tudor houses in your groups which are now displayed in our classroom these look amazing! Thank you for all of the boxes that were brought in.

In music this week, we worked in table groups to complete our end of unit assessment. We had a dedicated scribe and we had to focus on our speaking and listening skills to ensure we were all heard. We did really well! Great work Year 2. 

This week in PE year 2 have started their new unit – Net & Wall Game Skills. They have worked on throwing and catching, challenging their partners to keep their eyes focussed and get themselves into a ready position as the ball is thrown high up into the air for them to catch.

We played some games to help develop our throwing aims and catching skills and we finished with some games of Cage Dodgeball.

What a brilliant week we have all had. Homework has been emailed out to parents which has a focus on telling the time so that we can keep practising.

Have a wonderful weekend team! I hope you all enjoy the fig pie wake if you are going to it.

See you on Monday,

Miss Haynes