Year 2's weekly newsletter 26.4.24

We have been soup makers, seed investigators and orangutan experts this week.

In English this week, you finished your fact files about orangutans and wrote them up into a booklet. These are now beautifully displayed in the classroom with your water coloured front cover. On Wednesday, you started your English book which is 'The king who banned the dark'. You found lot of clues about our book hidden around the classroom there were candles, a sun, torches, robe and a newspaper. You thought carefully about what the book might be about and you wrote your very own prediction. We then started to read our story and think about where the clues were in our story. We have looked at the vocabulary from our story book and our example text and used this to write some of our own sentences. We are so excited to explore some more of this book in the next coming weeks.

In reading, your focus was on the book 'the secret of the tattered shoes'. Each day we read a part of our book and answered some comprehension questions about our prince and princess.

In maths, you have come to the end of your measurement learning. You have been focusing on measuring capacity and temperature this week. I am so impressed with how you have worked in these lessons and how hard you worked on your homework that was set last week. We enjoyed watching everyone measure at home.

Y2, you are the best soup makers in the world! For our DT learning this week, you made your very own vegetable soup. I was so impressed with how brilliant you were at chopping all of the different vegetables and putting all of the ingredients together. We loved hearing the soup maker blend and smooth our soup as we thought about what it might look like. Then we got to the best part where we tasted our soup. I was so amazed with how you all gave it a go! Finally, we had to evaluate our soup and think about what we liked and what we might change next time.

In history you have continued your learning of the Great fire of Nantwich by looking at our big questions of 'What did Nantwich look like in 1853?' We found out the all of the houses were made from wattle and daub, the streets were overcrowded and that people had no running water in their houses. Did you know that people used to have to get their water from the river? Which we disgracefully found out is the same river where all of their sewage went. YUCK!

You became seed investigators this week in science with your magnifying glasses. You carefully dissected a seed and found out what is inside a seed. You found that seeds have coats to protect them, an embryo plant and even a food store. How clever is this! You labelled your seed and wrote about what all of the parts do and what might grow from each part.

In our PE lesson you were learning all about jumping skills. You warmed up your bodies with a relay race. You learnt how to jump and how you have got to start with two feet, use your arms to move and then land with one foot. Some of you even learnt that you jump further when taking a run up! You then put all your skills into a practice with a jumping circuit. Wow! You hurdled, speed bounced, skipped and even did a triple jump. You have been jumping like frogs in this lesson. Well done superstars!

In computing you have been listening to music by Gustav Holst. You listened to mars and Venus and thought about what it reminded you of and how it made you feel. The children then explored the app chrome music lab.

In our HeartSmart lesson this week, we were learning that not all the thoughts we have about ourselves are true. We discussed unkind and kind thoughts we may have about ourselves. A lot of self-talk words can be unkind ones that are not true. Unless we catch these thoughts and replace them with kind and true thoughts, we will continue to think the same unkind thoughts the next day and the next day and the next day...! Replacing unkind thoughts with positive self-talk will allow us to move forward. We know this can be hard to do, but we want to try and do this. This links to the bible reference – 'We capture every thought and make it give up and obey Christ.' 2 Corinthians 10:5

This week we warmed up to Hey You! Our improvisation task was to sway, clap or tap our knees. We did this independently and were able to swap the movements around when we chose to. We produced some really good rhythms. We then had a rap battle. Group 1 – Hey you, what you gonna do? Group 2 – I'm gonna clap some rhythms, sing some songs, play my instrument and I'm gonna keep the pulse. We had so much fun in the improvisation section. We created some amazing clapping rhythms and dance moves. Some teachers even commented on how good we sounded when singing the verses!

In RE, you looked at what makes a place special/holy. You learnt that when Christianity first came about there were no churches and people came together outside or in houses to pray. We then started to realise that it is the people that makes a place special or holy. You learnt about the biblical story of Jacob's dream and how God promised Jacob that he would be with him wherever he goes. We then thought about how you don't just need to go to church to pray to God you can do this anywhere.

We have had such a fun filled week making our soups and dissecting our seeds. We also even managed to squeeze a mystery reader in on Friday. Thank you to Milo's mummy for coming in and reading us a story.

Have a super duper weekend Y2!

See you on Monday,

Miss Haynes