Year Two weekly newsletter 18.10.24

Only a week to go of this half term team and you have made incredible progress in your learning journey. It has been a blessing to watch you grow each day and to watch you adapt to your new Year Two learning with such ease.

In English this week, you began writing your letters to warn Tom about the dangers on his river journey. You carefully crafted your introduction, explaining the setting you’ve chosen, and moved on to describe two potential dangers Tom might face in the jungle. Throughout your writing, you focused on using possessive apostrophes to show ownership, ensuring that Tom knows what belongs to each creature or element of the jungle. You also worked on incorporating conjunctions to extend your sentences and add more detail, making your advice clear and easy for Tom to follow. Additionally, you skilfully used "ly" adverbs to give Tom precise instructions on how to approach each danger and what to be cautious about. Finally, you wrote your solutions paragraph, explaining how Tom can stay safe and overcome the dangers with your thoughtful advice. We can’t wait to see how your letters turn out next week!

In Phonics, you have continued reviewing your sounds with great focus and determination. I’ve had the privilege of assessing each of you in your phonics, and I am absolutely amazed by the incredible progress you've made—well done! In your Steps to Read sessions, you’ve also been reading aloud to Mrs. Parker, practicing your fluency and building your confidence as readers. Keep up the fantastic work!

In Maths, you’ve faced some trickier lessons on addition and subtraction this week, focusing specifically on adding across the 10. Though challenging, you’ve shown resilience in mastering these new skills and have worked hard to understand the concepts. Keep going, Y2, your progress is fantastic!

In RE, you had a thoughtful and reflective lesson where you explored various stories from the Bible. You were tasked with thinking about which story you believe is the most important and explaining why. Together, we read through a selection of Bible stories and also recapped ones you had previously heard in worship or past RE lessons. It was wonderful to listen to everyone's different perspectives and hear the unique reasons why certain stories were important to you. Each response was beautifully personal and reflective of your own values

In HeartSmart this week, we explored different sandwich fillings and named each sandwich based on what was inside. We then reflected on how we are like the filling of a sandwich—what's on the inside defines what we are called. If we have a "nice filling" by being HeartSmart, we might be described with words like kind, helpful, and happy. However, if we have "bad fillings," we might be called things like mean, unkind, or bully. This activity helped us understand how our actions and the way we treat others shape how people see us. “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23 In our second HeartSmart lesson, we created a "love map." We discussed how all of our families are unique and made up of different people. We reflected on the special people in our lives and thought about why we love them. Then, we designed our love maps by placing the people we are closest to in the middle, showing how much they mean to us. This activity helped us appreciate the importance of love and connection in our lives. “ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

In our science lesson, we learned about John Dunlop and his invention of the pneumatic tyre. We explored why he chose rubber for wheels and why he decided to pump them up with air. You were fascinated by his story and created fact files about him. Afterwards, you made your own tyres from different materials to test how far they would roll and what would happen to the material. After our experiment, we concluded that none of our materials were better than the rubber tyre!

In history, you completed all of your learning on transport, finishing with an assessment and answering the big question: 'Have trains, cars, and planes always been around?' You wrote about who invented each form of transport, how they were powered in the past, and how they are powered now. It was clear that you’ve loved this topic and have learned so much over the past few weeks!

In Geography, you explored the capital city of Belfast. You examined its location on the map and identified the country it serves as the capital for, Northern Ireland. You discussed various ways to travel to Belfast, considering that it is situated over water. Additionally, you learned about key characteristics of Northern Ireland and examined both human and physical landmarks within the city. To showcase your learning, you created a beautiful fact file all about Belfast, highlighting its unique features and significance.

Well this week our music lesson saw us learn how to say Hello in different languages. We danced and sang to this song while adding in our own actions. We thought using sign language to say Hello would also add an extra language. We were also shocked to learn there are about 7,000 languages in the world. That’s about 7,000 ways of say ‘hello’ and to make people feel welcome. Learning one word of someone else’s language can show that you care about them, and that you are interested in the mother tongue and their culture. We also practised our worship song and added actions!

In their final lesson of the unit, year 2 have brought all they have learnt together to play some different games in small teams. There was a punting game, a bouncing and catching game and a throwing and catching game where they had to have fast reactions. Once they were shown the games and split into teams, they had to manage the games themselves, making sure everyone played fairly and took turns.

You really wouldn’t think after all of this learning this week, we had any time to practise our worship but we did! On Monday we started putting our worship together, thinking about what we needed to say, where we needed to stand and who we needed to give the mic to. You also started to learn your song. After four sessions, you were ready to perform your worship to the school and to your parents. I really could not have been prouder Y2. You were so confident and read you lines so beautifully, you sang your song with pride and you let your lights shine throughout. You left our week on a high and I will never forget our first worship together! A huge congratulations to you all!

Have a wonderful weekend,

Miss Haynes