Year 2 weekly newsletter 07.12.25

What a busy week we have had with lots of learning quizzes
and nativity practices!

In English, we have been gathering lots of ideas for our
diary writing. To help us build rich and detailed descriptions, we explored all
of the different trees from our story and thought carefully about how each one
looked, felt and sounded. You worked extremely hard to write a range of
descriptive sentences, as well as exclamation and question sentences, to
capture the personality of each tree. This helped you prepare for writing your
own diary entry later on. I was so impressed with how creative your ideas were
and how confidently you shared them with the class.

In Steps to Read, we spent the week focusing on the
beautiful story One World by Michael Foreman. This book follows a
brother and sister as they explore a rock pool and begin to understand how
important it is to care for our planet and protect our oceans from pollution.
You showed fantastic understanding of the story and answered a range of
comprehension questions thoughtfully and accurately. In phonics, you continued
to review your sounds and practised reading with increasing fluency, accuracy
and expression. It has been wonderful to see your confidence grow each day.

In Maths, you have been working incredibly hard on adding
two-digit numbers to two-digit numbers while crossing ten. We discovered
together that the most efficient way to do this was to add the tens first and
then the remaining ones. Although this was a tricky new concept, you showed
brilliant resilience and determination. By the end of the second lesson, you
were completing the calculations independently and with great confidence.

This week you also completed two reading quizzes and two
maths quizzes. You were so excited to complete them, and I was extremely proud
to mark them and see how wonderfully you shone in every single one.

In RE, we looked at how the good new of Jesus’ birth is
celebrated all around the world. We looked at how the celebrations are
different in different countries. It was lovely to hear about Luna’s German Christmas
traditions and how Lucien has French Christmas traditions. It really brought
our learning to life!

In heartsmart, we looked at the short film of ‘boundin’ and we thought carefully about the range of
emotions of the lamb throughout the film and how his attitude changed once he
realised that he had a lot to be thankful for. We thought about our bodies and
what we are thankful for. We came up with great ideas like ‘I’m thankful for my
legs because they help me to run really fast’ and ‘I am thankful for my eyes
because they let me see all of the beautiful nature we have in our world’.

In art this week, we learnt about using a wax resist. In
your forest school session you collected lots of leaves and drew the outline of
your leaf using wax crayons and then you used watercolours to bring out the
colour in your leaf. You were amazed to see how the wax just resists the water
so you can still see the outline very clearly.

In the rest of your forest school session, you listened to
the story of ’The King of tiny things’. You then created different micro-habitats
for all of the animals you saw in the book. Your habitats were fantastic and
you thought so carefully about them when working in your teams. You finished
the session off with roasting marshmallows. What a treat!

In geography, we learnt about the capital city of Scotland
which we found out was Edinburgh. We looked at all of the different landmarks
in Edinburgh like the Scott monument, Arthur’s seat, Edinburgh castle and St.
Giles cathedral. You grouped the landmarks into physical and human features.

In computing, we continued with our work on digital
photography. In this lesson you thought carefully about what makes a good photo.
You learnt that when taking photos you need to ensure the main object is in the
middle, you have got everything you need to in the frame and if it’s a close up
then you need to go close enough to see the detail. You used this knowledge when
taking your own photos of trees, friends, sticks and leaves! You could really
see how your photography skills are getting better and better.

In music this week, we worked in our groups to recreate one
part of our Little Angel Gets Her Wings story. We finalised our characters and
where our scenes will be set. We then practised our nativity songs.

What a treat it was to take part in a live broadcast from Antarctica! We listened to stories from the ice and learnt about the importance of protecting our planet’s frozen continent. We then looked at our maps to find out where Antarctica is in relation to the united Kingdom. We couldn't believe how far away it was! We were truly inspired to share the important messages about how we can help protect our world.

It’s been a fantastic
week and we have really got into the Christmas spirit with putting our
classroom decorations up and doing our advent calendar each day.

Have a wonderful weekend and I will see you on Monday for
another very busy festive week!

Miss Haynes