Year 2 weekly newsletter 21.11.25

What a brilliant week we have had!

In English, you have been working really hard on creating
your setting narratives. Each day, you have written a new paragraph to describe
Grimloch Park on a summer’s day, carefully building your story with detail and
imagination. You began by describing the summer sky and the warm weather,
painting a beautiful picture for your reader. Then you moved on to writing
about the leaves and how they looked, sounded, and moved in the gentle breeze.
After that, you focused on the people in Grimloch Park, describing how lively,
busy, and joyful the park felt on a sunny day. Next week, you will finish your
big write by describing the most important part of the park—the spectacular
topiaries! You are all doing an amazing job, and your descriptive skills are
getting stronger every day. Keep it up!

In phonics, you have been continuing to practice your sounds
and build upon your fluency. In Steps to Read, we have been enjoying the
beautiful story ‘The Real Boat’. It follows the journey of a small paper
boat who longs to become a real boat. He sets off on an adventure across rivers
and seas, meeting new creatures, facing challenges, and discovering the wide
world beyond his pond. The children have really loved following his exciting
journey and watching how brave and determined the little paper boat becomes.Each
lesson, you have worked incredibly hard to answer a range of comprehension
questions. You have shown great understanding of the characters, the settings,
and the events in the story. Your thoughtful answers show just how much you are
enjoying this wonderful book

In maths this week, you have been learning the method of adding
across 10 using the bridging method. This is when you jump to the next multiple
of 10 first, then add the rest of the number. For example, if you are solving 8
+ 7, you jump from 8 to 10, then add the remaining 5. This helps you to add
more efficiently. You used blank number lines and ten frames to practise this
method. You then built on this learning by discovering how to subtract across
10 using the bridging method. This is when you jump back to the nearest
multiple of 10 first, then subtract the rest. For example, for 14 – 6,
you jump back from 14 to 10, then subtract the remaining 2. You used straws and
blank number lines to work this out practically before moving on to using just
number lines. You have made amazing progress with these tricky methods!

In our afternoon learning you have been super busy. In music, we listened to the story of Little Angel’s journey
and how she got her wings. We decided to add – mice, camels, a star and some
cows to our story. We wrote down 3 choices we would like to be for our
mini-performance, number 1 being our most favourite. We were all so excited about finding out which role we have. It
was lovely to see so many of us being really pleased for others. We then began
to learn a few of the songs for our performance. In your wellbeing time, you have
thought carefully about what makes you unique. We talked about how we are all
different to each other and we all have differences that we should be proud of.
In forest school this week we had a very cold session so we spent some of our
time building upon our art learning in the classroom. This week you learnt what
a ‘feely drawing’ was. You had a natural object behind your back and you were
not able to look at the object you had. You spent a long time feeling the whole
object with your hands and then you spent some time drawing the object whilst
going back to feel the object again. We were amazed at how our drawings looked
in comparison to our objects and how we couldn’t add any small details or shading
into our drawings because we couldn’t see the object. After this, you spent
some time outside. You created an animal out of clay and then built a habitat
for your animal. You then finished our forest school session with some toasted
marshmallows around the fire. What a fantastic and creative session we had!

On Friday it was our theme day and what an amazing day it was! We spent the morning working hard on our DT project, starting with a survey where you asked children in the classroom how you could represent the local area on your ferris wheel. You chose colours for your design and selected local landmarks to include, then used the class votes to decide which ideas to add. After break, you began making your ferris wheels using paper plates, straws and cardboard boxes, creating the special models that we will be giving to the mayor. We ended the morning with a brilliant transport quiz before heading into a very exciting afternoon, when we received visits from Mrs Dakin with her tractor and Cooper Buckley with their lorry. You were thrilled to learn about their jobs and were incredibly lucky to be able to go inside both the tractor and the lorry. A huge thank you to Alice and Jonah’s mum for organising this fantastic experience—it really brought our learning to life. Finally, a massive thank you to all parents for the amazing theme day outfits; I was so impressed by your creativity and all the effort that had gone into them. It was a wonderful end to our transport topic and a day we will all remember!

I hope you have all had a wonderful weekend,

Miss Haynes