Summer 1

Welcome to Summer 1!  We hope that you have had restful Easter break and are recharged ready for our last term of Year 2!

This half term, our Geography focused theme to – Lets go exploring  will have a focus on Australia!

RE

Our RE this half-term is Eastertide.

Our learning objective today was to answer the question ‘why does Easter matter so much?’ We recalled our learning from assemblies before Easter, to sequence the story and assess the most important parts. The children were encouraged to use vocabulary from the Bible, including ‘ascended’, ‘risen’ and ‘tomb’. Children then worked in groups and read different reasons why Easter is important. They were encouraged to read loud enough for their peers to hear them and then discuss what they thought of each reason. Through discussion children had to decide the most important things about Easter, creating a pyramid to show importance. It was a great opportunity for the children to develop their opinions and share them with one another.

To help us reflect on our learning about the Easter story, we revised key terms and their definitions. We then worked in groups to match the key terms to their meanings, applying our reading skills. When we returned to the classroom, we had a go creating our own glossaries of key Easter terms. We then used this to support our class discussion about what the Easter story teaches us.

English

Our key text linked to our focus author to start this half term is Grandads Island , written by Benji Davies.

We will be also having a big focus on non-fiction books linked to our topic on Australia  to support our recount, glossary and non-chronological report writing. We will begin by reading Grandad’s Island before also exploring other picture books that have also been written by our key author Benji Davies. Year 2’s took the setting of Grandad’s island to describe and brainstorm interesting vocabulary.

They edited and improved a description using their knowledge of nouns, adjectives and expanded noun phrases to ensure the reader of their description would be able to really imagine the setting.

The idyllic tropical island is surrounded by the blue, wavy sea.- Darcey

A troop of colourful parrots fly confidently around Syd and grandad.-Eva

Next to the bright blue sea there is some beautiful warm, yellow sand.- Charlotte

Soft white, fluffy clouds meet the foamy, frothy waves.- Eloise

We spent our first lesson exploring non-fiction reports concentrating on their organisation. Year 2’s had a go at sorting facts into paragraphs that contained similar information.

The Kings Coronation

One focus this half term is making sure the children write, independently at length. Year 2’s combined their reading comprehension skills and also their recent work on report organisation to help them to learn about what would happen during King Charles’ Coronation.

After watching a clip from Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953, the children read more about the main parts of this special ceremony and were able to recognise some of the same traditions and regalia. They used glossaries to help them look up the tricky names of the royal objects that would be part of the ceremony. They then went on to write about their own personal experiences of King Charles III Coronation and how they have celebrated this very memorable and special occasion.

We have had a lot of fun celebrating the Kings coronation in school. We have prepared for our party celebration in school and learned a lot about King Charles III. We enjoyed our party with Year 1 and played party games, had a celebratory coronation cookie and did lots of dancing!

Maths

This half term in Maths, we will have a focus on measuring using money- coins and notes to make totals and to give change. We will also be telling the time to o’clock, half past, quarter past, quarter to and at five minute intervals.

We have started looking at the different coins and notes that can be used to make amounts in pounds (£) and pence (p). Year 2’s have worked practically using coins and interactive games to order and find the total when there is a combination of coins and notes. Year 2’s have put their previous learning of counting in steps of 5, 10, and 2 to good use in order to be more officiant and speedier. We looked at how to use different combinations  of coins to make the same amount. We have especially enjoyed using these interactive games to help us with our learning about money: money interactive games interactive money toyshop game

We have been working hard on word problems – reading the question really carefully, working out what is it asking us, writing the calculation and answering it.

We have been practising reading analogue clocks and telling the time to o clock, half past, quarter past, quarter to and to five minute intervals. We have shown a lot of resilience, as telling the time is a tricky skill to learn! We have had an active Burn to Learn session to match written times to clocks and we also played What Time is It Mr Wolf! We have also been working in teams to play various telling the time games, applying our knowledge across different contexts. We have shown great team work skills, helping each other out and encouraging each other with our learning.

Science

Our topic in Science this half term is Plants. We are going to be doing a lot of practical learning with planting and observing outside to ensure that we work scientifically and are able to perform comparative tests and ask and answer questions based on our own observations.

We have been learning about the lifecycle of a plant  and comparing it to other lifecycles that we have learned about previously, such as frogs and butterflies. We have developed our understanding from year 1 about the different parts of a flowering plant to being also being able to also describe each of their functions too. We ended on a learning quiz to test that our knowledge of todays learning had stuck!

We have had lots of fun this week, beginning our comparative test. We discussed what seeds need to grow, then we planted some cress seeds and we are keeping them in different conditions – one is getting water and light, one just water, one just light and one is getting no water and no light – it’s stored in a dark cupboard! We have predicted what we think will happen and, linking with our maths learning, we will measure the plants growth each week in centimetres. This was a very active lesson, with the children helping to plant the cress , investigating them and making decisions about where we should keep the plant pots in the classroom.

We have been working scientifically and observing changes over time with our seeds. It has been very exciting to watch our cress seeds grow! We have been able to observe the seed, the shoot, the roots, the leaves, the stem and watch them getting stronger each day – particularly the seed that has been given water and light.

Art

We are looking at the contemporary working painter and printmaker Teresa Newham for our art learning journey this term with a focus on printing. We began by looking at some of her prints for inspiration and found that she draws her own inspiration for her printing from nature. Her favourite subjects include landscapes flowers wildlife. The children were able to make their own responses to her work noticing her choices of colour, line and subject. 

• She uses only one colour in some of her prints. It makes the sketch stand out.
• I like that the colours are really bold.
• You can see the lines really clearly.
• I wonder if she practises drawing before she does her prints.
• I like the wildlife she has printed. They look clear and really stand out.

To find out more about Teresa’s work please click on the tab which will take you to her website where you can view her work.Link to Teresa Newham’s website  We look forward to taking our own inspiration from the nature and the outdoor school environment to make our own prints. 

Computing

As we start every new unit in computing, we deepened our understanding of staying safe online. Today’s learning objective was for children to understand that some sites/apps have age restrictions. I was impressed with the children’s understanding of why age restrictions are important but lots were surprised about how old you need to be to use apps like TikTok and Whatsapp! We used think-pair-share to reflect on the reasons why some sites/apps are restricted and talked about our own experiences using sites/apps.

Finally, we explored ‘Squiggle’ a child-safe search engine. We talked about the role adults play in keeping children safe online by having search blocks but that using child search engines is still a good idea!

Geography 

Our Geography enquiry question this half term is:

What are the similarities and differences between Australia and England?

We have started our Geography learning this half term by revisiting the names of the continents and worlds oceans. We have already found out that Australia is an entire country, continent and an island which is one similarity to the UK.

Year 2’s have been particularly enjoying the catchy ‘5 oceans’ song to help them to remember the names and some simple ocean facts. 

Our Geography learning journey has led us to begin to compare the UK and Australia thinking about their size and population. Year 2 started off using our locality first and needed to learn more about the what a settlement is. We developed our map reading skills to local find other local settlements that have been made along the River Wharfe.

We began to compare their populations and found that most settlements that were towns had a larger population than the villages. This was a great start to help us to be able to compare the populations of the UK and Australia. Year 2’s made use of their maths skills to order populations. They were amazed to find that despite its size, Australia’s population was a lot smaller than the UKs. Some children went on to state they thought that this was because some parts of Australia were ‘outback’ or ‘bush land’ and these places did not have what a settlement or community needs. 

Music

In music this half-term, we are linking our Geography focus to find out more about traditional Aboriginal music. To gain a better understanding about the Aboriginal culture we applied our core reading skills to read around the subject. Then we began to listen and to appraise some Aboriginal music. After listening to different pieces of music and instruments, Year 2’s made a response about what they could hear, how it made them feel, using a tell me grid. Click on the link below to listen to some Aboriginal music.

We have been learning about some key Aboriginal instruments, describing how they make their sounds and how they are played.

• Didgeridoo.
• Clapsticks.
• Gum leaf.
• Bullroarer

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We enjoyed  playing this quiz to test our new instrumental knowledge and to see if we could name the instrument by hearing it.

PE

In PE, we  have been working on the focus area of co-ordination. Today Mrs Powell was helping year 2’s to develop our jumping skills to be able to hurdle a range of different obstacles. She demonstrated how to use our arms and legs with power to lift and jump successfully with power and lift to hurdle over different obstacles. Year 2’s even gave names to their obstacles drawing on their own interests and to make it even more fun. They named the hoops ‘muddy puddles’ and the hurdles and cones ‘mushroom kingdoms’!

PSHE