Is it really half-term already? Where has the time gone! 

This week, we had our last gymnastics lesson with Mr Carr using the equipment. The children really loved using it and demonstrated some great core strength, balance and movements! PE will go back to being on a Thursday and Friday after half-term so make sure you have your kits ready!

We have loved exploring poetry this week. We have spotted where the rhyme is in poems, any repetition, alliteration and talked about verses being a change of idea. We enjoyed sharing our favourite poems, and especially liked one of Miss Everett's favourite ones - Strict by Michael Rosen! It was very funny! We worked in groups to perform a poem today called The Mud-Maker's Rhyme by Janet Paisley. We had to use our voices in difference ways to show expression, include actions and use our faces too! The children did such an amazing job, I put them all on gold!

In maths, we have continued to explore division as sharing, answering word problems and making sure we could record our working out in a clear way and also be efficient with our method! 

We have now finished our Great Yarmouth history topic and had fun learning about what the seaside was like 100 years ago and comparing it to now. We also looked at lots of books that had tons of old photographs of Great Yarmouth in. This helped us to really see what it would have been like when Great Yarmouth was becoming 'great!'

It was lovely to talk to all of you at parents' evening this week and I said that I would send home a recommended reading list for Year 2 of books that are appropriate for this age group. I have attached the document below should you want to head to the library over half-term to explore some of the titles!

I hope you have a great half-term and come back ready and enthusiastic to learn even more! 

Miss Everett, Mrs Simpkins and Mr Cuddles

Wel done to all the children in Year 2 who took part in the gymnastics competition on Wednesday. I heard only positive things about you all and you should be proud of your fantastic efforts! Ms Studley has posted more about the event in the Sports Blog on the website so go and check it out too!

This week, we have been doing some great scientific thinking, from planning and carrying out an experiment to test if older children have bigger hands, to matching up animals to their young, to writing instructions about how to grow cress and deciding what foods are good for us! We have done some great thinking this week. 

In english, we have been writing our own Tunnel stories and we have got some lovely expanded noun phrases and veb choices so far! We will be moving onto poetry next week, so get those poetry books out at home and indulge!

In maths, we have grown into multiplication masters, seeing multiplication as groups of things and using arrays to help us see these groups, drawing them , matching them up, spotting the odd ones out and solving a puzzle! Keep up the good work!

We start our new local history topic next week, aiming to answer the question 'what made Great Yarmouth great?' Why not get talking to older family members and friends who may be able to tell you more about what Yarmouth used to be like when they were younger or even what their parents experienced! We will be looking back to when Great Yarmouth became a popular destination for tourists and what attracts people there even to this day. The secret word is Victorian.

Have a great weekend!

Miss Everett, Mrs Simpkins and Mr Cuddles

Welcome back!

I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and a restful break. It is lovely to have you all back and so ready to learn! Just a few admin points: I know most of you have seen or been told by the children that we are starting gymnastics lessons with Mr Carr on a Monday so please make sure PE kits are in school! I will also be handing homework out on a Monday to be in for the following Monday. I will be sending more maths problems, reading questions and grammar challenges home to help secure and stretch the children's thinking. If you have any questions about these, do ask! I'm always happy to help at school as well if doing homework at home is difficult. Just let me know!

We have started reading this book in English. We are really enjoying it and have been thinking about if we would go through a mysterious tunnel ourselves... We have thought a lot about the characters, exploring their differences and feelings. We have also written some advice for Rose about whether or not we think she should go through the tunnel to find her brother and how she can stay brave even though she is scared. We began thinking about describing what the tunnel is like and we will continue describing it next week and can't wait to find out where it leads! 

In Maths we have been exploring money. We can recognise and count coins and notes and find the difference between amounts. We will be extending our thinking to pounds and pence, how we can make the same amount in different ways and thinking about the real life context of working out how much things cost altogether and what change we might get, as if we were in a shop. It would be great if you could try this at home too... I'm sure the children will be sorting finances in no time!

We have started and now finished our short Programming topic and the children have enjoyed programming Bee-Bots to get from A to B, some even having to avoid obstacles. We wrote algorithms to help some animals find their way back to their families and if we made a mistake, had to debug them to correct them. The children were great at this and it really helped us remember our lefts from our right!

We will be starting our new Science topic about plants. I wonder how much you already know? Can you explain how a plant grows? Can you tell me what a plant needs to grow and stay healthy? It would be great if you could come in on Monday with some ideas... perhaps a few team points might be rewarded! The secret word is germination.

Have a great weekend! See you Monday!

Miss Everett, Mrs Simpkins and Mr Cuddles

Well what a busy week it has been and may I start by saying how proud I am of you all, especially with how polite and well-mannered you were when our special visitor came this week (though I knew you would be!) but also with how well you tackled sewing on Thursday. For most of you, it was the first time you had ever sewn and my goodness you were all amazing! I just had to give the whole class the Growth Mindset award this week because of it!

Speaking of sewing, we are making hand puppets sell at the Christmas Fayre and I sent home a little homework this week to do some 'market research' to investigate which Christmas character would be the most popular to sell as a hand puppet. This is due on Monday so we can make some decisions about what to make for you, so please have it on Monday ready. The secret word is cautiously.

We have finished our recounts now in English and moved onto instructions - another non-fiction text which is meant to inform the reader. We have already noticed they have some similar features to recounts, like time conjunctions, and are going to be delving deeper into more features next week.

In Maths, we have been working out how to find 10 more, 10 less and multiples of 10 more or less to (like 20, 30, 40 etc). We noticed that on a hundred square these were directly above and below the number and that it is only the tens column that changes as we are adding no ones!

Tomorrow is a busy week, making our puppets, continuing with our Christmas play rehearsals and then Decoration Day on Friday! Keep your eyes peeled for a sign up sheet next week if you would like to help on Friday. 

Enjoy your weekend and we'll see you on Monday!

Miss Everett, Mrs Simpkins and Mr Cuddles

Welcome back! I hope you all had a lovely half-term and are feeling rested and ready to tackle all the challenges of this half-term. I hope you all enjoyed the art gallery on Tuesday and could see the progress the children had made from start to finish.

We have started a new english unit of work, this time focusing on Non-Fiction texts and we will be therefore writing to inform. We have started looking at recounts and their features as we will be writing our own recount of our animal encounter experience on Monday 5th November, when animals and bio-artefacts (furs, feathers, skins etc) from Banham Zoo will be coming to school! We are all very excited about this! This links with our new science topic - Living Things and Their Habitats. On Monday, I sent home a knowledge organiser with the key words and ideas that we will be covering in this topic for you to discuss with your children, so please make good use of it! We have already started learning about the different types of habitats in the world and what makes something alive, dead or never alive. I have set this week's homework to be a research task to find out about one of the habitats and tell me what plants and animals you would find in it. This can be presented in any way you would like and doesn't have to be in for 2 weeks as it is a heavier task!

We have also started learning how to write letters in the pre-cursive (with lead-ins and outs to the letters) so that we can make sure we are forming our letters properly before we start joining them properly. The secret word is paragraphs. 

A few of you have been asking me about things to do at home with your children. Hit the Button (https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button) is a great way for your children to practise number bonds, addition facts and subtraction facts and will help their recall to become speedier as these quick links between the numbers is a vital foundation for other areas of maths.  Also, Reading Vipers (https://www.literacyshedblog.com/uploads/1/2/5/7/12572836/ks1_reading_vipers.pdf) are a great resource for questions you can ask your children about their reading books to develop their comprehension, ability to retrieve information, understand vocabulary, predict, make inferences, sequence information and make links between other things they have read. Again, these are vital skills that really help secure the foundations of reading beyond decoding. It would be really helpful if you could comment on your child's understanding of the text in the comments section of their reading diaries to show their understanding of what they read, not just how they read it. 

Enjoy your weekend!

Miss Everett, Mrs Simpkins and Mr Cuddles