It’s starting to feel much warmer now as we approach the end of this half term. We have one week left before a half term break and have been very busy with our secret agent work!
We’ve created identity badges, taken finger prints, danced, designed secret gadgets and taken part in some maths and reading challenges too!
In PE we have been practising some athletic races and in music we started learning a new song and had time playing some ukuleles!
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We’re celebrating the Golden Jubilee next Friday 27th May. A home learning challenge and information about a decade dress-up opportunity has been sent home but please see below for more details:
See the message emailed from Mrs Smith copied below:
It’s the Easter break – where has the time gone?! We will be back on Monday 25th April after what we hope is a happy and healthy break for you all.
This week we’ve continued thinking about fractions of a shape and adding fractions to make a whole. E.g ¼ + ¾ = 1 whole. Can you think of any other examples?
We have been enjoying learning about butterfly life cycles in science and literacy too. We’ve read this book and learnt lots of facts about them:
We’ve used this research to start writing our own books about a butterfly’s life cycle.
In PE we have practised some passing techniques to help us with our basketball skills.
Today, we have been reflecting on the challenges those are facing in Ukraine. We spent some time thinking about why we were wearing the colours yellow and blue and the significance of these colours and also had a conversation about why people are leaving Ukraine and how the money we have raised from our fundraising day will help those in need.
It’s hard to believe that we’re in April already! We’ve seen lots of warm weather followed by some more chilly weather which has caused us to see some more wildlife like bees and butterflies during those sunny spells!
We’ve enjoyed learning about the Bog Baby story and have created suitable habitats for a Bog Baby creature. This week we have been writing some instructions for how to care for them too! We’ve learnt the importance of leaving wildlife in its natural habitat and making sure it has everything it needs to survive.
In maths we have been learning about fractions and have started focusing on halves and quarters so far. At home, you might like to practise finding halves and quarters of different objects. You could move on to thirds and fifths too. We have been using shapes to begin with but have started exploring finding fractions of numbers and linking this with division. E.g. Finding half of 12 is like dividing by 2. ¼ of 20 is 20 divided into 4 equal parts.
We have also been practising using an analogue clock to tell the time starting with revising o’clock and half past. You might like to use this interactive clock to practise at home on a device: https://www.visnos.com/demos/clock
In science we have been learning about animals including humans. Here’s a breakdown of our topic:
Over the Easter break, there is a competition for writing, illustrating or speaking with our Dorchester Area Schools Partnership (DASP). Please see the poster below for more details:
We have been looking at temperature in maths this week and have enjoyed recording and comparing the temperatures around the school. We have talked about what temperatures could be linked to the words, cold, cool, warm and hot too.
In writing, we have continued looking at poetry. We have enjoyed looking at the language used to describe the wind and the effect that this has. We also enjoyed writing our own poems about winter and writing them up neatly – we are really proud of our poems.
We used this poem by Shirley Hughes to inspire us to write our own poems.
We enjoyed exploring the school grounds and seeing what colours we noticed in preparation for creating our own butterfly which would be suited to live in the school grounds. We also talked about the different cycles that we see in nature such as the water cycle, the butterfly life cycle and the life cycle of a tree. We also enjoyed finding out about the lifecycle of a cardboard box in a story. If you would like to find out more, have a look at this link https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zxfrwmn/articles/zfbnscw
We have been using our new phonic mats to help us with our spellings, reading and to play some phonics games with.
We have learnt how to play our own version of wordle by creating our own. You might like to have a go at this one (hint, it’s a 5 letter year 2 common exception word!)
We hope that you all had a restful half term, it has been lovely to see the children returning refreshed and ready for learning.
We have continued to look at mass and comparing the weights of different objects. We have also started to consider the difference between the weight of different objects.
Our basketball skills have been improving during our Wednesday outdoor PE sessions! We braved the chilly weather to practise our passing and throwing skills whilst working together as a team.
We have also been enjoying some poetry from Out and About by Shirley Hughes. We have enjoyed exploring the language used in the poems and how this gives us a clue to what season the poem is about.
Happy World Book Day!
We were amazed by your book character potatoes! There were so many contributions and such imaginative ideas, we loved them! We enjoyed looking at the other classes’ potatoes as we walked around the school on world book
We also enjoyed seeing how many books we could spot in this WBD video too.
Happy Friday! We hope that you are all well and that you are staying safe on this windy and blustery day. For those who are able to do some activities today, here are some ideas that you can complete at home.
We are going to be meeting virtually if you are able to join us at 9.30 and 1.15 for around 10 minutes. Please see the email from the office with links to join. We’re also available at year2@damers.dorset.sch.uk for any home learning questions/photos to share tomorrow.
We’ve included some ideas below similar to what we’d be doing in class. You may also enjoy some of these ideas:
Make a pillow fort with blankets and cushions
Write a story about anything you like!
Enjoy a movie with your family if you can
Help an adult make a healthy snack or tasty treat
Listen to your favourite songs
Show off your best dance moves
Maths
In maths this week we have been learning about mass. You might want to have a look at the packaging of some food items and see how much these items weigh. Can you put these items in order of lightest to heaviest?
If you have access to scales then you could weigh different objects from around the house and compare their weights. Can you put these in order using the < (less than), > (greater than) and = (equal to) signs?
Alternatively, if you don’t have access to scales you can order the objects by feeling how heavy they are, the lego brick is lighter than the book.
Online activities
My Maths – Many of you will have access to your My Maths password, there are lots of activities on here which you can complete even if they have not been set by your teacher. https://www.mymaths.co.uk/
We have set some mymaths work on measures for completion over the next two weeks.
We know how much you have loved becoming experts on Emperor Penguins so now we would like you to find out about an animal from the Arctic – the Polar Bear!
You can watch these links to find out more about polar bears (as always, adults please check any external links first as external adverts and comments may be enabled).
Using the information that you have learnt about Polar Bears we would like you to create a non-chronological report. You can use the same structure and subheadings as we did for the Emperor Penguins (there is an example layout below or you can download the pdf). You might want to follow a structure similar to this:
Paragraph 1- introduction
Paragraph 2 – Where do polar bears live?
Paragraph 3 – How have polar bears adapted to live in the Arctic?
Paragraph 4 – What do polar bears eat?
Paragraph 5 – What do polar bears look like?
Wow fact – perhaps you could include a fact about polar bear cubs, how far they can swim or something that you find really interesting.
***update. In light of adverse weather conditions, please see the email from Mrs Smith regarding remote learning sent on 17.02.22*** Please stay safe today (Friday).
It’s the end of another week and another half term. Can you believe we’re halfway through year 2?
Thank you for spending your time with us this week during our parent consultation appointments. If you’ve not been able to make it, please speak with one of us by the gate in the morning or afterschool.
In art we have finished our amazing works of symmetry using water colours and oil pastels. Can you tell which side is the photograph and which side is our art work?
A few months ago, we ‘planted’ our hyacinth bulbs. They’ve started flowering now and produce such an amazing smell. Some of the children thought they smelt similar to soaps or lavender; others thought they were reminded of sweets!
It has been a windy few days so PE with Mr Senior was spent in the large hall practising some throwing, ducking and moving techniques!
We’ve continued thinking about mass and weight in class. If possible, it would be great if you could follow a recipe together that involves weighing out some ingredients at home. If you have access to a device, you could use this interactive scale: https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/87/itp-measuring-scales
In class we set the scales to 1000 (grams) with intervals of 10.
Another week done and dusted – where does the time go?!
We’ve enjoyed using balancing and measuring scales to help us measure mass/weight in grams and kilograms this week. We’ve estimated, measured and read different scales to help us.
We’ve been focusing on some sentence structures this week. We’re working on our lovely joined up handwriting and using words called conjunctions (‘so’, ‘or’, ‘but’) to help us extend our sentences.
Thank you for sharing your ongoing home learning projects with us. It has been great seeing so many of your boat experiments too!
We got muddy in PE this week using skills to help us dodge, twist, turn and maneuver with rugby balls.
In art we’ve been thinking about what we see in nature. In the past we talked about spirals and circles. We’ve explored how we can often see symmetry in nature and have explored whether we can see this with animals’ faces such as owls and tigers.
Today is national Safer Internet Day and we have spent time in class discussing how we use the internet in our day-to-day lives and how to stay safe when online or when using technology with a particular focus on online gaming. The discussions we had in class today might be a good starting point for a discussion at home about online safety so if your child can’t remember what they did at school today then ask them about how they can stay safe online and they might be able to give you a few pointers!
We also read a story about DigiDuck and his friends who used a device to play an online game.
Happy Friday! We hope that you have had a good week, we can’t believe it is now February!
We have been busy with our learning and have continued to learn about Emperor Penguins. Did you know that Emperor Penguins are the biggest of the penguin species and are around 115cm tall? We enjoyed measuring ourselves and working out how big they were compared with us.
This week we have taken part in a Literacy Festival which has been kindly funded by the PTA.
We heard an extract from Catherine Emmett’s book, The Pet, and learnt about how she creates her characters and how the illustrator, David Tazzyman, then draws them. We also took part in a storytelling session with Emily Hanna-Graze Brook and a session with author Ross Collins too.
In art we have continued to look at Symmetry in Nature, this week our focus has been on owls. We enjoyed looking at the majestic barn owl and sketching its face. We have also enjoyed painting our own abstract owls too.
We are loving writing our own emperor penguin information books and can’t wait to get these finished.
Some super effort was made here to create a life size emperor penguin complete with an information book in the style of an egg! Thank you for supporting the children at home with their additional learning opportunities and please continue to read daily with your children.
A message from Mr Moore:
The CPRE National Star count is back from Saturday 26th February – Sunday 6th March. If you want to get involved, choose a clear night between 26 February – 6 March 2022 and look to the skies to see how many stars you can spot within Orion.
