Christmas has well and truly arrived at Damers! We have been enjoying Christmas Jumper Day today and there has been lots of sparkle in the classroom in aid of Save the Children.

We have also had a busy week rehearsing our version of A Christmas Carol. We are really proud of the children who have worked hard to learn their lines, songs and dance. Thank you adults at home for your help with this too! The children loved having the opportunity to perform on the stage under the lights and really showed us what super actors they are. We can’t wait for you to see the film when it is released.

We’re especially proud of all the children’s adapting and learning new parts, whether that was in school or from home. If you were able to send in a Christmas message for those at home, thank you; we understand that you couldn’t be there and we’ve missed you very much. Everyone in Skipper 2 is missing you all and can’t wait until we’re all able to be the full team again!

Amongst rehearsals we have continued practicing ball skills in PE and singing Christmas songs in music. We’ve even started learning how to use sign language for the song ‘Jingle Bells’. 

In maths we have been continuing to look at the 2, 5 and 10 times tables, showing different ways of representing an equation. You might like to have a look at this together at home.

The children have been enjoying Hit the Button and TT Rockstars in class and if you have time you might want to have a go at using one of these at home to reinforce our learning of the 2, 5 and 10 times tables.

We have continued to learn about Victorian toys and really enjoyed making our own thaumatrope. This is a toy that some children would have played with as they were easy to make at home. They have a different design on each side of a circle and when spun quickly create the effect of a moving picture. We decided to make ours Christmassy so on one side we had a snow globe and on the other side a picture of the item inside the snow globe.

We talked about this being an early step in animation leading the way to cartoons and eventually movies like Frozen and Cars years later. 

Here are some other designs you may like to experiment with at home:

We can’t believe we’re approaching the last week of term before the Christmas holidays. Have a wonderful weekend where possible.

December is here and the sound of Christmas is in the air!

We have been having a wonderful time learning our lines, dancing and singing our way towards our own rendition of ‘A Christmas Carol’. So many children have come in with beaming smiles saying they’ve been learning their lines and songs at home – thank you! 

We’re looking forward to recording these performances next week to share with you at home. A letter has gone home with your child(ren) about simple home clothing/ outfits we hope the children can wear. Please let us know if you need a copy or have any questions. 

We’ve continued practising our times tables this week and we’ve started to explore how multiplication can be done in different ways. For example, we are recognising that 2 x 5 is similar to 5×2 and produces the same answer. Here’s an example of 4 x 2 and 2 x 4:

We found out some more about Victorian classrooms. We couldn’t believe some of the rules that existed in some of the classrooms! We all agreed that the dunce’s hat and cane were very unkind and made some of us think the children may have preferred working back in the factories! 

Our blinged bikes and scooters looked amazing. The children enjoyed taking part and showing off their Christmas themed transport! 

Please make sure you’re getting messages coming from Parent Mail/the school office. We appreciate several messages were coming your way this past week. If you’ve not been getting ParentMail messages, please contact the school office to check your details are correct on the system. 

Another busy week completed! We can’t believe it’s the last full week of November – this term is flying by. 

We have been enjoying finding out more about Victorian life for some children; we were surprised how different it was for some families! We’ve continued thinking about childhood for many Victorians and discussing similarities and differences. 

In literacy, we have been writing something called a recount where we write factually about something that happened to us. We decided to write a recount about our trip to Shire Hall. We used pictures from our trip to remind us what we did in chronological order. As a class, we really liked making the peg dolls and looking at the artefacts. We agreed that Harry Parker would have probably felt very alone and scared in the dark cells.

In maths we have been revisiting our times tables. We have reminded ourselves that times tables is a bit like repeated addition.For example, 3×2 is like adding 2+2+2 (three lots of 2). Building blocks can be useful to show times tables:

Next week is ‘Bling Your Bike Day’. A letter/email went home earlier in the week but here is the headline info: To make cycling to school even more fun, we are having a ‘Bling Your Bike’ day on Tuesday 30th November when we would like to encourage all children to cycle or scoot to school with their bikes or scooters decorated with a Christmas theme!

We work with a charity called ‘Sustrans’ who have this handy bike buying guide too that may be useful:

We’ve been practising and revisiting many of our phonics work that we have learnt in Year 1 and at the start of Year 2. Thank you for your support with the children’s home learning phonics books. We hope that by revisiting the alternative digraphs (e.g. how’ ie’, ‘y’, and’ i_e’, can make the ‘igh’ phoneme in some words), the children will become more familiar and confident with spelling patterns and word recognition etc. 

We have had a great week learning about the Victorians. We have enjoyed learning about Victorian schools and comparing how they are similar/different to schools today. We were particularly fascinated by the fact that many children would have had to work rather than go to school and one of the jobs they would have done would have been chimney sweeping or working with dangerous machines.

We had an amazing trip to Shire Hall and the adults there were so impressed with the children’s knowledge and how polite they were. Thank you to the adults that helped on the trip, your time and support is much appreciated. We spent time learning about the Victorian era and explored the courtroom and cells too. We learnt a lot about a child called Harry Parker and why he was in court at Shire Hall. We are now experts at exploring evidence and deciding whether we have enough grounds to convict someone.

We also had a great time getting crafty and making peg dolls. Some children even used these to tell stories as well. We learnt about Victorian toys and how rich children would have had dolls made from china whilst those from poorer backgrounds would have had homemade toys made from things that were around the house such as wood. There was a crib that was allegedly made from a smuggler’s box with a wooden doll inside.

This week we have also participated in anti-bullying week and looked at the theme of ‘One Kind Word…’. We have thought about what kindness means to us at school and how we can show different acts of kindness, it has been lovely to hear some of the kind acts the class have been sharing with one another. We created some great writing thinking about what kindness is.The children came up with some fantastic ideas: “Kindness is sharing and helping others. Kindness is looking after each other and making sure we use kind words.

Finally, we watched this video all about the kindness ‘boomerang’ effect, you can watch it here (adults please check the link in case of external adverts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwAYpLVyeFU

Remember, remember the 5th of November! It’s been a chilly but sunny week – we hope you had a restful and happy half term break.

Today we have thought about why Bonfire Night and Fireworks are so common in England at this time of year. We have learnt a little bit about Guy Fawkes. Next week we will also be thinking about why and how people remember others on November 11th with poppies and Remembrance Day (we do a lot of remembering in November don’t we?!).

In maths we have been learning how to use the column method when we add numbers together. We have learnt that we can add without renaming (where the numbers we add don’t make an extra 10) such as 25+32. We have also began looking at when adding does involve renaming such as 17 + 7 or 25+ 26 etc. As one of the children said “we can use our number bonds to help us… if we add the ones and it makes 10 or more, we need to rename the ones into a ten and remember to add it with the tens!”. 

Here are some examples without renaming:

And with renaming:

We used tens and ones (dienes) to help us make the numbers too.

In literacy, we enjoyed finishing off some of our work about Baba Yaga. We thought about noun phrases to describe the witch and the forest where the story is set. For example, The mean, scary witch had a long, twisty nose. She lived in the deep, dark forest. Etc. 

We enjoyed learning some tennis skills in PE this week. We practised how to hold the racket and develop our skill with balancing the ball and how to direct the ball to where we want it to go when we hit it. 

Next week at Damers we are welcoming Jonathan from Sustrans. Jonathan is coming in as Dr Bike to help give our bikes a free check up. Please see the below picture for details. 

We have nearly finished this first term and the time has flown by! 

We have continued to look at fairy tales in school, spotting the features and talking about these in class. We have continued to focus on Baba Yaga in class and have enjoyed retelling the story to each other. You might like to retell the story together at home or you could watch this short clip with no words.

In maths we have started to look at using a numberline for addition. We have also looked at how we can use basic number bonds to help us with more tricky addition sums, for example, if we know that 5 + 2 = 7 we can use this to work out 50 + 20 = 70.

Well done to everyone who has been practising counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. We have handed out lots of certificates – keep this up!

We have been enjoying our music sessions and singing with Mr Baker, recognising the high and low notes on a xylophone and practising these with our voices too.

In PE this week we have continued to use the apparatus in the hall to practise our climbing, balancing and jumping skills. The children are getting really good at this!

Although it is still only October, we have been thinking about making Christmas cards so they can uploaded onto the website for ordering real greetings cards (a link will be shared with you in the coming weeks) so apologies if any Christmas songs have been sung early!

We’ve enjoyed making these using many art techniques; here’s a sneak peak of the backgrounds we made using water colours for the first layer.

Have a wonderful weekend. We’re back in school on Monday and Tuesday; the children’s half term break starts on Wednesday.

It’s been great to see so many of you over the past couple of evenings for parent consultations.

Thank you for your help with learning some of the times tables too; the children worked hard and were delighted to get a certificate. To clarify, the 2, 5 and 10s are a feature throughout Year 2 so they can continue learning these throughout the year and move on to others when they are ready. We’ll check periodically but the children can let me know when they’re ready and can aim to get their certificates throughout the year.

We have had a lovely time in school. Earlier on in the month we looked outside the classroom to think about different types of ‘micro-habitats’. We thought about the conditions and things that creatures need to survive such as food and shelter and enjoyed looking at the diversity of what we found. Last time we were out there were hundreds of crane-fly!

We have started learning about traditional tales this week and have enjoyed sharing some in class. We have enjoyed talking about what makes a traditional tale and spotting the features in the stories that we have shared together. You might like to share the story of Baba Yaga that we have been looking at in class as there are lots of different versions. You can see the story below.

In maths we have continued to look at the different ways numbers are composed and represent this using different ways such as part part whole and dienes. We have also been looking at number sequences such as the ones below. We have looked at whether numbers are going forwards or backwards and by how much so that we can work out the next numbers in the sequence.

We have also been spotting patterns when counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s.

We have really enjoyed creating artwork ready for display in school. We have painted sunset backgrounds using watercolours and then sketched structures from around the world ready to stick on the background. Here are some pictures of what we have been doing.

We have really enjoyed our PE time this term. We’ve been outdoors practising our ball-skills with Mr Senior. This week we were improving our basketball skills and teamwork. On Fridays we have been using the apparatus to practise balancing, climbing and jumping skills.

We have enjoyed using different spelling techniques to help us learn ways to spell new words. ‘Noughts and Crosses’ has been a favourite!

We’re continuing to look at the bulb we ‘planted’ at the start of September. It likes being somewhere dark because it would be dark if it was buried under ground. The roots have grown even more since this photo!

Have a wonderful weekend. We can’t wait to see you on Monday!

Wow, it is October already and we are a month into Year 2! The weather is changing and there are definite signs of Autumn in the air. 

We have continued to look at Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers in our writing. We have been considering how we are all different and how this makes the world a more interesting place. We have also looked at diversity within the animal world. We used pictures from the book to write sentences about what the people are doing. We have focused on using adjectives to add description to make our writing more interesting and informative.

We loved listening to Louis Armstrong’s song ‘What a Wonderful World’ and enjoyed listening to David Attenborough recite some of the lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYXBJmrsxZU

We created our own versions of the poem and practised reading them aloud to the class – we did a wonderful job!

Next week we are looking forward to reading some Traditional Tales and starting to consider what makes them a traditional story.

In maths we have continued to look at the place value of digits and also discussed how to use the greater than and less than symbols to order numbers. You might want to watch this video that we watched in class about how to use the symbols. You might like to play this game: https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/574/Comparing-Numbers-using-Dienes

In art we have continued to look at buildings and structures – this week we focused on the Burj Khalifa and enjoyed spotting the shapes we could use to help us reproduce our own versions. We also looked at Dubai and where this was located on a map. We were amazed at how high it was but couldn’t believe how tiny it looked when we compared it next to Mount Everest!

We have continued to learn some new songs and find the pulse and beat in them. You might want to share this with your adults at home – penguins 

Thank you to everyone who worked so hard on their homework, we were so impressed with the work you have done, keep it up!

We’re at the end of another week! How quickly time flies when you’re having fun! 

This week we have been thinking about more of our sketching skills, looking at the diversity of buildings and landmarks around the world. We started to learn about the Colosseum in Rome, Italy. We began looking at shading techniques to show darker areas with our pencils such as crosshatching.

We’re really enjoying our music lessons with Mr Baker. We learnt about body percussion and listened to some of the classic, ‘We Will Rock You’ by Queen. We have also been learning some other songs throughout the week in class. You might like to practise this song at home too or teach it to someone you live with: https://vimeo.com/508398322 

In maths we have been using dienes to show and partition numbers into tens and ones. 

We have been comparing numbers using the equals, more than and less than symbols: 

The dots represent the numbers being more or less to help show which sign is which. 

You might like to play this game: https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/574/Comparing-Numbers-using-Dienes

We have also used a game called hit the button to help practise some of our times tables. https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button 

In literacy we have been continuing to read ‘Here We Are’ by Oliver Jeffers. We have looked at other books by the author and really enjoyed reading ‘Stuck’ in class. If you’d like to listen to it at home, you can hear Oliver reading it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hipx6HJs4XQ

We’ve learnt different spelling methods in class which the children may like to tell you about at home with their spelling target words (these have been sent home so you can see some of the words the children will be learning next week). 

We’re also sending a yellow home learning book home on Fridays with a challenge in. Please can these be returned by the following Wednesday and feel free to speak with one of us on the gate if you have any questions. 

We hope you have a wonderful weekend. We can’t wait to see you on Monday!

It is Friday already! I can’t believe how quickly the past week has gone, it seems to have flown by! 

Over the past week we have been looking at the book ‘The Story Machine’ by Tom McLaughlin, we have really enjoyed exploring the book and finding out about what a typewriter is. 

The children were excited to receive a special delivery; a large box with a letter from Elliot and the Story Machine itself! The children listened to the letter and wrote back to Elliott once they knew how to operate the typewriter!

If you want to listen and share the story at home, you can listen to the author Tom read it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXVqCCeCPAU (adults, please check the video first as there may be external comments or enabled links to other videos/ adverts etc.).

In maths we have been partitioning and exploring different ways we can make a number using different resources such as dienes (blocks made up of tens and ones) to physically form these numbers and partition them to form equations. For example, we explored how the number 64 has 6 tens and 4 ones but we could also partition this number into 4 tens, 2 tens and 4 ones. 

I am looking forward to next week and starting our new text ‘Here We Are’ and to share all our learning. I hope you all have a lovely weekend!