Year 2 December News
What a busy month we have had in Year 2!
In the lead up to Christmas we have had an extra visitor in our class, Baubles the Elf has been keeping us on our toes with his antics. The children have thoroughly enjoyed seeing what he has been getting up to each night and it has really put us in the festive spirit.
The children did fantastically well in their performance of Hey Ewe! Their singing was superb and the delivery of their lines was perfect. I hope you can tell how much hard work they put in during rehearsals and how much fun we have had preparing for the show. We are super proud of them all! Well done!
We have also had a fabulous time at our Christmas party this week. We played games, ate some food and had a good old dance. What a great time had by all!
Outside of our Christmas festivities we have been working super hard. In English, we began a new unit based on the story ‘The Polar Express’. The children have had a great time exploring the book and unpicking how to write a really impactful setting description based on the North Pole. The ideas the children created for their own writing were amazing and they all produced some beautiful setting descriptions in their published writing.
In maths, we have been exploring quarters and how to quarter amounts by sharing equally into 4 groups. Some of the children even extended their learning by linking quartering to the 4 times table, fantastic!
We have been busy finishing off all of our topics for Autumn 2. In Geography, we concluded our unit ‘Would you prefer to live in a hot or cold place?’ where the children had some really interesting ideas for living in hot and cold places. Some of us would love to live in the hot places such as Kenya to enjoy the lovely sunshine all year round but some of us thought it would be too hot. Others said they’d love to live in the South Pole so they could see snow and ice all year round. Some really great discussion on both sides.
Great work Year 2! Enjoy all of the family time over the Christmas holidays.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you in 2025!!
Miss Nicholson.
Year 2 November News
Where do we start with November’s news?!
We had an incredibly exciting start to our new half term spending the day at Beamish Museum. We had a great time exploring the different parts of the museum before taking part in a workshop during which we got to experience what life was like at school in the 1900’s. The children really enjoyed taking part in the activities including using a chalk and slate board, drawing a duck and playing a Victorian playground game. They weren’t so keen on having to stand every time they spoke to their teacher and calling her ma’am! We also had a sing song on the bus to celebrate Jack E’s birthday- what a fabulous day and well done to the children for representing Ellington Primary School so well!
Before half term, in English, we enjoyed taking part in poetry week where the children learned a poem from the poet Joshua Seigal. We explored three of his poems and the children discussed their favourite and why they liked that one the most. The children then worked in groups to perform the poem to their peers. There was some fantastic teamwork on display.
Since returning from the holidays, we have started a brand-new English topic based on the short film ‘The Cloudmaker’. Throughout this unit we are learning how to write an effective diary entry including using the past tense and using adverbs to make our writing even more exciting. We can’t wait to write our final drafts and get the chance to show off everything we have learned in this unit.
In maths, we have been working hard on some of our wider maths knowledge including mass, length, shape and symmetry. The children have really impressed me with the knowledge they have retained from year one and how they are able to apply this to their new learning and solve problems. We also had a wonderful time celebrating Times Tables Rock Star and Numbots day. The children all looked fabulous and enjoyed playing times table games and using the iPads to complete online activities. Please encourage them to use these games at home to continue working on their number skills.
This half term our Geography unit is ‘Would you prefer to live in a hot or cold place?’. So far, we have enjoyed learning about the coldest places on earth, the North and South Pole and we have located the equator using Google Earth. The children were fascinated to learn how much closer Ellington is to the North Pole than the equator and how that has an impact on the climate here. I wonder where they will decide they would prefer to live at the end of our unit!
Another fantastic month in Year 2, keep up the good work guys!
Year 2 October News
What a busy month we have had since we last spoke!
Year 2 have been working hard on writing fact files all about meerkats as part of our English unit based on the story ‘Meerkat Mail’ by Emily Gravett. The children have researched facts about meerkats, wrote our facts into paragraphs using subheadings to organise our ideas and then we published our work. I am amazed at all of the hard work the children have put into their fact files and the outcome has been beautiful! Please ask your child their favourite meerkat fact, I bet they have loads to tell you!
In Maths, we have been working on adding 1 and 10 to 2 digit numbers. We have also worked on some subtraction and some sharing by 2, 5 and 10 to tie in with our Learn It work around timetables. We are also working hard on our doubling and halving facts.
In Science, we have been continuing our work on habitats by investigating a range of different habitats including polar, desert, woodland and ocean. We have had explored the different animals and plants that live there and how they are able to survive there. We have also been learning about how different food chains can be found in each habitat and how these are unique to the conditions found in these places.
We were super lucky to have a special visitor in our class this week to help us with our History topic ‘How was school different in the past?’. Mrs Robinson came in to tell us about what school was like when she was a little girl. We asked her lots of questions and we were fascinated by what we found out. Our favourite facts included the headteacher was very strict, they didn’t have to wear a uniform and their school dinners were made in a different school and brought over!
In Music we have been working on call and response. This week we took turns to be the call leader while the rest of the did the response. We had so much fun trying to get our instruments to be as loud and as quiet as possible.
Well done Year 2!
Year 2 September News
Year 2 have had a brilliant start to the new school year, it has been wonderful to see them looking so smart in their uniforms and have them settle straight back into the school day- super stars!
In English, we have started our first unit of writing based on the story ‘Meerkat Mail’ by Emily Gravett. We have been creating character description full of adjectives and comparison to describe Sunny the meerkat. We have also been focusing heavily on punctuation and handwriting as we get back into the swing of writing after six weeks off! We have also been enjoying reading the story Mr Majeika by Humphrey Carpenter in our story time sessions after lunch, we can’t believe the mayhem Mr Majeika caused around his school.
In Maths, we have been recapping our place value knowledge and skills, working hard on understanding number up to 100. We have also been writing numbers in words and looking at the tens and ones in any 2 digit number.
We had a real treat this past week in our Science lessons. Mr Watkins came into school to deliver an exciting lesson about habitats and microhabitats. The children were so engaged and we brilliant at spotting and talking about the different features of habitats we found around our school grounds. This lesson tied into our ‘Living Things and their Habitats’ Science topic for this half term.