Welcome to Class 2

Taught by Mr Hartley with Teaching Assistants Miss Edwards, Mrs Morris and Mrs Brooke.

AUTUMN TERM

Race for Life

The children ran around our school field to raise money for Cancer Research UK. It was great to see so many parents cheering and supporting us on such a chilly day!

History

Our topic in history is The Great Fire of London. The children have been finding out all about this tragic event and have written adventure stories and newspaper reports on this topic. If you have any books or information on this event it would be great to see and share with the children. All books will be looked after and returned.

The children construction houses from clay and added tissue to create a Great Fire of London burning house!

The children enjoyed making Fire of London buns. They worked in small teams to weigh out the ingredients, mix and decorate their buns. See the pictures below!

Non Chronological Reports

The children have loved learning about the life of Florence Nightingale. We have written some detailed Reports about her life and have displayed these on our school writing wall. Feel free to pop in to see them when you drop your children off in the morning. The children are very proud of their work and every Report is on display.

Science

In science the children have been learning about different materials. This is a great topic for children to plan and carry out experiments. The children chose materials to test to see which would be the most suitable for a waterproof cover for Mrs Wood’s guinea pigs cage.

The children constructed mini houses from straw, sticks and clay bricks. They then tried to blow them down with powerful fans to see which would be the most suitable building material. Our school cleaner, Mrs Wooten kindly lent us her industrial hoover to clean up afterwards! Pictures below show the experiment.

RE and educational visit

In RE the children have been learning about religious buildings. As part of this topic we visited Ripon Cathedral. What a fantastic day we had! We are very grateful to Cliff Bowman, Canon Barry and the team at Ripon Cathedral for many carefully planned activities. Thank you also the the many parent volunteers who came along to support the class on this trip.  

PE 

PE for Class 2 is on a Mondays and Thursdays. For Autumn Term, PE on Thursdays is Martial Arts and is taught by Martial Arts specialist Clive. During this term, we have been running a mile twice a week. Here are some pictures!

Below are pictures of children taking part in Martial Arts.

Mr Skippy!

On 6th November 2018 we welcomed Mr Skippy in to school who spent the day working with each class. We had a fantastic time learning new skipping techniques. Thank you Mr Skippy!

Poetry

We have been learning about poetry. The children have read many different poems and learnt about the features. Below shows pictures of the children reciting the poem Kites by Daphne Lister, using actions to help remember the words.

GENERAL INFORMATION

READING BOOK SCHEME

The children  choose their own books from the correct colour book box and then ‘tick off’ the books they have read from a sheet with a partner to help them.

Listening to your child read on a regular basis, for example 3 or 4 times a week really helps them to progress and your help is greatly appreciated.

It will be very helpful if you could please continue to do the following:

• Return the reading record to school each day with the books, even if they have not yet been read at home.
• When you read with your child, enter the date and title of the book in the reading record and sign your name.
• Feel free to comment on how your child has done, but please don’t feel that you must do this every time as just signing your name is fine.

SPELLINGS

The test is every Friday. The children are tested on a specific phonic sound. For example, ‘igh’ in the word high. They may have already been tested on a specific sound before but we will revisit the sounds as they provide the children with good foundations of how to spell. On other occasions your children will receive ‘common exception’ words. These are just everyday words that children use when writing.

A quick reminder of good ways to practise learning spellings together:

• Read the word together out loud 3 times.
• Look, Cover, Write. Encourage your child to say the word by sounding it out, cover the word and then write the word, saying the sounds as they write.
• You can practise maybe just 3 words at a time, rather than all at once.
• If you are testing your child please say the words out of order or within a sentence.

TESTS

On a weekly basis the children do BIG maths. This is a timed test and is a fun way to ‘speed up’ children’s arithmetic skills. They only compete against themselves to try and beat their own best score. Year 2 children will take their SATS tests in Spring 2019 and I will discuss this with parents at parents evening nearer the time.

SMIRFS

Your child is working on their SMIRF targets. You can find these in the front of their yellow reading record book.  Like last year, the aim for your child is to complete the targets to enable them to move onto the next planet. Instant recall of mental maths is really beneficial to your child’s understanding and further progress in maths.  Please encourage your child to practise these on a regular basis, just 5 minutes is perfect!

TIMES TABLE ROCK STARS

This is a great website where the children practise their times tables (and the corresponding division facts). Each child has their own username and password to login (Year 1 children will be given their login details shortly). Hopefully all parents are aware of this site now but don’t worry if you’re not, just pop in and I’ll give you your child’s login details.

Useful websites:

• https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/
• http://www.ictgames.com/
• https://ttrockstars.com.