2SB

Welcome to 2SB 2022/2023 

"Don't give up. I believe in you all. A person's a person. No matter how small."

― Dr. Seuss 

School Closure: 10.3.23

Please find below a selection of activities to complete whilst at home. There is no need to complete all of the activities, please select what is appropriate.

You will find some spelling work on the Year 2 common exception words, where children have to correct the spelling mistakes. We have introduced how to use a dictionary this week, so if you have a dictionary at home the children could use it to help.

There is a selection of Maths revision activities for adding and subtracting to and from a ten. As always using the Top Marks 'Hit the Button' game is great practice to help embed basic number facts.

There is a reading activity, where there is a choice of 3 versions. You can read it to your child and answer the questions together or your child can read it and attempt the questions independently.

We have been learning about the Great Fire of London so we have also attached a short information pack about firefighting in the past and firefighting now and the children can sort the pictures to match the appropriate period. As an extra challenge the children could write some facts to match the pictures from what they have learned from the information pack.

You could also log in to Quizziz for our big Year 2 quiz which revises all of our learning from the last half term.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

https://quizizz.com/admin/quiz/63cc58e28e7233001dc46f0a?source=quiz_share

Please copy the links into your browser to access

If you are unable to print them, children could just answer questions on a piece of paper from the screen.

Spring so far! 

Spring 1

In English, we have been reading the book 'The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark'. The children really enjoyed reading this book and predicting what would happen next! It was great to see the children make their own owl habitats on Outdoor Day! They were so creative! 

In Maths, we have been adding numbers and learning different strategies to add bigger numbers together using what we already know! The children have worked so hard and I am incredibly impressed with their effort and progress! 

In our RE unit we have been learning about the miracles Jesus performed and lots of different parables such as 'The Parable of the Sower', 'The Parable of the Miracles' and 'The Parable of the Prodigal Son'. The children have thought about the talents that they have, the meaning behind the parables and how this represents God, Jesus and ourselves in each of them.

Our Science topic this term is 'Living Things and their Habitats'. We have looked at lots of different types of habitats including microhabitats! The children have really enjoyed Science, making predictions and learning about different kinds of animals. 

During History, we have been learning about significant people! Ask your child what they now know about Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole! They are fabulous historians making inferences from pictures, understanding why Florence and Mary are significant people in history and deciding who deserves medals.. or not! 

As I am sure you have heard, our Music unit this term has been all about UB40! The children learnt the song 'I'll Be On My Way' and thought about how this song made them feel whilst listening to it. They also learnt to use percussion instruments to play to the rhythm of the song. They then got to perform live to UB40!! What an experience for all of the children at St Edwards. They worked so hard and made me so proud! 

Autumn 1

In Autumn 1, Year 2 have had lots of fun In English reading 'The Day the Crayons Quit' and 'The Day the Crayons Came Home'. We created our very own postcards that we sent home! 

We have been working hard in Maths with place value looking at tens and ones. We have also been looking at odd and even numbers in Mastering Number and making sure we are fluent with small numbers, so that the children are very confident when working with bigger numbers. 

We have also been practising our reading, making sure we are fluent, adding expression when reading aloud and understanding the text.

In Art, we looked at Picasso and his style of Art. The children created their very own portraits! They look fabulous! 

We have carried out fun Science experiments using different materials. We also decided which material would be best for Noah to use for an Ark. 

In Geography, we have been looking at addresses, and our local area. We worked on directions and how to make a route to a destination. 

We have had a very busy, fun-filled half-term! 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2021/2022

In this document you will find details of what we will be covering in the Autumn Term.

Week 4 and 5

We have been very excited to start our new text ‘The owl who’s afraid of the dark’ by Jill Tomlinson. We read the first chapter and couldn’t believe how frightened Plop the little barn owl was. We have offered him some advice about fireworks in our English lessons and designed new front covers for the book like we are the author. We have been looking at division and fractions and enjoyed drawing on the tables to help us. We have been looking at the signs and symbols of Easter and what they respresent and even made our own Pascal candles. We have started planting some seeds in Science after the teachers couldn’t agree what seeds needed to germinate. We have continued learning about The Gambia and comparing where we live to there.

we also had a very exciting trip to the Botanical Gardens as part of our Science topic. We got to see some unusual plants and had to hunt for interesting facts about them. Ruth one of the teachers at the venue taught us all about the parts of plants and we even got to do some acting.

We have also been doing our SATs. We have been working so hard and have been so sensible and mature.

It was a short week this week with a bank holiday and polling day, but that didn't stop us having a non stop week. It was lovely to welcome parents into the classroom to do a short activity with the children and to have a look at the wonderful work the children have been doing. We also had a whole school focus on vocations as this Sunday was Vocations Sunday. The children explored ways that they could shine their light and be a disciple of Jesus to live out their vocation. It was also takeover day, where the children applied to be different staff within school. If they were successful they got to take on the role of that person for a period of the school day. We had cooks, teachers, office staff and many more.

The children have returned to school extremely settled and ready for the busy term ahead. The children have enjoyed discussing our new Gospel Virtues, grateful and generous and exploring what these mean to them and thinking of examples. Due to deteriorating weather conditions at the end of term, the children completed their sponsored event this week raising money for our chosen charities. The children had to keep moving as a whole school for an entire hour! We were extremely proud of their determination. The children have enjoyed listening to the different bible accounts of the resurrection and have been detectives, spotting the similarities and differences. The children have used their experience of our zoo trip this week as we have explored the book 'Zoo' another great book by Anthony Browne. I was astonished by all they could remember about the author, but also about common themes in his books. We had an interesting conversation about our thoughts on zoos and have used this conversation to write letters about whether zoos should remain open or closed.

What a Holy Week (6)!

Year 2 had a busy week this week as we prepared for the Easter Holidays, including Holy Week. We learnt about the significant events that happened in Jesus' life and how we can think about these days during the Easter Holidays. We celebrated our Easter Bonnet parade this week, with many of our children creating wonderful bonnets that the Key Stage 2 children applauded and praised! We also innovated our own stories of gorilla, which created lots of fantastic variations of a book we have loved reading!

For-give us some time to tell you about Week 5!

This week we looked at the meaning of Lent and how we ask God for forgiveness during this time. We thought about times we have offended others and we prayed to God, asking him for forgiveness. In our English lessons, we carried out some research on gorilla's and we created detailed reports to send to Dudley Zoo. We continued to develop our Map skills this week by finding The Gambia (and we saw how it looks a bit like a worm-shape on the West Coast of Africa!). Developing our Tennis skills was how we spent our PE lesson this week, looking at controlling the ball on our racket and beginning to strike the ball with a forehand technique.

Afri-Can you see what we did in Week 4?!

Year 2 have enjoyed coming into school this week basking in the beginning of the Spring sunshine! On Tuesday, we had our outdoor day and children were desperate to create structures linked to The Gambia, ranging from huts, market stalls and even full compounds, which helped us to learn a lot about how Gambian people live compared to us (and the weather even had us feeling like we were in The Gambia!). For our Lenten fundraising, we have also had Fancy Dress Day, where we chose a sport theme and had lots of different costumes come in!

Here’s a pizza-bout week 3:

This week, Mr. Worthington and Mrs Bailey had set the children a STEM project. We started by learning about business names and logos and the children worked in groups to design their own logo for a Pizzeria. We then looked at where different foods come from and this led us into making simple food chains. We looked at healthy eating and how we could incorporate some of the food groups into our pizza. At the end of the week, we ended with chopping our ingredients and cooking our own pizzas, which we tasted and evaluated. We have made great strides in our fundraising efforts and have sold out of tip tops twice. The children showed great reverence and respect when the Legion of Mary came to pray the Rosary with us.

We are zoo-ming into week 2:

This week was a very exciting week where we went to Dudley Zoo. The children were amazing ambassadors for our school. We were focussing on habitats and what animals needed to survive in their habitat and with our topic about Africa developing we were seeing how many animals from different continents we could spot. We have been really focusing on forgiveness in this season of Lent and getting our minds and hearts ready for Jesus. Using our knowledge of habitats we innovated our own story based on the book ‘Leaf’ which Miss Broadbent had asked us to focus on for World Book Day. We have entered a competition where we have designed our own badges for Wow Living Streets and the travel tracker we fill in each day to see who is travelling to school in a sustainable way and caring for the environment. Let’s see if one of us wins!

Week 1…. We have it covered!

We welcomed the children back after what we hope was a very restful half term break. We were preparing ourselves for the start of Lent and we received the ashes on our forehead as a symbol of this season. The children were very excited in the build up to world book day and we completed a whole array of activities. We started  a new book called ‘Leaf’ which linked well with our Science work, we had quizzes, we made book marks, we had lots of discussion all about different books that we like and why.

The Big Spring One!
During this half term, Year 2 have enjoyed two different topics and we have learnt lots through them!
The first topic we studied was the Great Fire of London, a significant event in British history. We learnt about Samuel Pepys and his diary, as well as learning how the fire started, how it was stopped and what changes were made to stop something like that happening again.
In PE, we have been practicing our ball skills and applying these skills in our cricket lessons. 
We have learnt about Castles in our history lessons, looking at William the Conqueror and how he became king of England. We looked at all the castles he built in England and we even had the opportunity to visit one when we went to Warwick Castle! We were able to spot the different features of a castle too.
 

Autumn 2 Week 5 - An update on our Adventures this week!

This week marked the start of Advent, a time where we think, pray and prepare ourselves for the birth of Jesus in four weeks time on Christmas day. To mark this, we spent Monday doing some silent, meditation style prayer, drawing pictures to represent what or who we were praying for. We also had the opportunity to get creative with our Advent craft, creating Advent wreaths. We have looked at directions this week in Geography, looking at compasses and the different points that a compass has. In our writing this week, we have written for different purposes creating a letter to Grandma from Katie in London, informing her of our findings from our Science experiment last week, letting her know what the best resources are to make a blanket. We also created wanted posters as we had received a letter from the Queen asking us to try and find the lion who had kidnapped the children and caused chaos around London! In Music this week, we have been creating our own melodies after mastering the melody to 'Once a man fell in a well' with some children even trying to play Silent Night, which was a very challenging piece of music to play. This is preparing us well for our Nativity on the 14th and 15th as Silent Night is the carol that we will be singing! 

Autumn 2 Week 4- More 'Material' for the class page!

It has been an exciting week in Year 2 as it always is, with lots of different activities going on throughout the week. We have began reading a new book this week called 'Katie in London' to link to our work on the Great Fire of London, which we will be starting soon! We linked this to our work in Geography, where we have looked at the United Kingdom! We used Atlases to locate the countries of the United Kingdom and their Capital cities also! In Maths this week, we have been introduced to doubling and halving numbers as well as consolidating our work on odd and even numbers. We had an exciting opportunity in Science to become materials engineers and test different materials for how waterproof they were in order to make a new coat for Katie's grandma in our class text! We chose our own methods of testing and worked together in groups to work out which material was the most waterproof. We also investigated how we can change the shape of different materials and we had and we even took part in challenges to make certain objects out of certain materials! In Music this week we played 'Once a man fell in a well' on Glockenspiels which the children enjoyed and some even managed to play and sing at the same time! We spent some time in the hall this week doing some yoga too!

Autumn 2 Week 3 - Find OUT what we’ve been up to!
This week, we embarked on our first outdoor day! We spent all day exploring, building and working as a team in the forest. We built and created our own hospitals to celebrate the work of Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale and recap the work that we have done in class. We had to build our hospitals to make sure they could stand on their own, it had a roof and that it could fit a patient inside. Our children even managed to build structures that they (and even Miss McTiernan) could sit on top of. This week also had two different themes to celebrate: Road Safety Week and Anti-Bullying Week. For road safety week, we have been looking at ‘Hodgeheg’, which is a story about Max the hedgehog who has troubles with crossing the road, giving him a bump on the head and getting his words in a muddle (or his mords in a wuddle!). We created some Road Safety posters to advise Max how to cross the road, giving him tips to avoid getting another head on the bump! We spoke throughout the week about anti-bullying and how we can be kind to people and how we can look out for bullying inside and outside school. We created jigsaw pieces with actions we can carry out to spread kindness and keep bullying out of our school. 

Autumn 2 Week 2- Well… that was a busy one!

Our children this week had many different events to take part in which they did fantastically well. On Tuesday, we welcomed our parents into school to take part in our first open afternoon. It was fantastic to see so many of our parents and the excitement they shared with their child completing our online quiz that we use regularly to revisit the children’s learning. On Wednesday, we held our first year group Mass. Mrs Kennett was very impressed with how the children behaved, sung and read during the Mass, really setting an example for the rest of the infants. We took our History learning outside this week, taking part in a treasure hunt looking for information about Florence Nightingale’s life. Thursday was Remembrance Day and we took this opportunity to think of those who sacrificed themselves for us. An orchestra known as the Stringcredibles came to tell us more about the war through music, getting us involved with singing and marching too! We also created our own poppies to remember those who lost their lives in the war.

Autumn 2 Week 1- Back to Business!

This week we welcomed our children back into school after our half term break. We all are expected to be wearing our winter uniform now, with shirt and tie and trousers or skirt/pinafore. Please remember no jewellery or accessories (ear rings should just be a gold stud). 

We welcomed a visitor into Year 2 this week called Laura. She is also known as the Animal Woman! She brought different animals for us to see, hold and touch, teaching us a lot about how they live, where they come from and how they help our environment. This week we have also started our email questions to our children and it has been wonderful hearing some of their responses about the Animal woman. It is important that it is our children logging on and replying to the email, as this is developing their computer literacy. This week was also 'Coding Week' and we spent a lot of time using JIT5 on BGFL, programming different sprites to perform a range of different algorithms. This week helped us to develop our problem solving skills as well as our spatial awareness. In PE this week we have welcomed James from Aston Villa, who has started to improve our movement and decision making skills in different game situations. In History, we have been introduced to another significant figure from the past in Florence Nightingale. We discussed the word 'century' and identified which century she was from. We spoke about schools in the Victorian times so that the children could see the difference between schools then and now. We used Florence's determination to inspire us to think about what we want to be when we grow up and what steps we need to take to get there. 

Our penultimate week of Autumn 1… Week 6!

This week we looked at developing our independence in our Computing lesson by logging ourselves on and beginning to look at some coding activities! For the first time, we used the iPads to complete an online quiz on everything we have learnt so far this year, which we found very exciting! In PE, we continued to develop our gymnastic skills by learning more rolls and with our ball skills we practiced throwing through a target and catching! We took our Science lesson outside this week, by looking at different objects in our school environment, looking at the material they were made from and choosing properties to describe it.

Week 5: 

This week we have delved deeper into the life of Mary Seacole, we took on the role of a soldier injured in the war and had to inform our parent’s how we are and what it is like. We also looked at the poet Benjamin Zephaniah and some of his poetry. His poem ‘Once upon a time..’ was our focus and we were able to get creative with all the things we could do and have in our dreams.

In RE, we looked at story of Jonah and the Whale and the children were able to see straight away the links with the other scripture stories and how we should always obey God. Most of the children gave the story 5 stars.

In maths, we have continued focusing on tens and comparing multiples of ten and consolidating finding ten more and ten less.

We have been reading words and phrases containing alternative pronunciations for our vowel sounds. We have been enjoying our new reading books and reading with our peers and showing our understanding. We are trying to expression and intonation into all that we do.

We have been focusing on caring in our PSHE lessons and how we could show care for others in different scenarios.

We were very excited by our African dance workshop, it left us quite out of breath!

Week Four: What now?
The children have had their reading books this week, and have been showing great responsibility by bringing them in daily. Please ensure that the children bring their reading books everyday. They have shown great enthusiasm towards their homework with some bringing it straight back in the day after. 
This week we have begun looking at ‘Black History’ and focusing on Mary Seacole, lots of children have said how much they are enjoying it already! We have been reading lots about her and trying to find out as much as we can.

In maths, we have started to look at the word ‘multiple’ and counting in multiples of ten ready to start adding multiples of ten. We will be looking at number formation and making sure we are all getting our numbers the correct way round. Talking in maths is really important to share our thoughts and ideas and will help our peers find the most efficient way to solve problems.

We had our first library session this week. We sat and spoke about how a library works and how the books are organised, we will be working on scanning our own books in and out. We will be encouraging the children to make informed choices about the books they choose. Please ensure all library books are returned every Friday.

We have been enjoying learning about the stories from the ‘Old Testament’ we have studied Abraham and Isaac and couldn’t believe what God had asked Abraham to do, but once we discussed it we could see the reason. We role played David and Goliath and enjoyed taking on the different roles.

Week 3: what have we been up to now?

This week we have been very busy, in English we have been looking at word classes and sorting words into adjectives and nouns ready to start writing expanded noun phrases. We have been looking at tens and ones in Maths and the different representations we can use.

we have been focusing on caring and what this is and looks like, we did some role play where the children were able to show how they would respond to different scenarios. We have started exploring the stories of the Old Testament starting with Noah’s Ark, we also prayed a decade of the rosary to celebrate the work of the Legion of Mary.

We also took part in a whole school ‘wake up shake up’ to celebrate National Fitness day!

Week 2; The week that was…

This week in Year 2, we read ‘The Day the Crayons Came Home’, meeting new crayons and reading interesting postcards they had written for Duncan. In Geography, we looked at addresses and postcodes and how they are used to send letters/postcards to different locations around the world. We all wrote our own postcards about our time in Year 2 so far, reflecting on what we have enjoyed and what we have learnt. 
In Maths, we have started using equipment to create different two digit numbers, looking at how many groups of ten and ones we need to represent a number. 
We completed some practical work in Science this week, investigating the difference between a material and an object. We sorted different materials and objects into two categories.

In PE, we continued our fantastic work in the all developing our gymnastic skills and developing our ball skills by passing a ball using our feet, even hitting a target!

Week 1; The week that was…

The children have made a great start back at school after a lovely summer holiday! This week we have started learning about the artist Picasso and his style of art, focussing particularly on portraits. We looked at his art work and decided if we liked it or not and gave reasons why.

We had a very exciting visitor from our class text and Mr Red Crayon came to visit us to answer some of our questions, based on the events in the book.We have also used the book to focus our PSHE work on and learning about what a compliment is, Duncan didn’t receive many compliments from the crayons! 
We have been sequencing number patterns to 50 and looking at numbers that come in between two given numbers.

The children have shown great enthusiasm towards PE and our gymnastics skills and ball skills.

Please look at the Catholic life tab to see how reverent and respectful we have been in class this week and the interesting things we have learned.

Over the coming weeks, we will be focussing on our school rules and routines to ensure that we are making the most of our time in school and enjoying the fun work we will be doing.