Week ending 27th November

This week we have been thinking about the rebuilding of London and what sorts of things Christopher Wren would have needed to think about. We have looked at pictures of both the old St Paul's Cathedral and the new one he built after the Great Fire. We then looked generally at the features/ specific names of various parts of a church or cathedral, designing our own from the various construction kits we have in class. Have a look at some of the lovely designs below:

In Maths, Mrs Carter has been thrilled that on the whole our addition is very secure, having grasped the traditional column method of adding two two digits numbers together. Most children passed their doubles maths tags too.

Bug Club is now up and running with login details stuck in the front of reading records. Using this site will mean children can access books at the right level over the weekend when we have reading records and books in school. This is particularly important for those children still on green and orange level, which are Year 1 book bands. There are questions throughout each book which are important for developing these key comprehension skills. 

In Science Mrs Hodgson led an experiment where we predicted the height of bounce of various balls. Again there are a couple of photos below to show how we set it up.

We are reviewing homework as a school, but with this wonderful cohort of Year 2 children, we have few concerns and Mrs Carter is more than happy with the standard of work from all children. The song 'The Lord is My Shepherd' has been learnt off by heart by most children, but please ensure your child knows the words: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN4tPkX0MG0

Children should be passing tag words and particularly maths tags every week- please encourage your child to write everything down to embed learning. We test both on a Friday or a Monday so new ones are issued when the books go out on Monday afternoon.

Please note that, due to staff illness, we have had to swap TAs around and Mrs Kerley is at present supporting Reception class, so Mrs Carter is doing her very best in challenging circumstances!

Week ending 20th November

This week has been focused on the phonics test we have had to complete. Mrs Hodgson covered the class whilst Mrs Carter went through our phonics test individually over Monday and Tuesday. Well done to all parents and children; all the hard work revising Year R and Year 1 phonics sounds has really paid off as these sounds are fully embedded and results were excellent. As a result of this and Mrs Carter's dogged push on handwriting and presentation, writing in Year 2 is very strong now. Our published diaries of Samuel Pepys are now beautifully presented and proudly displayed on the Writing Wall.

In Maths we keep revisiting adding to ensure it is embedded. This week we have used lots of equipment and computer games to reinforce concepts and today Mrs Carter taught us an adding game using dice called 'Pig' which we enjoyed playing, although some were very competitive! It's a great game to help mental addition strategies.

Our new Maths tags will be tested on Monday- we had a practice today and realised some of us needed to write quicker. Lots have passed their tag words today. Lots of hard work and lots of stickers awarded particularly in writing this week!

Week ending 13th November

This week we have extended our instructional writing into detailed recipe planning. However, on Monday Mrs Carter had a number of disasters trying to make a jam sandwich because our instructions weren't precise. She pulled the sliced loaf apart, put her hand in the butter, spread butter around the slice of bread and not in it and ended up trying to put the whole sandwich in her mouth ....all because our instructions were not detailed enough!

We did improve, though. The culmination was on Wednesday when we followed the very detailed instructions we had written from a Youtube video on making bread rolls. This was linked to Thomas Farriner who, as baker to King Charles II, would have made first class bread before the Great Fire of London burnt down his bakery in Pudding Lane. Mrs Carter had tried the recipe at the start of the week and her rolls were very flat and squashy. Check the pictures of us making our rolls below and see how round and crusty ours were!

We were late baking our rolls because we saw an online Remembrance Day presentation about the First World War from the Historical Society and then went outside hoping to hear sirens from the local camp or the big guns from Larkhill. Sadly we couldn't hear either but we observed our own class silence.

Our phonics revision is going really well and practice tests indicate that the Year 1 phonics scheme is nearly fully embedded, which is great news.

In Maths we have been looking at bridging to ten using tens frames, bead strings and number lines. Children can you explain it to parents?

There is a very short video on Youtube that explains this method using a number line that is worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9h4skGoWJ8

We have been continuing to run for 10 minutes every day just before lunch and the record of non-stop running, which is held by Layla, is 10 laps, which is amazing. Most children are now comfortably able to run without stopping for this time so fitness progress is great. Our afternoon PE is mainly focused on circuits where we have done bench step-ups, star jumps, catching, shuttle runs, ladder jumping, skipping and Mrs Carter's favourite 'grapevine' (which no-one can master yet!) Joe Wicks would be proud of us. Our Friday session is focused on hockey skills and this too is going well, with hand-eye coordination and dribbling improving.

We have finished our RE work on how Jesus showed kindness and have reflected on how we can become kinder people.

Week ending 7th November

This first week has whizzed by; we've not had Mrs Kerley for a few days so it has been ultra busy for Mrs Carter. The first day back we took part in a virtual trip to The Museum of London where we had a tour of the exhibits and learnt a bit more about the fire. We submitted a question and the Education Officer leading the presentation read it out- we were very excited as there were over 15 schools taking part. It was interesting to see how an actual squirt worked and we were surprised how long the fire hooks were.

We have started learning about how to set out instructions and we have examined recipes, sequenced pictures, studied commands, questions and statements and looked at 'what you need' and 'what to do'. Next week we are planning to create instructions to make bread rolls (linked to The Great Fire of London.)

In Maths we have looked at 'one more', 'one less' and 'ten more', 'ten less' using hundred squares to help.

We loved Golden Time on Friday where the aim was to make houses out of our new construction equipment (some made snakes!) We had hoped to have time to make instructions for our house models but time ran away with us!

Week ending 15th October

Although we are all pretty tired after a busy term, we've made it to the half term holiday; we have all been well, avoided colds and flu and attendance has been close to 100%, which has been brilliant!

Following a couple of sessions studying newspapers, this week we have put all our energy into writing our own newspapers based on The Great Fire of London. Joiners were allowed to use skinny pencils and the handwriting on our published articles was really superb, making our teacher very proud!

We've had a great time on the creative front with most of us making a selection of concrete blocks and all day Friday was spent making some very high quality Tudor houses. We had our first 'new look' End of Term Celebration with Miss Purchase awarding certificates from our class door!

Well done to Marcos, Mathis and Verity, our star children, and to Jessica B who fully deserves our Citizenship award.

We all need a really good rest, but don't forget to read and share books together as much as possible over the break!

Week ending 9th October

This week we have been busy asking questions, in preparation for learning to be reporters on The Great Fire of London. We focused on the five 'W's and one 'H'- What? Who? Where? Why? When? and How?. On Friday we dressed up in clothes from 1666 (although some were a bit dodgy!) and videoed each other asking these questions. When we reviewed them together, we realised some key important rules for filming: 

Camera Children:

• Do not slice heads off
• Check the background is suitable
• Move the ipad round to face the person speaking

Those being videoed:

• Speak clearly to the camera
• Rehearse lots so you remember your lines

 We all had practised some acting during RE on Monday when we filmed the Story of the Paralysed Man. Well done to Charlie B who was amazing!

On Wednesday we demonstrated making our first concrete block which we will be doing more of next week. The aim is to make a little wall round our tiny Year 2 garden space. Here's hoping the blocks are good enough! 

In Maths we have been focusing on the 8 fact families that we can write on any one part-part-whole model. Given 9+6=15, can children find the other 7 number sentences?

In Art, Mrs Kerley has extended her William Morris themed focus beyond butterflies to repeating patterns with leaves as in the photos; they look great!

Please bring in assorted boxes for making Tudor houses on Friday. Shoe boxes/cereal boxes/card for roofs all welcome.

Week ending 2nd October

This week we have focused on the sequence of events surrounding The Great Fire of London, with lots of 'Talk for Writing' and actions we invented to support our sentence writing. The result has been impressive with really accurate written work that we are proud of.

We now have nine children on the 'Joiners' board demonstrating really lovely accurate joined handwriting. Let's see if we can have some more joiners this coming week.

Great news about the Big Tag Word Test! Lots of children got all the Year 1 tag words (common exception words) correct and this week we were pleased that lots of others passed the ones they didn't get correct initially. Thanks to the hard work of parents, we now have the majority of children on the Year 2 Tag Words. 

Reading is going well with Mrs Carter, Mrs Hood and Mrs Kerley listening to readers at least once a week and parents listening to children read all the books we send home. Progress is great! Assessments show children all need to focus on sequencing events, so asking what happens in what order in reading books is key. 

Our maths is still focused on place value with more work on splitting up 2-digit numbers in to tens and ones. We are also revising counting forwards and backwards in 2s, 5s and 10s.

Fitness is really improving too with Betsy holding the class record of running 7 laps of the track in 10 minutes.

In science we are aiming to make our concrete blocks if the weather holds next week. Please send in butter/margarine tubs.

On Monday we will be sending home new Seesaw codes stuck in reading records as we are aiming to set homework on this portal after half term.

Week ending 25th September

This week we have extending our topic work on houses and looked at buildings in London around 1666. We have viewed videos and studied pictures of the wooden Tudor houses using adjectives and expanded noun phrases to describe scenes. We have looked at a beautifully illustrated book on The Great Fire of London and will continue our writing on this focus next week. We ended the week by focusing on the grammar of sequencing words and worked on embedding capital letters and full stops.

In Maths we have worked more practically with part part whole models and Dienes blocks; we are looking at ways of deepening our understanding of the partitioning of two digit numbers. 

On Tuesday the weather was lovely and so we took the opportunity to walk down to the village to look at the different houses; we made sketches of the church, the vicarage and the brand new eco house (called the Marmite House) learning how new houses can be energy efficient.

In PE we are now starting to learn basic hockey skills with the plastic Unihoc sticks. We hope to start dribbling next week.

The highlight of the week was our science experiment where our objective was to see which paper towel material was the most absorbent. We used pipettes and dropped small amounts of water on various materials and then observed whether the water seeped through into the empty beaker.

Week Ending 18th September

This week we have been focusing on how homes have developed over the ages. In our English we have been looking at the features of non-fiction texts. We have been lucky enough to receive around 40 books on homes and houses from the Wiltshire Learning Resources and we have read these and examined the features. By tracking the different building materials used through time, we have discovered how house building has changed. To reinforce this we spent an afternoon sketching features of local houses we could see from our school grounds; we had some lovely bungalows, terraced, semi-detached and detached houses and some very detailed pictures of chimneys and windows in Summerlug. Next week we hope to have our planned walk along Figsbury Road including a trip to see 'The Marmite House'- a new eco- build house that has been constructed by a family whose son Mrs Carter taught in Year 6. This village walk was postponed from this week due to staff absence.

Our maths is now focused on numbers between 50 and 100 and everybody seems comfortable with these larger numbers, although some are forgetting how to count backwards in ones across a tens barrier- please check your child can successfully achieve this! 72, 71, 70 then....?

The new phonics sessions are going well -this week the 'ee' sound: Monkey up a Chimney ey ey ey, Baby with a Teddy y y y and Believe and You'll Achieve ie ie ie. Please ask your child to go over these with you with all the sounds and actions as we can only mime in school! We played scooter relays to reinforce this week's sounds in PE. Despite the competitive nature of this game, well done to Ethan who pointed out that 'It's not the winning that's important; it's the taking part!'

Some of our foundation subjects have been 'squashed' a little as time is reduced due to hand washing and movement in our bubbles following the one way system around school. We have managed to start the RE focus on kindness, our worship with the value of Thankfulness and will be spending more time next week on science of materials which links well with houses. Mrs Carter is investigating how we can make concrete bricks as a class in the coming weeks so save up your plastic butter containers!

Week ending 11th September

The first full week has been a lovely start to the new term. We have learnt about some of the explorers who travelled round the world or dived to the deepest part of the ocean. We have focused on the geography of Great Britain, the countries it is made up of, the capitals, some of the features and we have created our own Union Flags. We have discussed our own family, making individual house books detailing who we live with including special features like trampolines and garden playhouses and we have used collage to create a road of houses, both for display. 

Our work this week has been focused on planning our expedition to Figsbury Rings (like real explorers!)We have studied the local map of Winterbourne Earls and learnt to recognise many of the symbols. On Wednesday we planned our route using compass directions and landmarks. Then at 1100 we packed up our school lunches and water bottles and followed our instructions up the steep slope to Figsbury Rings. We were thrilled to find a number of butterflies although not the Adonis Blue, which Mrs Carter had seen yesterday on her pre-visit. We took our diaries to record what we discovered and returned to school with pictures of butterflies, birds and trees we had seen. The weather at the top was sunny but not windy and the views were tremendous. We spotted the landmarks of Salisbury Cathedral, Old Sarum hillfort, Boscombe Down airfield and in the trees below the blue of our school and the tower of St Michael's church.

On Friday we lit a fire in the school grounds and toasted marshmallows like real explorers. The children loved this activity, as the photos showed, although some very gooey faces at the end!

We are in the process of assessing children's maths, phonics, writing and reading, so we can try and fill any gaps in learning and support individual needs. To minimise contamination, we are planning to send three reading books home on a Monday and we then need to collect them in on a Friday. We will still try to listen to individual readers and provide tag words to learn once assessments are complete. Thanks to parents for your patience!