Week commencing 19^th July 2021

Celebrating our week

We had a lovely week to end our time together in Year 2.  We were able to complete our ‘big-write’ in our English sessions and then got to consolidate a range of maths concepts that we had learnt throughout the year in a number of maths challenges, quizzes and activities.

We also enjoyed Celebration worship where we were able to reflect on all we have had achieved in what has been an extremely challenging year and congratulate the worthy recipients of the Citizenship cups.

We also bid a fond farewell to the Year 6 class and those leaving the school to embark on new adventures.  We used our art sessions to create some wonderful drawings and cards for them to remember us by.

Although it was far too hot for PE this week, we made up for it with an ‘end of year water activity afternoon’ as part of our class treat.  It is safe to say we all thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon!

Looking forward to the next academic year

We have so much to look forward to in Year 3 but for now we are focussing on having a great summer holiday! 

Week commencing 12^th July 2021

Celebrating our week

Another great week in Silver Birch class!  We have dedicated extra time this week to our ‘big-write’ where we watched a lovely film clip about a lighthouse as stimulus for our writing.  We worked hard to include dramatic description as well as focussing on effectively retelling the events of the story.

In other news…  we spent a lovely afternoon with the Bridge Youth Project thinking about change, maths saw us completed our unit on time although we will continue to practise this.  We have completed our end of year science assessments and achieved another set of fantastic results and even managed to find time to squeeze in a tennis session and create some ‘fox related art!’

We enjoyed our final transition session to Year 3 and even managed to spend time in our new classroom to see what it will be like next year and find out more about what we will be learning.

The Fox Fest was AMAZING! The wonderful FoWES team worked tirelessly to create a fun filled extravaganza with activities including; face painting, hook the duck, skittles, slack line, tin can alley, dream catcher making and more.  We were able to enjoy a picnic with ice lollies listening to festival music and being entertained by a spectacular stiltwalker!

Looking forward to next week

In our final week of Year 2 we will be finishing our ‘big-write’, undertaking some practical maths challenges and there are a number of fun end of term activities planned…these are staying a secret until next week!

Week commencing 5^th July 2021

Celebrating our week

We are feeling very proud of ourselves this week!  We approached our SATs with a real sense of determination and focus to show-off our learning, the results of which were brilliant!  It is great that we have been able to, again, demonstrate all the attainment and progress we have made this year.

The highlight of our week though was definitely the visit from the Salisbury Museum who delivered their ‘Surviving the Stone Age’ education program to us.  We had the opportunity to further our understanding through a variety of activities including; handling artefacts, dressing up in authentic clothing, creating clay pinch-pots and designing our very own game.  We all enjoyed the day and the experts from the museum were really impressed with our level of understanding, questioning and superb manners.

We had great fun during our ‘taster’ afternoon finding out what Year 3 has in store for us and are looking forward to visiting our new classroom soon.

In addition, we also enjoyed an active science session learning why exercise is important and then designing our own exercises to work different muscle groups plus, an art session where we experiment mixing colours to create a colour wheel.

Looking forward to next week

Although we are approaching the end of term we are not slowing down!  Next week we start our whole school ‘big write’ in English plus will conclude our maths unit on the measurement of time.

In addition, on Monday we are looking forward to a visit from The Bridge Youth Project and of course the eagerly anticipated Fox Fest at the end of the week!

Week commencing 28^th June 2021

Celebrating our week

Maths this week had us learning to tell the time, for many this was a new concept and a tricky one to master but, we persevered and by the end of the week felt proud of what we had achieved. We will be revisiting telling the time throughout the rest of the year and are poised to be asked the time at any point in the day!

In English this week we have been considering persuasive writing – looking at the features and what we need to include in our own writing.  We have each produced a letter for our Head Teacher, Mrs Carter, to persuade her to allow us to work with the Salisbury Museum for a whole day next week rather than just a half day. We hope that our letters are persuasive enough!

We enjoyed furthering our tennis skills in PE this week and learning some new warm-up games to challenge our use of tactics, observation and marking.

Art and design was a messy session this week but a lot of fun!  We experimented with tie dyeing in preparation for the eagerly anticipated ‘Fox Fest’. We tried a variety of techniques including spirals, ‘bullseye’ and stripes – please see photos below.

We were also very pleased to be able to congratulate two more of our class members who earned their Silver and Bronze Mathletics certificates.

Looking forward to next week

We are sitting our SATs next week and will be using them as an opportunity to help show-case how hard we have been working and all the progress that we have made despite such a difficult year.

We are also very much looking forward to a visist from the Salisbury Museum who, as we are unable to visit them, have kindly agreed to bring their Stone Age artefacts to us to learn about and enjoy.

Next week will also see us having a ‘taster’ afternoon in Year 3 in preparation for September.  We are looking forward to finding out what exciting topics Mrs Crompton has in store for us.

Week commencing 21^st June 2021

Celebrating our week

Our week got off to a great start as we collectively ‘earnt a marble’ towards a class treat as a result of our excellent maths homework – it was neatly presented, accurate and we remembered to show all of our workings out.

Science this week left us all feeling rather hungry as we explored healthy eating, including the different food groups and how we could achieve a healthy diet.  We designed our own healthy meals and also considered how the presentation of food could encourage younger children to eat more healthily by making ‘fruity faces’.

We enjoyed our PE session this week as we continued to build our racket and ball skills focussing on increasing our confidence and control when using a tennis racket.

After working hard to complete our instructional writing on how to build a Stone Age tepee we put our instructions to the test.  Not only was our ability to write and follow instructions put to the test, so was our resilience, perseverance and teamwork skills – especially battling with the tarpaulin in the wind!

Looking forward to next week

Next week we will be tackling using an analogue clock to tell the time in our new maths unit as well as continuing our work on statistics with Mrs Hood.

Having completed our guided reading text on ‘The Ugly Five’ we are looking forward to finding out what ‘Prince Cinders’ has in store for use – it is certainly an intriguing title!

We will be continuing looking at growth and survival in science and linking to our PSHE topic of ‘Changing me’.

In English we turn our attention to persuasive writing and will be working on producing a piece of writing to convince our Head Teacher that school trips and visits are beneficial!

Week commencing 14^th June 2021

Celebrating our week

Sports Day was definitely the highlight of our week!  Our friends in Year 6 ran six different skills stations, encouraged us, kept us safe and ensured that we had a great morning of activities competing for House points, whilst also focussing on our core values.  The sun continued to shine for us in the afternoon where we had the opportunity to run our own Year 2 flat races and (after a few false starts!) we enjoyed our three-legged races.  As parents were not able to spectate this year, there are lots of photos included in this update for you.

We started our maths this week with reasoning and problem solving where we were able to apply our methods of column subtraction before moving on to estimating, measuring and comparing lengths in metres and centimetres. We were also able to celebrate more children gaining their first Mathletics bronze certificates and, very excitingly, the award of three Silver certificates!

In science, we continued looking at what animals need to survive, flourish and thrive and linked back to our PSHE unit of ‘Changing me’.

During PE we were able to demonstrate just how much we had improved our fitness levels over the past term through our participation in the Healthy School Challenge plus, we had fun working on our teamwork and communication skills with the ‘hoop challenge’.

We ended the week with an art and design activity based on the Stone Age craft of basket weaving - only we used scraps of material and wool rather than strips of traditional dear skin!

Looking forward to next week

We are looking forward completing our instructions on how to build Stone Age tepees and finding out just how effective our instructional writing is.

In maths we will be completing our learning about measurement and starting a new mini unit focussing on statistics to build upon our prior learning.

Science will, again, link closely to our PSHE model as investigate what we need to live healthy lives.

We are also keen to further develop our computing skills as we continue to explore different websites, identifying similarities and differences between different primary school sites.

Week commencing 7 June 2021

Celebrating our week

What a lovely start to our last term!  We enjoyed our nature walk through the surrounding countryside in celebration of Pentecost, taking the time to reflect and appreciate the wonderful countryside in which we are fortunate to live (thank you again to parent and grandparent helpers).  As we will be learning about colour wheels this term we took the opportunity to look at nature’s colour wheel and create one of our own.  We also enjoyed a very exciting outdoor Collective Worship with Rev. Peter which had us on the edge of our seats as he incorporated both wind and fire!

In maths this week we have been revisiting the concept of subtraction, building on our prior learning to tackle the formal column method where we have to ‘cross the tens barrier’ and exchange.  The photos below show us using physical resources to aid our understanding.

We took further advantage of the sunny weather and have started to develop our racket and ball skills, enjoying using the new equipment – please see the photos of us in action!

We also started new units in English, focussing on writing instructions and a unit on animals in science.  We were also able to complete our Stone Age homes.

Looking forward to next week

We are eagerly anticipating sports day and are hoping that the good weather will continue.

In maths we will be applying our column subtraction knowledge to solve problems and we will also continue looking at measurement.

Growth, development and survival will be the theme for both science and PSHE next week looking specifically at animals and how we care for them. 

We will be honing our evaluative skills in computing where we will be taking a closer look at this website and designing own versions.

Week commencing 24^th May 2021

As a busy half term drew to a close we took time to reflect on all we had achieved during our whole school celebration worship and celebrated another well deserving recipient of the citizenship cup. The cup was awarded for being a fantastic role model in our class, especially for demonstrating resilience, perseverance and kindness to others.

We were also pleased to congratulate another group of children who have achieved their bronze Mathletics certificates over the course of the week.

Continuing the theme of maths, we started our new unit focussing on measurement with a practical ‘measure-hunt’ in the beautiful sunshine, involving solving measurement challenges to collect letters for an anagram and earn the ‘treasure’.

In science this week we were excited to check the progress of the seeds that we planted as part of our investigation and enjoyed a super discussion to explain the results.  We were also very pleased to receive photo updates of our frogs who appear to be thriving in their new pond.

PE this week was an opportunity to see how our regular exercise had improved our overall fitness, as part of the Healthy Schools Challenge, and it has made us even more determined to continue to improve over the rest of the summer term.  We also focussed on team work, sportsmanship and applying our newly gained skills in a highly competitive PE session.

Our Stone Age houses were given straw roofs this week and plans were finalised for the rest of the campsite.

Looking forward to next term

We have lots to look forward to next term.  We will be continuing our Stone Age topic to explore both instructional and persuasive writing as well as some ambitious art and design projects.

In maths will be continue learning about measurement and will also complete our geometry unit.

Please see our ‘Summer Term 2 curriculum map’ for a more detailed overview of all we are looking forward to.

Week commencing 17^th May 2021

We were able to start our week by congratulating another group of children who have managed to earn their first bronze certificate for their efforts on our maths platform, Mathletics. Maths this week has seen us working very hard to use bar models to solve worded problems involving fractions – we demonstrated great resilience and felt very proud of ourselves by the end of the week.

Our poetry unit got off to an entertaining start as we used a variety of fidget toys to help us build a word bank of interesting verbs to use in our own versions of the ‘Desk Fiddler,’ a poem by Michael Rosen.  We enjoyed trying to identify different sound effects in order to introduce onomatopoeia into our poems.

PE this week involved us putting all our newly learnt skills into practice in mini games, showcasing our skills of accurate and controlled throwing, catching and marking. The sun even shone for us, albeit briefly!

We practiced our research skills during ICT in order to find out how Stone Age homes were built and to gain a further insight into how Stone Age camps may have looked, all in preparation for the construction of our own camp, created in our art and design session.

The transformation of our tadpoles into frogs has been a constant source of awe and wonder.  We wished them well on the next stage of their adventures…….in a pond!

Looking forward to next week

Next week we will be publishing and performing our poems focussing on expression and intonation, we hope to be able to share them via Seesaw.

In PE we will be finding out whether we have improved our scores in the Healthy School Challenge plus creating our own games to incorporate the skills that we have been learning this half term.

We are looking forward starting a new unit in Maths – measurement.

We hope that our clay Stone Age house will be dry and ready for their straw roofs and all the other accessories needed to make a realistic camp.

Week commencing 10^th May 2021

Celebrating our week!

Another busy week in Silver Birch class.  We were excited to have Miss Arrandale visit us with some new maths resources to support us in increasing the fluency and accuracy of our timestables.  She taught us a number of high speed, high energy games which were enjoyed by all. 

Our writing this week has caused a real buzz in the classroom as we are all very keen to share the experiences, thoughts and feelings of a Stone Age girl who found herself in Winterbourne Earls in 2021.  We have enjoyed writing from a different perspective – seeing and describing our world through someone else’s eyes!

We continued the theme of considering the perspective of other people during our circle time, where, led by Mrs. Hood, we had the opportunity to consider feelings and relationships.

In Science, we successfully planned and conducted an investigation into whether seeds need light to germinate.  We were very careful to ensure that our investigation was fair and now eagerly await the results!

We are feeling very proud of our artwork this week which involved us exploring tints and tones to create beautiful images of Stonehenge- we hope you enjoy looking at a few examples below.

Finally, we were delighted to congratulate a number of children who received their bronze Mathletics certificates this week (see photograph below).  These children have gone 'over and above' with their Mathletics homework - well done!

Looking forward to next week

We are very keen to complete the editing of our Stone Age Girl stories as we will then be channelling our inner CBeebies presenter to record ourselves reading our stories ready for our friends in Year 1 to enjoy!

We are also looking forward to starting a poetry writing unit so will, we are sure, have many exciting ideas to share.

We are looking forward to putting all the skills that we have learnt in PE into practice into some team games next week involving target practice and defending.

Week commencing 3rd May 2021

Celebrating our week!

We returned to school after the bank holiday raring to get started planning our own versions of the Stone Age Boy story – what would it be like for a Stone Age child to visit our school in 2021?  We enjoyed considering and discussing all the differences that a child from the Stone Age would notice and how they may feel.

In our maths sessions we continued to explore fractions, this week considering equivalence.  We were very focused when calculating whether two thirds of a bar of chocolate would be more or less than three quarters!

Our PE session allowed us to practice all the invasion skills that we have been learning through a number of games and activities, as well as continuing to improve our individual scores in our Healthy Schools Challenge.

The highlight of our week was our much-anticipated Stone Age Day.  We dressed as Stone Age children and enjoyed a range of activities trying to emulate Stone Age life.  Spear making was great fun along with cave painting, making jewellery and clay pinch pots, cooking bread over a camp fire and making (and eating) our own version of Stonehenge out of biscuits!

Looking forward to next week

We are looking forward to learning some new maths games to help us further embed our multiplication and division facts as well as completing our fractions unit.

Most of the seeds we planted last week have germinated and are sprouting nicely however, we will be investigating why some have not.  We will be planning and conducting an investigation to see if we can discover the ideal conditions for germination to take place.

We are keen to explore tints and tones in our next art session and hope to be able to create some amazing paintings of Stonehenge to display in our classroom.

Week commencing 26^th April 2021

Celebrating our week!

Another busy week.  This week in maths we took the opportunity to have a number of practical sessions investigating fractions and demonstrating our ever-developing maths vocabulary.  We have been exploring halves, quarters and thirds and applying our new knowledge to solve problems.

We are still really enjoying deepening our understanding about the Stone Age through our class text. In order to ‘collect’ interesting verbs we took advantage of a sunny spell to recreate the stalking scene with Mrs Bravery as the prey! We got into character as the ‘Stone Age Boy’ in order to consider the thoughts and feelings that he may have experienced travelling back in time ready to use in our diary entries.

In our ICT session we were able to bring our storyboards to life with the help of animation software, plasticine and some artistic license!

In continuation of our science unit, learning about plant growth, we have been keeping a close eye on our broad beans in their mini greenhouses and have been very excited to observe some visible signs that the germination process has begun.  This week has also seen us plant a variety of seeds ranging from beetroot to lettuce which we will care for and hopefully, eventually, enjoy eating.

Looking forward to next week

We are excitedly looking forward to our Stone Age day where we are hoping to try a range of the skills that we have been learning about including, jewellery making, cooking over an open fire and maybe even recreating Stonehenge!

We are also keen to try out Mathletics and continue to improve the speed and accuracy of our times table facts.

Our main English task next week will be to plan our own version of the Stone Age Boy story but with a twist!  We have already started to share a number of ideas and are looking forward to getting started.

Week commencing 19 April 2021

Celebrating our week

It was lovely to return to school after the Easter break.  We were especially grateful for the warmer weather which meant that we could enjoy our collective worships together, as a whole school, in the playground. We were also pleased to be able to celebrate the successes of Figsbury Challenge, in which we came a credible second place.  We were able to reflect on how the Challenge encouraged us to be more active and how we enjoyed being part of the wider school team.

We have made a great start to our Stone Age topic and have spent time using our detective skills to discover what life was like in the Stone Age.  It has been interesting to make comparisons to our lives today and debate whether life is easier now or 3 million years ago.

Art this week saw us consider Stone Age cave art and after an interesting discussion surrounding what the images were trying to communicate, we had a go at making our own using sandpaper to simulate the rough cave walls and charcoal to draw with.

In science we started our new module investigating plants and in particular how they grow.  We enjoyed making our mini greenhouses and planting broad beans. We were also fortunate enough to receive sunflower seeds from the Year 6 Eco Team which we are looking forward to growing and tracking their progress. 

Looking forward to next week

We are looking forward to further immersing ourselves in our Stone Age text through a variety of English activities including the hot-seating of characters and re-enacting the stalking. We are also looking forward to recreating our favourite part of the story through the medium of animation with, we are sure, a few twists!

To further our knowledge of plant growth we will be planting a variety of seeds that we will be able to care for and hopefully turn the produce into smoothies!

We are keen to continue explore our maths unit about fractions with some practical lessons using a variety of resources to deepen our understanding of halves, quarters and thirds.  In addition, we are all going to attempt to improve on our times table scores as we are practising hard.