Me and My Community: Identity
This week, in Living and Learning, we have a special themed week. We are thinking about ‘Me and My Community’. Today, we have explored our identity and thought about what makes us unique and special.
Living and Learning
This week, our Living and Learning statement has been I take part in democratic decisions.
We talked about what being part of a democratic decision means – making a choice through a vote. We’ve taken part in many democratic decisions in our classroom, such as choosing a book for story time and choosing which dance to do if we have Wake Up Shake Up in our classroom. Yesterday, we took part in our biggest democratic decision so far this year! We voted for our Junior Leadership Team (JLT) class representatives.
Some children stood in front of the class and gave a speech on why they would be a good member of the JLT. We had some fantastic ideas in Year 2! After, we had a ballot in the hall where everyone voted for the person they would like to be our JLT representative.
Living and Learning
This week, we’ve been thinking about how we respect ourselves in Living and Learning.
Here are some thoughtful ideas: don’t doubt yourself, accept the way you are, eat healthily, look after yourself and respect the choices that we make. We also said to do something we enjoy. Could you show respect to yourselves this weekend by doing something you enjoy as a family?
When thinking about accepting the way we are, the children were asked ‘what makes you unique and different?’ We said that being unique is being one of a kind and we are unique by the way we look, what we believe in and what we enjoy.
We drew different ‘characters’ and talked about what made them unique. Here are some of our fantastic creations:
History Topic – The Great Fire of London
This week, we have been learning about Samuel Pepys. We thought about why he was so important to the people of London during the fire. The children were all very enthusiastic and could explain their thoughts.
“He went to the king and asked him for help. The king ordered the houses to be pulled down. This helped save some of London.”
We also talked about why Samuel Pepys is important to people wanting to learn about The Great Fire of London.
“His diary helps us to know what happened!”
“His diary gave us lots of information about The Great Fire of London.”
“Told us what people had to do to get away from the fire.”
After, Year 1 and 2 worked together to read some different scenarios and they had to decide what they would do in each situation.
“I would get all my gold and dig a hole and bury it, then I would leave.”
“I would wake up my family up really quickly and go out of our house, hide our things and go to a new, safe place.”
“I would see if anyone needed my help to try and stop the fire.”
Challenge: Why not read a scenario to your child and see if they can tell you what they would do and why.
PE
In PE, we’ve been using our throwing and catching skills. We’ve also talked about the skills we need to defend a ball that is being thrown. Today, we put all of this together and introduced a game of ‘bench ball’. We used hoops to help us understand the rule that 5 people need to be on the bench for a point to be scored. Next week, we will be using the benches!
The children had lots of fun and demonstrated some fantastic throwing, catching and defending. Who knew they could jump so high to defend a ball? We also had a great umpire, making sure everyone followed the rules of the game. Well done, Year 2!
Science
Our Science this half term includes learning all about living things and their habitats. This week, with Mrs Bald, we’ve been exploring habitats and micro-habitats. A habitat is a home to a living thing. A micro-habitat is a smaller, different environment within the larger habitat that it is in. We put on our coats and went on a ‘habitat and micro-habitat hunt’ around the school grounds. We found lots of animals living under large sticks and in bushes – snails, spiders and even a bee!
Why not have a look in your garden or the local park to see what habitats and micro-habitats you can find?
Living and Learning
Today, in Living and Learning with Mrs Bald, we’ve been thinking about good manners and what it means to have them. We already know we use good manners each day because we say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ – this makes us polite. We talked about how we feel happy when people use good manners towards us.
Ways we can use good manners in our classroom: put your hand up if you’d like to say something, share with our learning partners, don’t interrupt and smile.
Ways we can use good manners in other areas of school: hold doors open for people, chew our food with our mouths closed and smile at everyone we see.
How do you use good manners at home?
Enjoying our reading!
There’s been lots of reading this week in Year 2! Today, we spent some time in the library choosing a book to enjoy at home. This will happen every Friday, so please bring these books back each week so that they can be changed. Some children still have books needing to be returned from last year. Please make sure these are returned soon so children can be issued a new book to enjoy.
We’ve also thought about traditional tales and alternative versions – reading The Three Little Pigs and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. We put on our best growling voices to join in with storytelling and be as fierce as the Big Bad Wolf! See if you can remember and re-tell either of the stories at home. It was hard to decide which version we enjoyed more!
Other reading this week includes our ICT Acceptable Use Policy. The children will be bringing home a copy tonight to read with you at home. It would be great if you could sign this and return to me next week.
Topic
This week, as you may have already seen or heard about, we started our History topic – The Great Fire of London. We learned about timelines and even went into the hall to make our own human timeline! We discussed some new vocabulary:
Past: an event or something that has already happened
Now: what is currently happening
Timeline: a line that shows us events in the order that they happened
Living memory: events that we remember because we’ve experienced them
The Great Fire of London was at the beginning of our timeline, far away from recent events because it happened so long ago. Ask your child if they know when the Great Fire of London was, or even how many years ago it happened!
History topic – The Great Fire of London
We have started our topic and we are learning all about The Great Fire of London. We are using a book, Vlad and the Great Fire of London, to stimulate our learning. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.)
We have started by talking about the topic vocabulary, which you can see below. Help your child at home by exploring the information on the BBC bitesize website.
Look at our amazing learning. These are all the key facts we already know about the Great Fire of London!
