Topic
We have started out new history topic all about real life heroes. The first important person we’re learning about is Nelson Mandela. You can find more about him here. He believed that everyone should be treated the same. We will be learning about equality, apartheid and the suffragettes.
We are biologists!
Biologists study living things, including people, animals, and plants. This half term, Year 1 and 2 will be studying plants.
On Tuesday, we began looking at the different things plants need to grow. We have created an experiment looking at what an onion bulb needs to grow.
We planted four onion bulbs in different conditions. 
We have four environments for our bulbs to grow:
- no light, no soil, no water
- no water, no soil
- no soil
- water, light, soil
After we’d planted them, we made predictions on which bulb we thought would grow the best or wouldn’t grow. Each week, we will be observing our bulbs to see which are growing.
Help at home
Explore plants that you have in the garden or that you see on your walk to school. Observe how plants change over time and talk about what things they need to grow and survive.
Persuasive writing!
We were so shocked this morning when we came into school and our chairs were on STRIKE!
The books last week, the chairs this week… what’s next!?
Our challenge was to write a persuasive letter to the chairs to get them to change their minds and let us use them again.
Our writing was so persuasive that the chairs wrote us a letter back saying we could use them again!
Pirate Bonnie and her swash buckling adventures!
This week, year 1 and 2 were lucky to take an adventure to Wetherby library to meet Pirate Bonnie and hear all about her swashbuckling adventures.
We heard tales of old – of pirates that lived long ago. Pirates who faced adversity and persevered through difficulty to become legendary pirates.
We saw a book that was 300 years old and had pictures and stories about the pirates we had just heard about.
Maths: more money!
Wow – what progress we’ve been making in our maths learning all about money! Today, we thought about how we can make a pound (£1) using different combinations of pence coins. We know that £1 = 100p.
We used our knowledge of related maths facts to help us work out how many coins with the same value we’d need to make £1.
Then, we used coins with different values!
Writing: persuasion
This week, we’ve started to think about persuasion in our Writing lessons. To write persuasively means to encourage someone to change their thinking through writing a letter, email or even a speech.
We were really shocked when we came into school and couldn’t use our book corner!
Don’t throw us on the rug! STOP putting us away in the wrong place! Don’t rip the pages – it hurts!
Our challenge this week is to work together to write persuasively to encourage the books to let us read them again.
“If we don’t have books, how will we learn to love reading?
“Do you not enjoy being read by us?
“Reading is good for your mind because it takes you into new and imaginative worlds!”
We talked about how exclamatory (!) and question (?) sentence types can persuade someone to change their thinking. We also talked about the use of because and if to make the audience think.
Help at home by encouraging your child to think persuasively to help them with their writing. Perhaps they could persuade you to read an extra bedtime story or to go to the park!
Money in maths!
This week, we’ve been learning all about money in maths. We’ve counted pence and pounds and we’ve done a fantastic job! We have a great understanding of the value of different coins and notes.
Today, we’ve been choosing coins to make amounts! Miss Kay gave us a team challenge to find all the different ways we can make amounts of money that are the price of Miss Kay’s lunch.
Help at home by looking at coins you may have. Talk about the values and add it all up!
PE
Recently, in PE, we’ve been using our knowledge of controlled movements to climb on and around the large apparatus in the hall. We talked about some of the best ways to move and balance on the equipment and what happens to our body movement as we travel, balance, jump and climb.
Living and Learning: strong emotions and feelings
This half term, in Living and Learning with Mrs Bald, we are thinking about emotions and friendships.
We’ve thought about how it feels to be happy, excited, nervous or sad and when we might experience these different emotions. We thought about how our bodies react to our emotions. For example, if we are happy then we will laugh and smile. If we are sad or worried, then we might feel knots in our tummies or we might need to cry. We know that it is okay to experience different emotions and that other people do, too.
We’ve thought about different ways that we could comfort people, and ourselves, if there are feelings of sadness. One example was mindfulness exercises, such as listening to calming music or colouring in. We also thought about what we would say to someone who felt sad and discussed this in one of our circle time sessions.
Another area that we’ve thought about is the idea of friendships. We know that sometimes our friends can make us happy and sometimes we can also be sad because of friendships. Our Christian value this half term is forgiveness so we’ve thought about how we can ask for someone to forgive us or to show forgiveness if a friendship has made us sad.
World Book Day!
Today, we celebrated World Book Day in Year 2! We reflected on our talk time homework and brought in our favourite books to share. We discussed why we like our books and how important it is to read.
“Reading helps our mental health by relaxing.”
“Reading more helps us become fluent readers.”
“Reading is fun to do with our family and friends.”
“Reading can help us with our learning”
Take a look at our favourite books – there’s a range! Chapter books, picture books, fiction books, non fiction books, books about animals, books about maths….
We joined up with our Year 4 friends to read and share our favourite books. Help at home by reading each night before bed to build up fluency. Talk about the order of events in your book or about new words you’ve learned.