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.
What have we been learning about in Year 2?
There’s been some fantastic learning happening in class recently. We wanted to share some of it with you…
Reading: learning to use a dictionary!
We’ve recently been exploring a poem called The Three Little Kittens by Eliza Lee Follen in our reading lessons – you may have seen this on our homework sheet! There were some new vocabulary words that we weren’t sure about, so we used a dictionary to help us learn the definitions of sigh, fear and soil. We know that dictionaries can help us spell words and look up meanings of words we are curious about. We use our knowledge of the alphabet when looking for words in dictionaries.
Maths: doubling numbers!
We’ve been making fantastic progress with our multiplication and division learning in Maths. We’ve recently learned to multiply and divide by 2. Our knowledge of the 2x tables helps us with doubling numbers. We used Numicon and mirrors to help us with our doubling learning!
Zooming Julia Donaldson
To kick off world book day, we enjoyed a zoom with Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. We enjoyed a story about a hare and a hedgehog who were in a running race. Axel Scheffler showed us how he draws the characters. Julia Donaldson then read us a new story about some baddies. The children were gripped!
Food Technology
This week, we have made some overnight oats.
We washed our hands before we started to wash away any germs. We read the recipe and worked together in pairs to follow the method. We used a claw grip to keep us safe when cutting the banana with a knife.
After, we evaluated our oats saying what we enjoyed and what we’d improve if we made them again.
If you make this at home, please email some pictures to share with us.
Homophones hunt!
This week, we have been learning about homophones in Grammar. These are words which sound the same, but have different meanings and spellings.
For example: see and sea, sun and son, flower and flour.
We had to make homophone pairs by finding someone else with a different word that sounds the same as ours. We learned that some homophones are not pairs of words, but come in triplets!
For example: two, too and to, their, there and they’re.
Maths: making equal groups!
This week, we began our multiplication and division learning in Maths.
We’ve been thinking about equal groups – having the same number of objects in each group. Recognising equal groups can help us with our multiplication and repeated addition facts.
For example, we made 4 equal groups of 2.
Our repeated addition fact was 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 =
Our multiplication fact was 4 x 2 =
Have a look at some of the other equal groups we’ve been making!
2 equal groups of 6
4 equal groups of 3
Help at home by asking your child to make some equal groups out of objects in the home, for example, some books or toys.
We will be continuing our multiplication and division learning after half term, therefore I encourage you to be using Times Tables Rockstars at home to help with the 2s, 5s and 10s facts. Thank you for all your hard work this half term and I hope you have a happy and healthy break!