Our Achievements In Year 2

YEAR 2 CURRICULUM NEWSLETTER JUNE 2022

YEAR 2 CURRICULUM NEWSLETTER MAY 2022

YEAR 2 CURRICULUM NEWSLETTER MARCH 2022

YEAR 2 CURRICULUM NEWSLETTER JANUARY 2022

YEAR 2 LEARNING JOURNEY

World Book Day

For World Book Day we came to school dressed as one of our favourite characters.  We enjoyed completing many book related activities including making bookmarks, making book character masks and completing a book scavenger hunt.  We all shared our favourite books too.

 

World Book Day Dance

To continue celebrating World Book Day we had a wonderful dance teacher come into school to help us create a dance to retell the story of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’.  We searched for the golden tickets, found them and celebrated.  Finally, we danced our way around the chocolate factory.

 

Geography

What is life like in the Arctic?

We have been looking at atlases, globes and Google Earth to locate the Arctic Circle.  We have learnt about the seasons of the Arctic and compared them to the UK.  We have learnt about physical features and identified some physical features of the Arctic on photos.  We have also learnt about human features and located some of them on photos too.  Finally, we compared London to Sisimiut, a town in Greenland. We realised there are lots of similarities as well as differences.  We thought about Carlisle when we talked about this as well.
 

Science

In Science, we have been learning about ‘Growing Plants’.  We started by labelling a plant, thinking about the different parts and their jobs.  We then investigated where you would find a seed by cutting some apples in half.  After that, we planted some cress seeds and learnt about germination.

The cress seeds took a long time to germinate, longer than it said on the packet.  Therefore, we decided to carry out a fair test to see if carrot seeds germinate quicker in the warmth to carrot seeds growing in the ‘chilly’ classroom.

 

  

We discovered that carrot seeds germinated more quickly in the warmth.  We then thought about the correct conditions for growing plants so we are in the process of carrying out another fair test to see how sunlight and water affect plant growth.  Some seeds have water and sunlight.  Some seeds have water and no sunlight.  Some seeds have sunlight and no water.  Some seeds have neither.  We have made some interesting predictions.  

 

History at Tullie House – Toys and Games Workshop

Today we revisited some of our learning in the Autumn Term and learnt many new and interesting facts.  We became detectives and talked about how we knew toys were old.  We looked at what they were made from as well as how worn they were.  It was interesting to learn about a Victorian doll who was stuffed with horsehair.  We also learnt about the lever inside her that made her eyes open and close.

We then looked at another Victorian doll, which had human hair and learnt that, on some children’s dolls, their own ‘first curls’ were put on a doll as a keep-sake.   We then put some toys in chronological order and found that some wooden animals were the oldest.  However, we were surprised to see that they were not too worn.  We then learnt that some families had toys just for a Sunday, the other toys were put away and toys related to the Bible were played with and we realised that these animals were from a Noah’s Ark set.

We had the opportunity to look at a selection of toys and think about the materials used to make them and compare them with the toys we have now. We particularly liked the potato popper.

We made our own peg dolls too.

We looked at how some toys move – twisting, lever, spinning, pushing, flicking, squeezing etc. 

Finally, we looked at outdoor toys. We talked about how hoops are made from plastic now but were made of metal and wood.  Some of the games we still enjoy playing like ‘egg and spoon’ and skittles.  Today has been a great learning experience.  Thank you, Tullie House!
 

 

Computing - Pictograms

In computing, we have been learning different ways to display the data we have collected on a tally chart and then we talked about the results.  We started by collecting information on our friends’ favourite fruits.  We recorded this on a tally chart and then input the data onto a pictogram already made for us.  The next lesson we went on a mini beast hunt (this was a video clip), once again, we collected the information on a tally chart and then this time we created our own pictogram using the images given to us.

As a class, we were now becoming rather confident so we decided to collect information using a tally chart on our friends’ hair colour.  This time we made our own pictograms completely independently; we changed the colours because not all the colours available were accurate.  We then went on to make the information into a bar chart.  We added the different titles needed as well. We asked and answered questions interpreting the results of our work.

Show and Tell

We had the most amazing and unusual ‘Show and Tell’.  One of our super students has just had some new ‘arrivals’ at home and she wanted to share her new pets with all of her friends.  With the help of her Mum, she brought her guinea pigs into school.  The class learnt how to stroke them, how to feed them and how they are looked after at home.  Thank you for a brilliant experience.

 

In history, we have been learning about explorers.  To start our topic we had to guess what was in the ‘feely bag’. We discovered that it was a pineapple and then we found out who introduced had the pineapple to Europe.

We created posters about Christopher Columbus with our friends. The posters informed our readers about what Christopher Columbus discovered and when.  We had many discussions about ‘Christopher Columbus Day’ and the different opinions people have regarding Columbus. We then learnt about Neil Armstrong and his trip to the moon. We learnt the first words he said when he landed on the moon and we wrote a diary entry thinking about how he must have felt.

 

Art

In Art we have been studying the work of Henri Rousseau.  We have learnt about the key features of his work and from this, we have painted and drawn pictures of plants following his ideas.  

We then learnt how he painted animals in his work and from this, we have created animal masks using collage as well as drawing to make our product. We have learnt how Rousseau sometimes painted images that he had never seen.  

We were inspired by this to paint space.  We experimented with different paints, brushes and effects, we then use oil pastels for the planets.  We are very proud of our work.

Drama

As part of our English work we have shared and retold many fairy tales. Hot-seating was great to help us to really think about what it felt like to be some of the main characters. Stepping inside their shoes and answering lots of questions helped us to think about what it was like to be the big, bad wolf. Was he just lonely? Or was he really very hungry and very greedy?

 

Maths is Fun!

We are learning to explain and reason in our maths lessons. Using the equipment helps our understanding of place value and makes solving simple addition and subtraction number sentences much easier.

 

Fantastic Mr Fox

To help bring our class story alive we visited Stocks Wood for the day. We fed the chickens and watched them in their run. We enjoyed lighting a fire and re-telling parts of the story while toasting marshmallows. We imagined being Bogus, Bunce or Bean while swinging in the hammock. It was a very chilly day but we had great fun in the outdoors!