This week in English we have continued to use the story On the Way Home.
On Monday we looked at a collection of words and realised they were all words from the story.
We looked at the word friend and talked about strategies to remember how to spell it. Our most popular strategy was friend. We used the strategy ‘Look, cover, write, check’ to write the word. After we played ‘Quick write’ where we had to see how many times we could write the word friend in our neatest writing in one minute.
We repeated the activities with the word there. Our most popular strategy was there. We linked the place words here and there to help us remember how to spell there.
After we worked in pairs, choosing words from the list to spell. We used the spelling strategy ‘Look, cover, write, check’
All these words could be part of the children’s stories next week so you may like to let them practise at home.
On Tuesday we revisited our learning about exclamations.
The type of exclamations we were learning about were the ones that begin with a How or a What and end in an !
We used Jill Murphy’s example from the story ‘How dreadful!'
We then made up our own exclamations.
We talked about where the ! goes.
What an astonishing story said Meg! Or What an astonishing story! Said Meg.
Which is correct?
Talk to your children about the correct position and look out for exclamations in books.
On Wednesday in our SpAG lesson we revisited our learning about question sentences.
We thought about the recurring question in On the Way Home - ‘How did you do it?’
We talked about these question words – Who What Where When Why
We worked in threes and took turns to pick up a question card Who What Where When Why. Then we thought of a question sentence to go with that word.
You may like to play this game at home.
On Thursday we thought of our favourite part from On the Way Home. First we began by quickly drawing the key moment, showing the main character Claire, the character she imagined and how she got away. We added details to help us remember what happened. Next we wrote an expanded noun phrase describing the character Claire met. We remembered the rule – adjective, adjective, noun. Then we thought of four verbs to describe what was happening in the picture. After that we wrote a sentence using the expanded noun phrase and verbs.
Finally we wrote an exclamation.
On Friday we planned our own On the Way Home stories using a plot matrix.You may like to tal
Spelling
This week in spelling we were learning about the suffixes – less, ly, ily.
We made words suing the root word and the suffix.
On Tuesday we revisited our learning about the possessive apostrophe.
The children made up their own sentences
Mrs Roberson’s glasses.
Mrs Bootle’s blanket.
On Wednesday the children learnt a selection of new homophones.
no/know knight/night to/too/two
On Thursday our dictations were
The careless bus driver didn’t shut the door of the bus because he didn’t know he had to!
The playful child dropped his sister’s toy on the floor at night.
The children played happily for two weeks.
Please help your child practise these spelling rules at home.
In art this term we have been learning about the works of Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh.
We have learnt to paint in the style of these great artists.
We have learnt about
· - the brush strokes they used
· - the colours they used
· - how they liked to paint the same scenes at different times of day and in different seasons
· - how they like to paint cityscapes and landscapes
A couple of weeks ago we used Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ painting to inspire our own paintings. We painted the night sky using the same brush strokes and colours.
This week we turned our starry skies into cityscapes by cutting a night skyline of London. We also cut out our moon and stars we had previously painted and added them to our work.
Look at our wonderful efforts.
This week in
maths we have been learning about shape. We started by looking a 3d shapes and
used mathematical words to describe their properties. Shapes we described
include: Cube, cuboid, cylinder, cone, sphere, pyramid and prism.
We named the
shapes and counted their faces, edges and vertices.
Ask your child if
they can explain the following words:
Faces – the flat
2d shapes on the surface of a 3d shape
Edges – where the
faces meet
Vertices – where the
edges meet
As you see shapes in the environment as your child to
name them and count their faces, edges and vertices.
The next day we
looked at 2d shapes. We named and described the shapes by counting their sides/edges
and vertices. Ask your
child if they can describe the following 2d shapes: circle, square, rectangle,
triangle, pentagon, hexagon and octagon.
The next day we investigated
the lines of symmetry on 2d shapes. We thought about where lines on symmetry might
be and we used mirrors to check if we were correct. Here is a video we watched
about lines of symmetry that you might like to watch at home. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/clips/ztpyr82
On Friday we used
a selection of shapes and sorted them in different ways. Our friends had to
look at our shapes and try and work out the criterion we had used. Some of our
ways of sorting them were:
- 2d or 3d shapes
- < 4 vertices or > 4 vertices
- All equal length edges or not all equal length edges.
Next week we will be making our ‘geographical
locations’ shoe boxes. Children can choose if they wish to create a town, city,
village or coastal location. Please
remember to send in a named, normal-sized shoe box, if you have not already
done so.
We hope you have a good weekend – we can’t believe
there is only one week left until half term!
The Year Two Teachers
