Friday 27th September

This week in English we have been continuing learning about poetry.  On Monday we were given the sentence   Long, wriggly worms wriggling in the soil. We had to identify the adjectives and the nouns. We then used the pattern of adjective, comma, adjective noun (an expanded noun phrase) to write our own sentences in pairs. We then had to think of a verb to describe what it was doing.  By the end of the lesson we had made our own class four sentence poem about minibeasts. On Tuesday we used the same pattern to write our own minibeast poems.  We use the toolkit to remind ourselves of what we needed to include. On Thursday we edited our poems with our teachers to make them even better before writing them in our best handwriting ready to display. At home you may like to play a game of identifying the adjective (describing word), the noun (naming word) and verb (doing or action word) in a sentence. Your child could then write their own expanded noun phrase ( adjective comma adjective noun) to bring into school.  You may also like to be expanded noun detectives when reading stories. In phonics we have been recapping the digraphs ee, ea and the split digraph e-e. Make a list of words with these digraphs and then write a sentence using them. In handwriting we have been learning the letters u e w and the words we, wet, wilt and lute. Encourage your child to practise these at home.  You will find the letters and words on letterjoins under easy letters and easy words. We would love to see the children’s work. We have recently done a spelling assessment with the chidren of all the Year 1 common exception words. The following words ome children found tricky – says, said, were, there, where, come, some, friend, school and house. Please keep practising the Year 1 common exception words at home to ensure they are embedded before we start teaching the year 2 words. A good strategy is ‘Look, cover, write, check’ On Monday in maths using number lines we had to fill in the missing numbers.   Next we put numbers on a blank number line and some of us challenged ourselves to put the same number eg 45 on number lines of different scales. 0__________________________50 0__________________________100 0__________________________ 60 During the rest of the week we revisited our learning on partitioning numbers into tens and ones. We used arrow cards to show how to partition and then recombine. 42  when partitioned is made up of 40 + 2  When recombined the number goes back to 42. Follow the link to play the arrow cards game (make 2 digit numbers only) ictgames.com/mobilePage/arrowCards/index.html We then tried to partition the number 42 using other representations .  We could use the tens frame, Numicon, the part,part, whole model or diennes. We then thought of other ways of partitioning 42 30+12 = 42 20 + 22 = 42 What other ways can you find? Can your child partion the number 42 in three ways? 20+ 20+2=42 Can they find other ways? At home your child could partition other numbers.

On Friday we used our learning about place value to solve a problem. We started with 4 beads and could place them in the tens or ones column. We tried to find all the possibilities. We then challenged ourselves to use 7 beads and made all the possible numbers and identify the patterns. Please try this at home with your child - maybe use 8 or 9 beads? We tried to work out the pattern of how many different numbers we could make with different numbers of beads. We also thought about what the digits in all the numbers add up to and why? Please ask your child if they can see and explain these patterns.  In art we learnt to hatch and cross hatch using different thicknesses of pencil lines to add texture and tone. First we explored and then we applied our skills to carefully draw a selection of mini beasts.  In computing as part of our learning to prepare the children to use Turtle Logo we learnt how to give instructions using the words half a turn and quarter of a turn. We learnt that a quarter turn can be called a 90 turn!  Hope you all have a lovely weekend. We look forward to celebrating 'Book Week' next week.  Don't forget our competition to  design a book mark.  The lucky winner will receive a £5 voucher to use at the book fair which is in school next week. Also could everyone please bring in a toilet roll tube as we will be making our own mini beasts next week. Thank you. The Year 2 teachers

Friday 20th September

This week in English we have been focusing on poetry.  We read a range of poems by Giles Andreae in an anthology called ‘Mad About Minibeasts’.   We talked about what we liked and disliked about the poems.  Our ideas included rhyming words, alliteration and words chosen carefully for effect. On Tuesday we read a poem called ‘Eeny, Meeny Minibeasts.  We talked about the poem and then recorded our ideas using this writing frame. I like ______ poem because ……. My favourite part of the poem is the part where I don’t really like ______ because…… On Thursday we read and performed the poems by  Giles Andreae in groups of three. We added actions and used intonation in our voices to make it more interesting for the audience.  On Friday we did an activity to help develop the children’s vocabulary. They had a picture of a minibeast and had to think of the best words or phrases to describe it.  Here are some of our ideas.  When you have an adjective, adjective, noun it is called an expanded noun phrase.  We will be using this expression a lot throughout Year 2. You could repeat this activity at home with your child and would love to see some of the words they came up with. Can your child identify the nouns and adjectives in this list? Can your child think of two different adjectives to improve this sentence? Next week we will be writing our own minibeast poems using many of the words we have found this week. Ask your child what their favourite word was. Home learning You may like to read some poems  with your child and use the writing frame  above to discuss the poems after reading them. Also as they read can they use some intonation in their voice to make the meaning of the poem clear. Please send in any poems about minibeasts to add to our class anthology. This week in phonics – we recapped the digraph ai, ay, a-e.

Spellings
Over the next few weeks please ensure your child can spell the Year One common exception words.

This week in maths, we have been counting, reading and writing numbers to 100. We have been practising counting forwards and backwards in ones from any number. Some of us find ‘crossing the tens’ tricky (i.e. 70 – 69, 60 – 59 etc.), please practise counting backwards from any number at home. 

On Monday we started by selecting a number and then making that number using a variety of resources. This helps us check the children’s understanding of numbers. For example, knowing that 67 is made of 6 tens and 7 ones. Some of us challenged ourselves to make 5 more than the given number. Here are some photos of the ways we made numbers.

The next day we practised reading numbers to 100 by playing ‘Splat the Square’. https://www.primarygames.co.uk/pg2/splat/splatsq100.html We discussed how we know that, for example, 54 is not 45, by looking at the tens and ones. We then read numbers written in words. We used our phoneme fingers to help us. We then worked as a group to match numerals and words.

The next day we started by listening to a ‘Numbers to Ten’ story and we wrote the numbers in words as we heard them. We then played ‘Splat the Square’ again, but this time discussed how we write the numbers in words. We thought about different strategies we could use. For example, the word ‘four’ has four letters and ‘eight’ is spelt the same as ‘light’, but with a different letter to start. We then extended this to numbers to one hundred. We discussed how we add ‘ty’ to the end of words such as ‘seven’ to make ‘seventy’. We rolled dice to make 2-digit numbers and recorded these in our books. We then wrote the number in words, using a word bank to help us, if needed.

Please help your child learn to write all numbers to one hundred in numerals and words.

This week in art we were using clay.  In this first lesson we explored what we could do with the clay. First we pulled, pinched, rolled the clay into a round ball and a long sausage shape, coiled it and flattened it. 

Next we used tools to make marks. 

Finally we used slip (slippery, watery clay) to attach two pieces of clay together.

We have had a very busy week and we hope you all enjoy a restful weekend!

The Year Two Team