Author: Mrs Oughton

Ho Ho How quickly time flies when you’re having fun. I can’t believe we’re at the end of a very busy term. Thank you to all our families for your support so far in Year 2. We’re very grateful for your kind words as we end the autumn term.

We’ve been busy in maths thinking about the value of coins and different shape names. We also enjoyed some role-play shopping and calculating what coins we would need to buy different toys.

We have also enjoyed some crafty activities, making Christmas cards and also some Santa faces.

It’s been a festive week with many special days. Many of us enjoyed a Christmas dinner on Wednesday. On Thursday, we sang, danced and cheered along to a special virtual pantomime edition of Cinderella (Oh Yes We Did!) and on Friday we enjoyed virtually joining in with the Year 4’s Christmas talent show, Xmas Factor! 

We’re sending some passwords home for TT-rockstars which also has details for how to login to ‘numbots’, a fun interactive series of games and maths learning to help with arithmetic. https://ttrockstars.com/ 

 Additionally there are logins for ‘my maths’, another interactive maths app that includes lessons and games that will cover a series of teacher-set topics. An optional lesson has been set on mymaths for over the holidays but it is only there if you would like to access some additional activities. https://www.mymaths.co.uk/ 

We will aim to trial this more for Friday homework tasks in January. 

We hope you’re able to enjoy a happy and restful holiday after a very busy term. Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Christmas has well and truly arrived at Damers! We have been enjoying Christmas Jumper Day today and there has been lots of sparkle in the classroom in aid of Save the Children.

We have also had a busy week rehearsing our version of A Christmas Carol. We are really proud of the children who have worked hard to learn their lines, songs and dance. Thank you adults at home for your help with this too! The children loved having the opportunity to perform on the stage under the lights and really showed us what super actors they are. We can’t wait for you to see the film when it is released.

Amongst rehearsals we have continued practicing ball skills in PE and singing Christmas songs in music. We’ve even started learning how to use sign language for the song ‘Jingle Bells’. 

In maths we have been continuing to look at the 2, 5 and 10 times tables, showing different ways of representing an equation. You might like to have a look at this together at home.

The children have been enjoying Hit the Button and TT Rockstars in class and if you have time you might want to have a go at using one of these at home to reinforce our learning of the 2, 5 and 10 times tables.

We have continued to learn about Victorian toys and really enjoyed making our own thaumatrope. This is a toy that poor children would have played with as they were easy to make at home. They have a different design on each side of a circle and when spun quickly create the effect of a moving picture. We decided to make ours Christmassy so on one side we had a snow globe and on the other side a picture of the item inside the snow globe.

We talked about this being an early step in animation leading the way to movies like Frozen and Cars years later. 

Here are some other designs you may like to experiment with at home:

December is here and the sound of Christmas is in the air!

We have been having a wonderful time learning our lines, dancing and singing our way towards our own rendition of ‘A Christmas Carol’. So many children have come in with beaming smiles saying they’ve been learning their lines and songs at home – thank you! 

We’re looking forward to recording these performances next week to share with you at home. A letter has gone home with your child(ren) about simple home clothing/ outfits we hope the children can wear. Please let us know if you need a copy or have any questions. 

We’ve continued practising our times tables this week and we’ve started to explore how multiplication can be done in different ways. For example, we are recognising that 2 x 5 is similar to 5×2 and produces the same answer. Here’s an example of 4 x 2 and 2 x 4:

Our blinged bikes and scooters looked amazing. The children enjoyed taking part and showing off their Christmas themed transport! 

Please make sure you’re getting messages coming from Parent Mail/the school office. We appreciate several messages were coming your way this past week. If you’ve not been getting ParentMail messages, please contact the school office to check your details are correct on the system.

Our Week 26.11.21

Another busy week completed! We can’t believe it’s the last full week of November – this term is flying by. 

We have been enjoying finding out more about Victorian life for some children; we were surprised how different it was for some families! We’ve continued thinking about childhood for many Victorians and discussing similarities and differences. 

In literacy, we have been writing something called a recount where we write factually about something that happened to us. We decided to write a recount about our trip to Shire Hall. We used pictures from our trip to remind us what we did in chronological order. As a class, we really liked making the peg dolls and looking at the artefacts. We agreed that Harry Parker would have probably felt very alone and scared in the dark cells.

In maths we have been revisiting our times tables. We have reminded ourselves that times tables is a bit like repeated addition.For example, 3×2 is like adding 2+2+2 (three lots of 2). Building blocks can be useful to show times tables:

Next week is ‘Bling Your Bike Day’. A letter/email went home earlier in the week but here is the headline info: To make cycling to school even more fun, we are having a ‘Bling Your Bike’ day on Tuesday 30th November when we would like to encourage all children to cycle or scoot to school with their bikes or scooters decorated with a Christmas theme!

We work with a charity called ‘Sustrans’ who have this handy bike buying guide too that may be useful:

We’ve been practising and revisiting many of our phonics work that we have learnt in Year 1 and at the start of Year 2. Thank you for your support with the children’s home learning phonics books. We hope that by revisiting the alternative digraphs (e.g. how’ ie’, ‘y’, and’ i_e’, can make the ‘igh’ phoneme in some words), the children will become more familiar and confident with spelling patterns and word recognition etc.

We have had a super week learning about the Victorians. We have enjoyed learning about Victorian schools and comparing how they are similar/different to schools today. We were particularly fascinated by the fact that many children would have had to work rather than go to school and some of the jobs they would have done would have been chimney sweeping or working with dangerous machines..

We had an amazing trip to Shire Hall and the adults there were so impressed with the children’s knowledge and how polite they were. Thank you to the adults that helped on the trip, your time and support is much appreciated. We spent time learning about the Victorian era and explored the courtroom and cells too. We learnt a lot about a child called Harry Parker and why he was in court at Shire Hall. We are now experts at exploring evidence and deciding whether we have enough grounds to convict someone on, there are definitely some future lawyers in the making in Meadow 2!

We also had a great time getting crafty and making peg dolls. Some children even used these to tell stories as well. We learnt about Victorian toys and how rich children would have had dolls made from china whilst those from poorer backgrounds would have had homemade toys made from things that were around the house such as wood. There was a crib that was allegedly made from a smuggler’s box with a wooden doll inside.

This week we have also participated in anti-bullying week and looked at the theme of ‘One Kind Word…’. We have thought about what kindness means to us at school and how we can show different acts of kindness, it has been lovely to hear some of the kind acts the class have been sharing with one another. We designed our own odd socks to help us reflect on what it means to be unique and individual, we discussed how we are all different but that is what makes us all so special and important. We were able to highlight this through our fantastic odd sock designs. Finally, we watched this video all about the kindness ‘boomerang’ effect, you can watch it here (adults please check the link in case of external adverts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwAYpLVyeFU

On Thursday morning, we took part in a Michael Rosen event where he spoke about his new book ‘Sticky McStickStick’ and his journey of recovery from Coronavirus where he had to learn how to walk again through the help of a walking stick named Sticky McStickStick. We explored some of his other poems/stories including chocolate cake and we’re going on a bear hunt, we started feeling hungry after listening to his chocolate cake poem!

Have a good weekend and we look forward to seeing you next week.

Thank you for your continued support with the homework and regular reading at home.

We have had an enjoyable and busy week this week. Yesterday we spent time learning about and reflecting upon the reasons behind Remembrance Day and the meaning of poppies too. We learnt that the poppies are made by ex service men and women. You might want to watch this animation  about the war from Cbeebies. ‘Poppies’ is a BBC Children’s remembrance animation which shows how The Great War would have been experienced by the animal inhabitants of a WW1 battlefield. We enjoyed creating poppy pictures using mixed media as part of our learning too.

In maths we have continued to look at addition and also renaming, when we add the ones column the numbers create an extra 10. You might want to have a go at practicing some more at home (see below), or you could practise your number bonds. .

We are starting to move on to subtraction and have looked at different methods to subtract including part part whole and using number lines. We have realised how important it is to know our number bonds as these can really help us to be accurate.

In science we have moved on from materials to consider whether things are alive, were once alive or have never been alive and have had some interesting conversations about the origins of some things such as paper and vegetables. I wonder if you can spot some things which were once alive in your house?

We have been enjoying writing some poems about what a witch might eat and drink as well as where she might fly and sleep. We have come up with some interesting ideas, there was an added level of challenge as we needed to make sure that our poems rhymed!

We really enjoyed painting autumnal pictures and also practising Happy Hand Hygiene!

We hope you have a good weekend and we are looking forward to our trip next week.

Remember, remember the 5th of November! It’s been a chilly but sunny week – we hope you had a restful and happy half term break.

Today we have thought about why Bonfire Night and Fireworks are so common in England at this time of year. We have learnt a little bit about Guy Fawkes. Next week we will also be thinking about why and how people remember others on November 11th with poppies and Remembrance Day (we do a lot of remembering in November don’t we?!).

In maths we have been learning how to use the column method when we add numbers together. We have learnt that we can add without renaming (where the numbers we add don’t make an extra 10) such as 25+32. We have also began looking at when adding does involve renaming such as 17 + 7 or 25+ 26 etc. As one of the children said “we can use our number bonds to help us… if we add the ones and it makes 10 or more, we need to rename the ones into a ten and remember to add it with the tens!”. 

Here are some examples without renaming:

And with renaming:

We used tens and ones (dienes) to help us make the numbers too.

In literacy, we enjoyed finishing off some of our work about Baba Yaga. We thought about noun phrases to describe the witch and the forest where the story is set. For example, The mean, scary witch had a long, twisty nose. She lived in the deep, dark forest. Etc. 

We enjoyed learning some tennis skills in PE this week. We practised how to hold the racket and develop our skill with balancing the ball and how to direct the ball to where we want it to go when we hit it. 

Next week at Damers we are welcoming Jonathan from Sustrans. Jonathan is coming in as Dr Bike to help give our bikes a free check up. Please see the below picture for details. 

We’re looking forward to going on our first trip this year to the Shire Hall. Please have all permission slips at least one day before the trip.

15th October

We have nearly finished this first term and the time has flown by! 

We have continued to look at fairy tales in school, spotting the features and talking about these in class. We have continued to focus on Baba Yaga in class and have enjoyed retelling the story to each other. You might like to retell the story together at home or you could watch this short clip with no words.

In maths we have started to look at using a numberline for addition. We have also looked at how we can use basic number bonds to help us with more tricky addition sums, for example, if we know that 5 + 2 = 7 we can use this to work out 50 + 20 = 70.

Well done to everyone who has been practising counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. We have handed out lots of certificates – keep this up!

We have been enjoying our music sessions and singing with Mr Baker, recognising the high and low notes on a xylophone and practising these with our voices too.

In PE this week we have continued to use the apparatus in the hall to practise our climbing, balancing and jumping skills. The children are getting really good at this!

It’s been great to see so many of you over the past couple of evenings for parent consultations. We have had a lovely week in school. We have started learning about traditional tales this week and have enjoyed sharing some in class. We have enjoyed talking about what makes a traditional tale and spotting the features in the stories that we have shared together. You might like to share the story of Baba Yaga that we have been looking at in class as there are lots of different versions. You can see the story below.

In maths we have continued to look at the different ways numbers are composed and represent this using different ways such as part part whole and dienes. We have also been looking at number sequences such as the ones below. We have looked at whether numbers are going forwards or backwards and by how much so that we can work out the next numbers in the sequence.

We have also been spotting patterns when counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s.

We have really enjoyed creating artwork ready for display in school. We have painted sunset backgrounds using watercolours and then sketched structures from around the world ready to stick on the background.

We have really enjoyed our PE time this term. We’ve been outdoors practising our ball-skills with Mr Senior. This week we were improving our basketball skills and teamwork. On Fridays we have been using the apparatus to practise balancing, climbing and jumping skills.