Welcome to the Year 2 class page. Here you will find photos, updates and important information throughout the school year. Our team consists of:

2L - Miss Lavin, Miss Rafftery and Miss Broadie

2C - Miss Cooper, Miss Delaney and Miss Christian

Our topic for this half term is Lent. We have been looking at how Lent is an incredibly special time for Christians as we prepare for Holy Week and Easter. Before starting our new topic, we looked inside our Lent box and organised the items into two groups. The first group were items we thought were not linked to Lent, such as the chocolate bunny and the nail. The other group were items we thought were linked to Lent, such as the pictures of Jesus and the donkey because we know that Jesus came to Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday. We are going to keep looking at this box throughout this topic to see if we change our minds about any of the items as we learn more!

We have discussed lots of new key vocabulary such as shrove and penance which have helped us to understand our Lent topic even more. So far, we have learnt lots about Ash Wednesday and we even got to role play what happens at Ash Wednesday mass by our teacher pretending to be the priest and making the sign of the cross with ashes on our forehead. We have even looked at CAFOD’s website to understand why charity is so important, especially during Lent. We know that during Lent, we should be more attentive when we pray, try to give something up and make more effort to be kind to one another. Both classes came up with their own Lenten class focus with lots of ways that we can achieve this promise:

What a week we’ve had! We have learnt so much about Palm Sunday and how we celebrate it in church. In today’s lesson we created our very own version of a stained glass window with all of our learning. First we looked at lots of different pieces of artwork that artists from different countries had created for Palm Sunday and the Last Supper. We then split into small groups and designed our section of the artwork, we had five groups:

1. Palm leaves
2. People cheering and putting cloaks down.
3. Jesus on the donkey.
4. The priest wearing red in mass.
5. The Last Supper.

We are super proud of how each section fit together to make an amazing piece of artwork! Please ask us some questions about it because can all explain about what different parts mean and what specific parts symbolise.

In our Caritas lessons, our new topic has been Options For The Poor And Vulnerable. We have really enjoyed this topic as we’ve had lots of opportunities to have big discussions about the extremely wealthy vs the very poor. We all agree that it is incredibly unfair that some people can have so much (way more than they need!), whereas others have so little and struggle a lot in life. We explored the feelings that people in poverty could experience compared to those who are rich. Our new words are fairness and justice and we came up with lots of ideas for how we can be just people and encourage those around us to do the same.  

This term we have been looking at Michael Rosen’s poem Don’t. In groups we rearranged lines of his poem to create our own version to perform. Please watch our group performances below!This term we have been looking at Michael Rosen’s poem Don’t. In groups we rearranged lines of his poem to create our own version to perform. Please watch our group performances below!

We have received some very exciting letters recently to our classes. We started by discussing our fears and why we are scared of them. Then the first letter arrived on our teacher’s desk! It was an anonymous letter by someone who had seen our posters about our fears – they told us all about their own fears and how they overcame them. We decided it would be best if we sent a letter back asking them lots of interesting questions! A second letter appeared with two pictures – one of a boy and one of a girl. As a class, we looked at these pictures and came up with lots of ideas for what their appearance was and what their personality could be like. We realised the letter must be from the girl and we are excited by the book she mentioned that her uncle had written. We asked in our first letter that we want to read this book if she could send it to us! We are really happy with our descriptions as we included lots of expanded noun phrases and compound sentences. Compound sentences are our main focus right now – making sure that we used a range of conjunctions such as and, but, or, so and yet. Next we’re going to move onto complex sentences where we will use to learn the conjunctions when, if, that and because.

On Thursday 2^nd March, it was World Book Day! We looked at lots of books and completed some fun activities such as creating our own book covers for our favourite books. Here are some pictures of us all dressed up in our masks:

On Thursday 29th September, we had a special visit in year two from a local author called Sam Shepherd. Sam was born in Manchester and after leaving grammar school, he achieved his childhood dream of joining the police. He is now retired after 32 years’ service and is a full time grandad of seven grandchildren, who inspired him to start writing so he could share his stories with them. Sam has combined his two great loves of the police and dogs into a comical adventure in his series of 'Dogchester PD' books.

The children were excited to ask Sam lots of questions. From asking about his experience as a police officer, to why he became an author, the children were fascinated to find out about his life!

We have been very busy in maths recently. We have learnt lots of strategies for both addition and subtraction so that we can choose the one that works best for us. This includes; +/- a multiple of ten (24+70, 86-30), +/- one digit numbers (54-7, 85+4), +/- two digit numbers (87-32, 48+27) and adding three 1 digit numbers (1+5+9). We know that addition is commutative which means that we can add in any order and the total will be the same. However, subtraction is not commutative because we always have to start with the whole which is the biggest number.

In 4 Rules, we have been revisiting all of these strategies to make sure we are secure in our learning. Next we will be moving on to fractions of amounts and shapes, we will learn how to find ½, ¼, ¾, 1/3 and 2/3. We also need to know that finding 2/4 is exactly the same ½, the word we use for this is equivalent.    

We have now completed our Number and Place Value topic, where we learnt to make numbers to 120, partition, round to the nearest ten, estimate using a number line and sequencing. We are now moving on to Addition and Subtraction, where we have recapped our number bonds to 10 using counters and are now looking at adding and subtracting systematically in all numbers up to 20.    

We have loved our new History topic this half term! We have been learning all about the Great Fire of London – the story of what happened and the reasons the fire spread so quickly. We have been looking at lots of artefacts and using our historical knowledge to guess what they could have been used for. Lots of us were correct in our guesses! We have also created our own version of what London should have looked like after the fire, when it was rebuilt. To do this, we had to think of all the reasons why the fire spread and improve upon this. For example, the roads were very narrow and windy in 1666 so we decided that they should be wider with pavements.

In June, all of Year 2 went on a school trip to Staircase House. We remembered so much from our History lessons and also learnt lots of new, interesting facts. In the morning, we had a great time acting out the story of the Great Fire and exploring the Tudor house with its many rooms. In the afternoon, we completed two activities, learning lots of information about wattle and daub and the fire mark. We had a go at using the same techniques for wattle and daub that would have been used hundreds of years ago and after learning about how fire marks work, we got to create our own. Have a look at all the pictures of us below!

Here are some videos and pictures of our KS1 Sports Day. We had such a great time!

This half term we have been creating our own Bubbles dance. We have been thinking about how a bubble would float, how a big gust of wind would change a bubble’s movement, how it connects to another bubble and how it pops. We’ve created a dance using different elements of speed, high or low and working in pairs. Please watch our performance below!

In PE, we have been creating our own dance to music. We had to pretend to be a balloon by inflating, deflating and even being carried around by a big gust of wind. We made sure that our movements were in time to the music and made sure we travelled in different ways, using both high and low. Here is part of our performance!

To end our music lessons this year, Mr Morris helped us learn lots of Christmas songs for our Year 2 Performance. We were delighted that so many of our families came to watch us perform! All our teachers were incredibly proud of us – here is our performance if you missed it.

This week we have been researching, designing and making our very own fire carts. We are making these to show what fire carts would have looked like during the time of the Great Fire of London. We have learnt some new vocabulary for all the parts of the cart and know what each part does. Here are some pictures of us at each stage of making our cart:

We have had a big challenge for our DT topic this term! We have been learning how to sew so that we could make a small Christmas jumper to fit a little bear. We had to overcome many obstacles while making these jumpers however, we persevered and we are incredibly happy with how they turned out! Here we are making them:

On Friday 3^rd December, we had some very exciting visitors called Pop Project! They helped us understand different ways for us to Reach for the Stars and become better people. They also showed us the 3 R’s – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. We are already really good at recycling but we learnt lots of new ways to reduce and reuse old items like plastic bottles and cardboard. We also got to sing and dance to lots of songs!