It is wonderful to have all of the Year 2 children back in school. They have returned with great enthusiasm and have all been very sensible as they keep themselves and their families safe by staying in their protective bubbles in school. Well done to everyone!
Individual reading
This week, I have read with all the children and given each child reading materials in their book bag. When your child is ready to read something new, they can put their reading log in the class basket and they will be able to choose something else. We have a quarantine system for returned books, which means that they will be left for a minimum of 72 hours before they can be chosen by another child.
Home learning
We will continue to use the Google Classroom for home learning this year. Your child’s existing log-in will provide access to the Year Two Google Classroom and more details can be found on the Year 2 Home Learning Quick Link. Home learning is posted at 2pm on Friday, to be completed by 8:30am on the following Wednesday.
As ever, if there is anything that you would like to discuss, you are very welcome to speak with me at the end of the school day (socially distanced, of course!).
Information relating to weekly home learning is posted on the Google Classroom at every Friday at 2pm. Most home learning is then due to be returned on the following Wednesday.
Each term, your child receives a home learning grid that includes exciting activities that can be completed at home throughout the term. We look forward to celebrating this home learning with your child when they bring it into school. More information can be found on the Google Classroom.
Ongoing activities for your Year Two child
Spellings
Spellings to be learned before starting Year Two can be found here:
By the end of the year, the children need to confidently know the multiplication and division facts for the 2x, 5x and 10x tables. Free games to reinforce these skills can be found here: https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button
Google Classroom
The children have joined the Year 2 Home Learning Google Classroom and their login details can be found in their Reading Record.
You can access Google Classroom here: https://classroom.google.com/c/NTQ3MTA1NTg0ODc2
This link will only work if you are logged in to your child’s own school Google account. You will not be able to access the classroom if logged in to Google with a parent’s account or that of another family member. Further information can be found on the Year 2 Quick Link, where you will find a handy Google Classroom guide should you have difficulties logging on.
Ideas of activities that can be done as part of your day together can be found here. Please do contact me through the googleclassroom stream to let the class know of any activities that have worked well for you and your family.
There is obviously an understanding relating to the activities listed below that these are only suggested activities as resources may well be reduced or unavailable at this time.
Some ideas, all on a handy A4 sheet can be found here: https://mcusercontent.com/35a57192e9ec6a559eaaa6cf9/files/ca721c01-dadb-4434-89ff-be64f1f19aa8/20_Activities_to_try_at_home.pdf
Being creative
This is an task to do when you are feeling in the mood for a peaceful, creative activity. Design a rainbow piece of artwork that you can put up in your window to make your neighbours smile as they go past doing their daily exercise. You can let your imagination run wild by using paint, pens, coloured pieces of paper or card (these could be cut off your magazines, paper or boxes before they go into your recycling box if you don’t have any paper), sequins or anything else that you think would make a wonderfully beautiful rainbow to bring happiness to your families and neighbours. If you upload your photos onto the Year 2 stream of the googleclassroom, I will add them to a class slide presentation, so that we can enjoy each other’s artwork.
Prayerlife
I have asked the children to keep one another in their daily prayers and suggested that at the end of the day, they could name each of the children who sit at their table in their prayers. We reflected on how lovely it would feel to know that every day, we are all being prayed for. Please support your child to remember their friends, including those on their learning table in their prayers each night.
Daily prayers can also be found here https://www.tentenresources.co.uk/primary-subscription/prayers-for-home/
The Scouts have produced a list of 100 free activities, games and craft ideas. All the activities are designed to have a clear positive outcome, such as developing communication skills or learning how to solve problems. https://www.scouts.org.uk/the-great-indoors
Cook/prepare meals with your child and as you do so, think about the following:
Talk about the different parts of the meal and how they fit in with the Eat Well Plate, which can be found here: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/the-eatwell-guide/. What types of food are you eating? Is it protein, carbohydrate, fruit, vegetable or dairy? Talk about the healthy and not so healthy parts of the meal.
Make sandwiches with your child. Let them think about the different fillings that they could include? How could they vary the content? Encourage children to make their own fillings such as …
egg with mayo (try growing your own cress to go into these sandwiches)
tuna with mayo
meat and salad
grate cheese/chop tomatoes for cheese and tomato etc. etc.
Use scales and measuring jugs to measure out ingredients, encouraging pupils to read the measures and think about what each unit of measurement is worth. Questioning could include How much more do we need? If we double the recipe, what ingredients will we need? The bread will prove for two hours and then bake for an hour and a half. What time will the bread be ready?
Read the packaging on your shopping. What is the country of origin? How do you think that this product arrived in this country? Trace a product’s journey on a world map. Which has travelled the furthest? etc.
The Change for Life website has activities for all the family, including fun food facts, and recipes. https://www.nhs.uk/change4life
Learn to tell the time to the nearest five minutes.
The best way to do this is by frequently referring to an analogue clock throughout the day, asking what the time is and further questions such as:
We’re going to have lunch in twenty minutes. What time will we have lunch?
The cake will take two hours to cook. What time will it be ready?
We have been playing with the Lego for forty five minutes. What time did we start? etc etc. etc.
Sow seeds
Great seeds to grow at this time of year are cress (perfect for those egg sandwiches), salad leaf, marigold and pea seeds. Talk with your child about what the seed will need to germinate and then measure/monitor the growth of the seedlings. A key element of Year Two learning in Plants is considering what happens if plants don’t have water or light, so consider doing an investigation by putting some seedlings in the dark or don’t water some seedlings and see what happens to them. Take some photos to show the growth/changes etc.
Keeping active
Joe Wicks is doing a daily PE workout at 9am. This is uploaded to his youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAxW1XT0iEJo0TYlRfn6rYQ
If you join imoves at the following address, you will have access to videos, music and lesson plans for activities to do with your child. https://imoves.com/imovement-signup
Why not have a go at indoor monopoly? This looks great fun. If you don’t have access to a printer, your child could make a portable set that consists of cards written out with each of the activities which could be lain out in a board shape (or any shape your wish!) to travel along using a counter and dice. Just do the action when you land on your written card. Amend the activity as you wish and enjoy! https://mcusercontent.com/35a57192e9ec6a559eaaa6cf9/files/0852e3f0-ec76-494d-b704-f7d33a23f0b6/Active_
Reading
Hertfordshire Online library services: You can borrow eBooks and audiobooks FREE from Hertfordshire Public Libraries using the BorrowBox app, your library card number and your PIN. Anyone can join Hertfordshire Libraries if they live, work or study in the area. If you’re not already a member, you can join online (google ‘join Herts library’) then email [email protected]
Go to: https://www.booksfortopics.com/year-2 to find recommendations of good reads for Year Two children.
Go to https://stories.audible.com/discovery and listen to some smashing stories together. If at all possible try to listen to them first to check that you are happy with the content.
Go to Curriculum Visions to access books suitable for your child to read with you. Go through the library shelves, looking for books that are at a similar colour to your child’s book band. A guide to the book banding can also be found on the site. Please note that this certainly does not replace sitting and reading a real book, but is somewhere that you can find limited, additional reading material, should you have exhausted your own supplies of lovely books to read at home. I will continue to search for sources of other reading material that you may be able to use.
Go to https://www.curriculumvisions.com/indexHomeScreen.html
Username: stadrians/0001 Password: jungle
Well being
Please see the Wellbeing post below to find lots of activities that will support your child’s wellbeing.
Maths
There is a wealth of maths activities on the Year 2 googleclassroom. Once you have completed all of these, please do feel free to complete any of the tasks on the Fluency Teaser blog which can be found in the menu on the right.
Practical, problem solving activities to deepen your child’s understanding in maths, can be found in these past features. We hope that you enjoy each challenge.
We would love you to share any solutions or comments with us through your Google Classroom.
As part of our RE in the summer term, the children learn how early Christians Spread the Word about Jesus’s resurrection.
Key words are: risen resurrection Holy Spirit Ascension witnesses blessing Pentecost promise Good News
As part of this topic, we will think about ‘Why should we spread Good News’?
The children will read from the bible to find out how the women at the tomb were asked to tell the disciples that Jesus has come alive again. We will hear Jesus’s message that he would give them a special helper called the Holy Spirit and then find out about the effect of the arrival of the Holy Spirit on the disciples at Pentecost as they then went out to spread Jesus’s word on the streets of Jerusalem.
RE home learning
As part of their home learning, the children will think about how they can pass on the Good News that Jesus is alive in each and every one of us. Read John 14: 18-19 and Acts 2: 1-4 together and talk about how the Holy Spirit helps and guides us. On your child’s summer home learning grid, you will find a flower with the phrase ‘Jesus is alive in me’, with a space on a petal for a beautiful, named self-portrait.
Talk to your child about the different things that they do which show that the Holy Spirit is working through them. These things can include
reading the bible, maybe about the experience of Jesus and the disciples after the resurrection
telling other people about the life and message of Jesus
examples of how your child follows Jesus’ message to love other people through their actions and service
talking about your child’s prayer life and what they pray about
talking about ways in which your child contributes to the Common Good by giving time or money to charities so that they can do good works
Through a combination of images and writing, ask your child to fill in each petal with a different way in which they show that Jesus is alive in them. Please ensure that all handwriting is neat and joined correctly as the flowers will all contribute to a classroom display.
We are looking forward to seeing the finished flowers!
Autumn term
In the autumn term, we learn about the rite of baptism through the theme of Signs and Symbols.
We will be considering the big question Are signs and symbols important? Why? Please talk about this question with your child, looking for the signs and symbols that the children encounter on the way to and from school.
The children will learn to describe and sequence the baptism service and we will explore the different parts of the sacrament and their significance. We will focus on important symbols associated with baptism, such as the sign of the cross, white garment, font, candle, chrism and Easter candle.
Key words for the topic are: white garment, Easter candle, font, chrism, Good News
Please talk to your child about their own baptism artefacts and how they were used within their baptism. For their RE home learning, the children will design a baptism candle. Encourage your child to think about what signs and symbols they would like to include on their candle. It would be great if your child could write a key to go with their candle, that explains what each of their chosen symbols mean. Please ensure that your child takes pride in their candle as it would be lovely to make a display of them.
Spring term
During the spring term, our first RE topic is based around the theme of Books.
Key words for the topic are:
Scripture, lectern, Gospel, Bible, New Testament, Old Testament, genre, thurible, missal, Church, parish family
In particular, discuss the meaning of the words thurible and missal. When you visit church together, see if you can find the church thurible or missal to talk about with your child.
We will be considering the big question Why do we need books?
The children will read Matthew’s gospel (Matthew 3; 13-17) to find out about the Baptism of Jesus.
RE home learning
Let’s enjoy reading the bible: Share stories from the bible with your child. Talk about stories that are particularly important to you. What stories are important to your child? Create a poster about this story that can be shared in class.
Mrs Hayes’s English group: We are finishing our teaching sequence on Wolves. The children are writing their own non-fiction booklet on Wolves. Our spelling learning focus includes reinforcing the Year 1 and Year 2 common exception words as well as single and plural spelling patterns i.e. scarf/scarves; puppy/puppies; bridge/bridges etc.
Maths
Mrs Hayes’s Maths Group: We are finishing off our topic on Fractions and beginning our learning on Money. We will be working with coins to solve word problems up to £1. We thought about all the different ways that we can pay for a £1 Sport Relief badge.
Mr King’s Maths Group have been doing it the other way around! Having finished off our topic on money we are now starting to look at fractions. So far we have looked at recognising equal parts, then finding one half, one quarter and three quarters of shapes. We plan to go on and look at finding thirds of a shape, looking at how two quarters and one half are equivalent, and then learning to find halves, quarters and thirds of amounts (e.g. half of 8 is 4, one quarter of 8 is 2).
Science
We are continuing with our learning on Plants. We carefully drew and labelled a strawberry plant and predicted what will happen as the plant grows through the next month. Next, we will be exploring the marigold plants that were sown by the children six weeks ago. The children each have their own seedling (3-4cm tall at the moment) and they will track it’s growth across the next month on a bar chart. Building on from learning that took place last autumn, the children will also set up an investigation to explore what happens to plants grown without water or plants grown without light.
Computing
We are introducing our We are Programmers unit, currently focusing on directions i.e. Go forward two steps, make a quarter turn to the right, go forward three steps etc.
Design and Technology
We have been setting up our sewing kits, ready to begin learning how to do a running stitch. As we will not be having parent helpers in school for the foreseeable future, children will bring these kits home to complete them there. If you child is not in school to receive a kit, feel free to practise running stitch on material or binca. The aim of the sewing activity is that the children will learn how to thread a needle independently, tie a knot in the end of the wool and then complete a running stitch.
History
We have been exploring a hundred year old family photo to see what we can find out. We have been thinking about the questions ‘What do you know/think/want to find out in relation to this photo.
Religious Education
We have just started our new topic: Opportunities. We are thinking about how Mothering Sunday gives us an opportunity to think about why our mother is so special to us. We have written messages relating to this theme and are practising our Mother’s Day song. During the week, we will be thinking about our journey through Lent and renewing our wish to help others.
On Wednesday, the children celebrated a liturgy with Father Francis. The focus of the liturgy was thanksgiving and the children enjoyed planning prayers, readings and hymns that they would use within the liturgy. It was a joyous occasion and the children prayed thoughtfully and sang with gusto!
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How to access our Google Classroom
In the event of school closure, I am hoping to provide activities via the Google classroom. It might be worth checking that your child is able to access this in case we are instructed by the Government to close in the coming weeks. Further details can be found below.
To access Google classroom, children will need to sign in using their school Google account.
Visit google.com and click ‘Sign in’ in the top-right of the webpage.
If you, or someone using the same device, already has a Google account, you will need to add your child’s school account and switch between them before accessing the Classroom.
How to add Google accounts
Open the Chrome web browser.
On the top right, select your profile image or initial.
On the menu, choose Add account.
Follow the instructions to add your child’s Google account.
Children’s school Google usernames all end with the domain, @stadrians.herts.sch.uk
Your child should know the first part of their username and the password. For security, I cannot add that information here. Further details can be found in your child’s reading log.
Once you have, set up your child’s Google account. You may need to switch between accounts for them to access the Google Classroom.
How to switch between Google accounts
In the top right, click your profile photo or email address.
The children in their classes used democracy and voted to choose who would represent them in the Eco Team and we are all very proud to have been chosen as our class Eco representatives. We are passionate about making a difference to our school and homes by making sure that we do all we can to spread good ideas about how to look after our beautiful planet.
Our first mission was to plant some trees to help the wildlife around the school grounds. We chose a great site for the trees, where they wouldn’t get mown down by the lawn mower and ordered a selection of trees that would be great for birds, butterflies and bees. When the saplings arrived, we got all the resources ready (compost, trowels, gloves, wheelbarrows etc!) and taught each class how to plant the trees Over the next few years, we will care for them to ensure that they grow as big and strong as the trees already in our school grounds. Here is one class in action!
Here we are, ready to plant.
These silver birch trees were planted ten years ago.
Into the ground goes the new sapling.
We made sure that there was lots of new soil around the tree.
The ball on the end of the cane is to stop the lawnmowers from accidentally mowing our new trees!
Here are our plans for 2024:
Plant new trees and care for them
Use both sides of your piece of paper: Set up a poster campaign to remind children not to waste paper as it means that more trees have to be chopped down
Look after the wildlife in our school grounds by putting up bird feeders, butterfly ponds and renewing our bug hotels.
Keep the playground tidy by doing litter picks around the school grounds and encouraging everyone to use the bins.
Reduce the use of plastic around the school by encouraging children to use re-usable plastic pots for their daily snack instead of a new plastic bag every day.
Keep our air cleaner and use less petrol by walking to school more. We will be telling our friends about the Walk to School week in May and then try to persuade them to walk to school at least once a week, even if is just by parking a little bit further away from school and then walking from there!
