The children have had a great start to Year 2 and have been very excited about their new learning. What has been especially rewarding is the enthusiasm with which pupils have brought in information from home about current learning. Thank you for the high quality of their home learning, including the posters about Saint Teresa and beautiful baptism candles.
We had an inspiring drama session earlier in October. The children paid great attention during the session and showed themselves to be wonderful actors. Well done to you all!
The circus ringmaster told us that the clowns are very sad and our mission is to make them happy.Maybe our funny faces will make the clowns laugh?
Our wonderful acting has made the clowns smile again. HURRAH!
The Year 2 children have a great passion for art, so I look forward to seeing their artwork inspired by the theme of Bread of Life.
Have a wonderful half term break with your family.
An exciting competition is taking place across the county. The task is to:
Create a piece of artwork entitled ‘The Bread of Life’.
Encourage your child to think about what the blessed sacrament, the Eucharistic host, means to them and then create a piece of artwork reflecting their thoughts. The artwork needs to be A4 in size and can be created using any medium, including paint, collage or printing. Please label the back of the artwork with your child’s name and year group and return to your class teacher by 9th November.
Today we had visitors in from Explore Learning to complete different maths challenges. The children were engaged and enjoyed debating each other’s ideas about which method was best!
This week, the children learnt all about our senses and which parts of our body are associated with which sense. For this, the children conducted experiments in a carousel style activity.
Smell The children used smelling pots and had to try and guess what was in each pot. Some guessed lavender and some guessed cinnamon.
Taste The children played a game in which they were given some fruit and they had to use their sense of taste to decide what the food was. They particularly enjoyed this one!
Touch The children were given a bag with different objects in and had to guess what the objects were according to their properties.
Sight The children played ‘Kim’s Game’ with Mrs Ruffell. This involved looking at objects in a tray and memorising them. Mrs Ruffell then took an object out of the tray and the children had to identify which object was missing. They were very good at this one!
Sound One child came into the middle of the circle and had to shout, “Stop!” The child who was holding a puppet had to say something and the child in the middle had to use their sense of sound to identify the child.
In Art, we are learning about European artists and designers. Yesterday, we learnt about the life and work of Coco Chanel, whose first shop sold hats that she had decorated.
During the autumn term, our learning
in RE will follow three themes. In the second of our themes, Called, we reflect
on our different experiences of being welcomed into new situations and groups,
recognising the importance of welcome, of feeling comfortable with new
situations and belonging to new groups.
Christians believe that everyone is
invited to share in the life and work of God through Baptism. The Bible
recounts God’s invitations to people to share in his life and work: among them
Moses, Samuel, the prophets, Mary and the apostles.
“Through Baptism, men and women are
incorporated into Christ. They are formed into God’s people and they obtain the
forgiveness of all their sins. They become a new creation through water and the
Holy Spirit. Hence they are called and are indeed children of God. Signed with
the gift of the Spirit in Confirmation, Christians more perfectly become the
image of their Lord and are filled with the Holy Spirit. They bear witness to him
before all the world and eagerly work for the building up of the body of
Christ.” (General Introduction to the Rite of the Christian Initiation of
Adults)
This topic is rooted in an
understanding of the sacrament of confirmation. Through this topic, children
will use a developing religious vocabulary to give reasons for the actions and
symbols used during this sacrament. Children will also come to understand what
is meant by the following key vocabulary through this topic: chosen,
response, Sacrament of Confirmation, oil of Chrism, mitre, crozier, sponsor,
catechist, bishop, Holy Spirit, witness, anointing, Holy Trinity, enkindle,
called.
Home learning in RE
During this topic, we will learn
about the lives of people who have answered the call to follow Christ.
For your home learning, I would like
you to find out about someone who has done something remarkable for someone
else (within the local community or the wider world) and use what you find to make
a poster about their life.
This challenge should be returned to school after the half-term break, on 5th November.
Prayer and Reflection
Almighty and eternal God,
you keep together those you have united.
Look kindly on all who follow Jesus your Son.
We are all consecrated to you by our common baptism;
make us one in the fullness of faith
and keep us one in the fellowship of love.
During maths, we looked at number bonds and discovered that numbers can be ‘split’ in lots of different ways. The children have all used their manipulatives (cubes) really well to show this and have quickly moved onto pictures to show their thinking. Super work!
Our current computing topic is about programming toys and today, we looked at what an algorithm is. The children learnt that it is a set of instructions and, when these instructions are put onto a computer, this is called programming. The children used all of their learning from geography to direct their friends around the dining room, using words such as left, right, forwards and backwards.
Next week, we will begin our new RE topic and information about this will be put onto the blog.
Another wonderful week was had in Year 1 this week! The children completed their poems about noises around the school and then performed them to the class. I was extremely impressed with the way in which the children spoke confidently and clearly. I am sure that they are looking forward to sharing these with you at the next Sharing Friday!
Thank you for all of your support in home reading. I have been reading your comments and it is extremely encouraging to see how much is being done at home.
Each morning, I will ask different Guided Reading groups to change their books and they will therefore need their books out of their bags and will need to put them on my chair. If you could please remind the children of this on their particular day and, if you are unsure of their group, they know them. The timetable for this is as follows:
Monday Group 5
Tuesday Group 1
Wednesday Group 2
Thursday Group 3
Friday Group 4
Alongside home reading of their school book, could I please ask that the children continue to practise their High Frequency Words which were sent home last year from Reception. If you do not have them, then please send a note in with your child and I can get some sorted for you. It is important that the children are able to sight read these words as some are ‘tricky’ which cannot be sounded out with phonics. Short, snappy testing of these words each day will really help the children’s reading and writing!
Autumn
Today, we started to look at the months of the year and the seasons. The children understood that we are in September and that the season is autumn. In order to support this learning, could the children please look for some signs of autumn over the weekend (dry leaves etc) and bring some in to share on Monday.
Have a lovely weekend and thank you for all of your support!
We are learning all about electricity in science. Today, we tested circuits to make a bulb light. We learnt that you need to have a complete circuit if it is to work.
Electricity can be dangerous and we were told never to play with electricity.
