Category: Year 2 – St Teresa of Calcutta

The Year 2 children have been incredible this half term. There has been lots of illness, but the children have been resilient and showed just how brilliant they are as they persevered through rehearsals when, on a number of occasions, a third of the characters were ill! We are all very proud of the wonderful production that they put on during the last week of term and the singing was joyful. Well done Year 2!

Mrs McAllister and I would like to warmly thank you for the smashing gifts that we received at the end of the term. We are very lucky to have such generous families. Have a very happy, healthy and holy Christmas.

Here is a very special Christmas message from Year 2 to celebrate the end term.

As part of our their learning in Design Technology, we have been exploring structures. Having discovered that a structure needs to have a flat base in order to be stable, we then explored cylinders as so many of the strong and stable structures that we have found are made of cylinders (just take a look at our playground climbing frame).

We learned how to create a cylinder out of a rectangle and were amazed to find out just how strong and stable a cylinder can be. Our challenge was to find out how many books our homemade cylinders could hold and some carried over 50 books. What a strong structure a cylinder is and that explains why our table and chair legs are cylindrical shaped!

Our final challenge was to design and create a chair for a bear. Having explored different structures, we set up our design criteria first. For a chair to be effective, it needed to be stable so that the bear did not fall off! We had great fun developing our joining techniques, adapting our ideas as we worked together and then tested our chairs to see if we had created a stable structure.

We are very proud of the final results as we all used card and sellotape to create a chair that a bear could sit on without falling off.

We now have a wonderful new library in school and it is great to be able to spend time in our library, sharing books with friends and listening to a special story being read. Look in your child’s book bag to find a new library book that they have chosen to bring home and enjoy sharing with their family.

Next week, we are excited to be welcoming Isabel Thomas to our school. Isabel is an award-winning children’s author and science writer. Isabel will be sharing her experiences as a writer with us on Tuesday afternoon and she will also open our new library. There will be a chance to purchase some of Isabel’s fantastic books and get them signed by the author. You can learn more about Isabel’s books and her work on her website:  https://isabelthomas.co.uk/

On top of all that has been happening this week, our fantastic school council organised a mufti-day and art competition in support of children in need. The children looked great and had a brilliant day. Well done, everyone!

Next week, as we prepare to mark the start of Advent, we will be making decorations to get our classroom ready for Christmas. If you have any unwanted decorations that you are able to donate to our class, it will add a spark of Christmas cheer to the weeks ahead.

This week, the children have been learning about Walter Tull, who is remembered for being one of the first professional black footballers (he played for Tottenham Hotspur) and he was also the first black army officer. The children developed their skills of historical enquiry when exploring a range of artefacts from over one hundred years ago. We had to decide whether they could have been found in Walter Tull’s suitcase or not and this resulted in lots of great discussions. We learned that Walter was recommended for a medal of bravery, but he died in the First World War and this knowledge made our Remembrance Dad service even more poignant.

This week, we have been learning about structures. Our first job was to find and name natural and manmade structures in our outdoor playground and then we had great fun exploring different construction materials to find out what makes a stable structure.

We loved the Mercy Mass on Wednesday and sang beautifully as well as performing a moving dance to the Circle of Mercy song. We all wanted to perform in front of everyone, but there just wasn’t space for all of us in front of the altar, so we are looking forward to everyone being involved in performing it for you during our class assembly next year.

After the mass, we planted some viola plants under our new Mercy Tree and we were all promptly rained on, which stopped our camera working. At least the plants and tree enjoyed the rain!

Last week, we attended the District Schools Award Ceremony and were very pleased to be awarded runner up in the Plant to Plate category. All through the year, we enjoy caring for the gardens outside our classroom and it was lovely to achieve this award as our outdoor spaces are so important to us and our wellbeing.

To start the year in RE, the children have been reading the story of the creation as told in Genesis. They have had great fun retelling the story in their own words and next week they will be writing the story in their own words. They are learning about nouns and adjectives, so retelling this wonderful story is a great way to put this new learning into practice and also show just how great they are at using full stops and capital letters in their super writing.

As part of their learning about the sacrament of baptism, the children are also beginning to design their own baptism candle using religious symbols that are important to them. We are looking forward to seeing lots more designs as they come into school.