Year 2

Summer Term- Literacy

In Literacy this term, we have enjoyed reading 'The Magic Finger' by Roald Dahl.  We made some predictions about what Girl's powers could be and found out that when Girl 'sees read,' she puts The Magic Finger on the Gregg family to teach them a lesson.  The Gregg family enjoy hunting and Girl strongly disagrees with this so the Magic Finger turns them into the birds that they have hunted!. We began by thinking about our own views on hunting. We wrote some persuasive letters to the Gregg family telling them the reasons why they should stop hunting. 

We wrote some amazing noun phrases to describe what the Gregg family might see, now that they had wings.  These included 'vast, sparkling river' and  'rolling, green hills.'  We continued reading the story and were pleased to find out that the Greggs had learnt their lesson and had finally stopped hunting. We then wrote the sequel to 'The Magic Finger.'  We innovated the story by thinking of a different animal that the Greggs could hunt and be turned into.  Our ideas included pigs, sheep and foxes! We enjoyed being authors and illustrating our own stories. 

Abie from Guilles Alles Library has visited Year 2 each Friday for the last few weeks. She has shared the books that have been shortlisted for the 'Yoto Carnegie Book Awards' for children. We have thoroughly enjoyed her visits and we have enjoyed 'Bowerbird' and ;The Midnight Panther' so far. Our love of reading is really developing in Year 2 and this opportunity has strengthened our desire to read more and more books!

Summer Term- Maths 

In Maths this tem, we began by working on place value.  We enjoy using Base 10 resources to help us with this.  We showed our understanding by using place value charts and part whole models.

We then used our knowledge of place value to add two, two-digit numbers. Place value charts really helped us with addition. 

Recently we have focused on time. We have developed our knowledge of o'clock times and also have worked on half past, quarter past and quarter to times.

Summer Term- Other Curriculum Areas 

History

We have learnt a lot about important people and places in Guernsey. We discovered the history of Castle Cornet. We learnt that it was built on 1204 as a fortification to protect Guernsey from French attack. Henry VIII ordered the castle to be repaired and  strengthened and said that more cannons were needed.  

Did you know, the bridge linking it to Guernsey was only built 100 years ago?

We visited Castle Cornet in April and enjoyed a super tour of the fortifications as well as a classroom session within the castle, learning about Tudor artefacts. 

Science Dome

We were very lucky to have a visit from the Science Dome. We took part in an interactive session inside a huge inflatable dome that was set up in the school hall. We were taken on a journey to the rainforest and learnt all about important species. We also though about ways to look after our planet. It was an amazing experience!

Spring Term- Literacy

This term, we have loved reading an exciting text called 'Leaf' by Sandra Dieckmann. The text focuses on a polar bear called Leaf, who drifts across the sea from the Arctic on a block of ice. He arrives in a woodland where the animals have never seen a polar bear before! We made a lot of predictions about the events of the story and we thought about the characters and the choices they have to make. The illustrations in the story inspired us to write poems and use descriptive language. We wrote some fabulous reports about polar bears. We discovered that polar bears' fur is actually transparent and that polar bears can swim for hundreds of miles at a time! The children considered how Leaf would have felt being so far away from home. We enjoyed responding to images from the text. The children imagined that they were Leaf writing a letter to his family in the Arctic.  They also considered why a polar bear might have drifted across the sea. We watched video clips of climate change and discovered that polar bears are classed as 'vulnerable' which means that the population will be closely monitored. We created some fabulous posters all about climate change and the things we can do to help our planet.

We also enjoyed reading a story called 'Beegu' by Alexis Deacon. In this story an alien named Beegu is lost and away from her family. She searches for friends to help her. We thoroughly enjoyed reading this book together and we thought about Beegu's feelings as the story progressed.

Spring Term- Maths

In Maths this term we have focussed on place value of numbers up to 100, money, multiplication and division and measures of length and height. We began the term by focusing on place value.  We ordered numbers from largest to smallest and smallest to largest. We then learnt about odd and even numbers.  Using numicon helped us to remember which numbers were odd and even. We also became more confident with counting in steps of two, five and ten.  We loved learning about money and we became much more familiar with the value of coins and notes. Also, our knowledge of division has developed and we have used using grouping and sharing to help us solve divsion calculations. We also used number lines to help us divide by jumping back in groups to zero. Throughout this term we have used resources such as base ten and numicon to help us with our Maths learning. 

Spring Term- Science

This term in Science, we studied plants and bulbs. We remembered our previous learning about parts of a plant and we identified features likes roots, stems, leaves and flowers. We spent some time learning about the process of germination and we learned that a seed is a store of energy. We planted our own bean seed in a plastic bag and placed this on our windows so that we could observe the growth of shoots and roots.

Spring Term- History

In History lessons this term we have focussed on the Great Fire of London. We first of all found out about London today and what London was like in 1666. We discovered that London was not very clean in 1666 and that houses were very different. We enjoyed learning all about how the fire started in a bakery in Pudding Lane and how the fire spread so quickly across London due to dry, hot weather and strong winds. We found out about Tudor houses and why they were so flammable.

The children thoroughly enjoyed gaining an insight into this historic event and they are able to recall so many interesting facts. To finish off this topic, we had a fantastic trip to the fire station were we were shown the modern methods to tackle fires. This gave the children a super, interactive experience out of the classroom.

Autumn Term- Literacy

This half term we have been working hard to consolidate our understanding of what a sentence is. We used our previous Year 1 learning to help us to write question, statement and command sentences. We also wrote sentences with the pronoun ‘I’ and learnt that every sentence always starts with a capital letter.

More recently we have really enjoyed sharing the text ‘The Last Wolf’ by Mini Grey. It is an interesting take on the story of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. The main character Red discovers endangered animals living in a tree cave and she tries to help them. We have made some super predictions about the text. We have also enjoyed learning about the black rhino as a critically endangered animal. We wrote some non-chronological reports about rhinos where we placed our information into appropriate sections and used subheadings like ‘Diet’ and ‘Habitat’ to organise our facts.

Autumn Term- Maths

We have been working hard to develop our knowledge of place value and have completed many challenges to help us gain a better understanding of tens and ones as place holders in 2-digit numbers. We have used part-whole models, place value charts and pictorial representations to help us develop this fundamental mathematical knowledge.

The concrete resources ‘Base 10’ and 'Numicon' have been used frequently to help us partition numbers and solve problems. We have been comparing numbers using ‘more than’, ’less than’ and ‘equal to’ symbols. 

We have also worked hard on addition and subtraction. We have used part-whole models to make fact families. We have also used number lines to help us solve subtraction calculations and we have worked on adding and subtracting 1 and 10 from a number.

As well as addition and subtraction, Year 2 have been gaining a better knowledge of times tables facts for the 2, 5 and 10 times tables. Also, children have been working hard at school and at home on their Maths passport, containing mental maths targets. 

Autumn Term- Science

Year 2 have been developing their understanding of ‘Living Things and Their Habitats’ and have loved learning about different categories of animals and the basic needs of all animals. We have explored and compared the differences between things that are living, dead, and things that have never been alive. We have identified that most living things live in habitats which suit their needs. We were able to explore some microhabitats within the school grounds and survey the minibeasts living within these habitats. During one of our lessons, we created a poster all about pollution and we considered how habitats can become damaged by humans making it more difficult for animals to thrive. We also learnt about food chains and that animals depend on each other as well as plant life to survive.

Autumn Term- Geography

Children in Year 2 have been learning all about food and where it comes from. We were really excited to use a mapping website to plot the origin of different types of staple food. We found out that a lot of apples come from New Zealand and some satsumas come from South Africa. We studied the local journey of milk in Guernsey from the farm to our fridges and we also investigated the journey of a banana from countries such as Colombia or Costa Rica to our supermarkets in Guernsey. We were amazed to discover that a banana can take weeks to get to our shops! Since learning about where our food comes from, we have been very interested to check our food packaging at home and at snack time to see where our food came from.