Year 2 worked diligently this week, preparing for their class assembly, focusing on the school’s core value of “Perseverance”. The children spoke eloquently about their own experiences of having to keep on going and persevere to overcome an obstacle and achieve their goals. The finalists of the House Poetry Competition performed their poems to inspire the younger children what can be achieved with determination and perseverance. Finally, we retold Eric Carle’s story of “The Tiny Seed”; against all odds, the tiny seed overcame many obstacles and dangers on its long journey to becoming a healthy plant and a beautiful flower.
In English this week, Year 2 have continued their adventures with Bob, The Man on the Moon, based on Simon Bartram’s brilliant series of books. First of all, the children designed and described their own alien character, in preparation for writing their own Bob adventure story. Next, they thought about how to structure a story using a story staircase, focusing on Bob’s Moontree Mystery. They started to generate ideas for their story and wrote a planning document, devising the title, the main characters, the setting of the story, the opening paragraph, the build-up of story, a problem that Bob has to overcome and the resolution. Once the stories were planned, the children were inspired by some brilliant story openings from favourite authors, demonstrating how to hook the reader. We look forward to reading their story openers next week!
In mathematics the children have continued to explore mass by being introduced to standard units of measure – grams and kilograms. The children loved the experience of picking up and feeling weights and thinking about objects that have a similar mass to 1 g/10 g/100 g/500 g/1kg to help them contextualise their learning and support with estimating. Balance scales and circular scales were used to accurately measure a range of objects. By the end of the week, they were able to practise their calculation skills in the context of mass to solve word problems. We have all been so impressed with how the children are able to choose the correct operation to solve a problem choosing the most efficient method.
In science, the children have been studying animals and their offspring. They matched different animals to their young and then sharpened their scientific research skills in the computing lesson by searching the internet to name the animals’ young. Children learned that some animals are born live and some hatch from eggs.
Excitement is building for the House Poetry Competition, taking place next week. We look forward to hearing the finalists’ poetry recitals on Monday and wish them all the best with their performances.
