Week 12: 2033

 Hello Class 2 Parents,

Happy December!!

The week has mainly been focussed on the nativity, getting stories written up in neat, some maths and phonics, and sorting quite a large bog baby problem. 

Our story jumped ahead to the year 2033. the Smith & Jones Building Co had built their new housing estate far away from the bog baby pond. That's the good news. 

Unfortunately, the pond itself had suffered from neglect. It was full of litter and other debris from the forest and, worse, no one had seen a bog baby there for many years. That's the bad news. 

The SPBB decided they should do something. They went to the pond and began to clear it. While doing so, they found some mysterious items and clues - including some bog baby prints and a mobile phone. They decided someone must have stolen the bog babies from the wild! A few days later, they spotted this:

The children were outraged. Not having enough money to buy all the bog babies back, they went to the pet shop to speak to Penny. Unfortunately, she was not very receptive to their ideas and asked them to leave. She explained she needed money to pay bills, and so would be selling the bog babies as soon as possible. She told the team they'd have to write to her lawyers if they had a problem. 

So that's what we will be doing next week. 

Meanwhile:

In Maths:

Year 1 children have been looking at number bonds to 20. They've learnt that if they know number bonds to 10, number bonds to 20 come quite easily. 

Year 2 children have been adding a 1-digit number to a 2-digit number, crossing a 10. The way they've done this is to simplify the addition, but jumping to the next ten first. For example:

25 + 7  = 30 + 2. 

In phonics the Year 1 children have learnt some new graphemes: e_e, ew and aw. They've learnt that ew and aw tend to go at the ends of words (as in screw, new, claw, paw). 

In spellings the Year 2 children have learnt that the 'j' sound is usually spelt with a g before the letters e, i and y. Their spellings are here. 

There is no maths homework this week. Instead, please help your children to practise their high frequency word spellings as I will be carrying out the half-termly tests of these in the next week or two!

And, of course, keep practising those nativity words and any acting that goes along with them!

Have a good weekend,

From Mrs Simpson

Week 11: allsorts

 

Hello Class 2 Parents,

This half term is going exceptionally quickly. It's one week until December and not long until Christmas completely takes over in Class 2!

For now, though, we continue as usual, fitting in maths, phonics, and everything else around our daily Nativity read-through. Thank you for all the work you've been doing helping your children to learn their lines - they really are doing a brilliant job!

On Tuesday the children were treated to a fantastic string trio. They were enthralled for the entire 50-minute performance! 

In our Bog Baby story, the children did some further map work. They were given Google satellite maps and asked to identify various geographical features. Then they had to decide upon three possibly locations for the new houses (see previous posts re: the woodland and the imminent threat of house-building). The children had to find a potential house location that: was near to a road, not too far from Northampton, had a lake or woodland nearby to walk around, and would not need any woodland habitats to be destroyed. 

The children also finished writing their Bog Baby stories this week. They spent a lovely few minutes sharing their writing with their thinking friends - see photos below. The next challenge is to spend a bit of time publishing the stories into a class book. 

In Maths:

Year 1 children have been working on addition fact families - number sentences that are related, and match a given part/whole model, eg:

3 + 5 = 8
5 + 3 = 8
8 = 3 + 5
8 = 5 + 3

Their homework is here and will be in their book bags.  A top tip is to remember that 'equals' means 'the same as'. 

Year 2 children have been looking at number bonds to 100. Their homework is here. 
For an extra challenge, use Hit The Button to practise this - select 'number bonds' then 'make 100'. If you would like a slightly less tricky one, choose 'make 100 (10s).

In phonics the Year 1 children have been learning split digraphs: 

a-e
i-e
o-e
u-e

See if you can spot these in reading books or out and about!

In spellings the Year 2 children have been learning the word endings -dge and -g. Their spellings are here and will be in their book bags. 

Have a good weekend!

Mrs Simpson

Week 10: Christmas is coming

 Hello Class 2 Parents,

This week marked the start of Christmas in Class 2: we had our first read-through of the Nativity. The children are all very excited and will come home with their lines to learn. Please help them to learn them by heart, saying them loudly and clearly (apart from the narrators, who have tricky things to say and will have a script to read from... they just need to practise reading confidently and beautifully!).

Aside from that, the children had an important meeting today with Miss Jones from the Smith & Jones Building Co. She had received their letters and wanted to meet with them to discuss their concerns. The children explained that they didn't want the habitat to be destroyed and for all of the animals to lose their homes or, worse, be killed. It took a while, but in the end Miss Jones agreed that her company really didn't want to destroy all those habitats, but needed to build the homes somewhere. Next week the children will look into some alternative locations for the new homes. 


In phonics the Year 1 children have been learning all about vowels. They have learnt the long and short sounds for them, using their hands to help. See if they can show you this. They have been learning that the single letters can make both the long and short sounds:

a     as in hat and baby
e     as in peg and secret
i      as in pig and find
o     as in bog and post
u.   as in hug and tuna

In spellings the Year 2 children have been learning to spell words starting with 'wr'. Their spellings are here. 

In Maths:

Year 1 children have continued to look at part whole diagrams. They learnt how to find a missing part, but subtracting the known part from the whole (e.g. if the whole is 9, and one part is 5, they subtract 5 from 9 to get 4, the other part). They have also learnt how to write subtraction number sentences to match a part whole model. 

Year 2 children have been learning how to find fact families and have also been learning how to check a calculation by either:

* drawing a pictorial represenation of it, or
* using the inverse (e.g. to check 20 - 4 = 16, they would add 16 and 4 together to see if it makes 20)

There is no maths homework this week because I would like you all to get a good start on learning your Nativity words! Maths homework will resume next week. 

Please also, of course, continue to read with your children as often as possible!

Have a good weekend

Mrs Simpson

Week 9: a potential disaster for the bog babies.

Hello and happy Friday Class 2 Parents,

The children have received some alarming news. The woodland, which the bog baby pond is part of, is due to be destroyed to make way for a new housing estate. The children were very upset when they learnt of this and quickly made some suggestions. They created some drawings for the building company showing the range of animals that the pond microhabitat housed (learning the word 'microhabitat' along the way) and wrote some letters outlining their concerns. 

Now that the children know the story of The Bog Baby so well, they have started writing their own versions of it. They have learnt to tell (a shortened version of) the story and are using this to base their ideas on. 

In other news:

The children have also started listening to the songs for the Nativity (information about which will be with you early next week). 

We marked Remembrance Day. The children will learn about the meaning of Remembrance day on Friday and will make poppies to take along to Friday's 11am service. 

In Maths

Year 1 children have been writing and solving addition number sentences. Their homework is here and will be in their folders. 

Year 2 children have been learning to add or subtract multiples of ten, noting that the ones column does not change. Their homework is here and will be in their folders

In Phonics the Year 1 children have looked at the graphemes    ir (as in bird)   ie  (as in pie)  ue (as in blue) and   u (as in tuna/music). 

In Spellings the Year 2 children have been learning to spell words that start with either kn or gn. Their spellings are here and will be in their folders. 

I think that's all for now. Have a good weekend, and see you next week!

Mrs Simpson

 

Week 8: Remember, Remember...

Hello Class 2 Parents and welcome back. 

It was good to see the children's smiling faces this week and we have had a really good first week back. 

A note about reading books:
Due to the shortened week, and having a history day on Tuesday, we have not had time to do our usual 2 reads per group. Your children will therefore have a new badger book this week, but will not have a new phonics book until next Friday.

On Tuesday we had a history day. The children learnt all about the Gunpowder Plot. They...

* learnt the story and put events in chronological order.

* packed a bag to go searching for Thomas Percy (only including things that would have been available in 1605, such as a horse and not a car).

* created 'wanted' posters using charcoal.

* learn lots of key facts, including who the key characters were, why they were disgruntled, and why the plot failed. 

* wrote a report to the King, outlining the key events of the plot.

We held a class team quiz each day this week to see what the children could remember, and on Friday the children completed their own quiz to see what they had learnt. 

Phonics and Spellings.

A change for this half term: children are no longer in 'blue' and 'green' groups. Instead, Year 1 children will work as a whole group following the phonics scheme, while Year 2 children will start the spellings programme. 

We have only had two sessions this week, so I will update you further in next week's blog!

Maths.

Both year groups have started a new unit of work on addition and subtraction. They also looked at number bonds to 10. 

To practise this you can sing this song together (the numbers are the main part to join in with) and then play this game.  

Year 2 children, for an extra challenge you could write down all of the fact families for 10 (e.g. 1+9 = 10, 9+1 =10, 10-9 = 1, 10-1=9).

Have a good weekend!

From Mrs Simpson