Spring Week 2: poetry and pastels

 Hello Class 2 Parents,

Much has been achieved in Class 2 this week. 

But first: 

The Reading Cafe. 
We had a few merry people turn up for the first reading cafe. I would encourage anyone to come along, particularly if you find reading at home with your child a challenge. It is intended to be:

* a space to enjoy books with your child
* a place where your child might be more willing to read their books to you
* a place where I can be on hand to help or offer advice. 

While it is for C1 and C2 children primarily, please do bring siblings if this means you are able to come.  You can read reading books or badger books, and I'll also have other badger books on hand if you wish. 

Now to the week. 

The children have been artists this week and last week, looking at the art of Paul Klee. This week they continued work on their final pieces, using oil pastels to colour in their castles. 

Last Friday we went on a walk around Little Houghton to look at some of the geographical features of a village. This week the children had a go at making a map of Little Houghton, using symbols instead of photographs. 

They have also been poets. We have been studying the poem '10 Things Found in a Wizard's Pocket' by Ian MacMillan. The children wrote their own poems entitled '10 Things Found in a Teacher's Drawer'.  They started work on performing their poems this week. If I can sort out the technology, a video will appear here soon showing their performance of Ian MacMillan's poem...

Homework (instead of maths) is to practise reading and putting actions to their own poems (in their folders) and, if possible, send me a recording! My plan is for you to upload the videos here. Let me know if you have trouble doing that and I'll find another way!

Maths.
Both year groups have continued with subtraction. 

Year 1 children have been solving subtraction number stories, for example, 'There were 16 ducks on a pond. 12 floated away. how many were left?' they used a variety of resources to to this. 

Year 2 children have been subtracting 2-digit numbers crossing a multiple of 1o, such as  44 - 26. To do this, they have been learning how to exchange one ten rod for ten ones. This will continue next week. 

Both year groups also looked at 'finding the difference', talking about 'how many more' or 'how many fewer' there were. For example, what is the difference between 8 and 5? Or 26 and 32?

In Phonics the Year 1 children have been revisiting 'ee' alternatives:  ea, ie and y. 

Blue group spellings are here. 
Green group spellings are here. 

In Spellings the Year 2 children have some fairly straightforward words to learn - with 'y' making the 'igh' sound at the end of the word. Next week we will be using these words to make plurals and past tense (so this week, for example, they will learn 'cry' and next week we will look at the rules around turning that into 'cries'). 

Their spellings are here.

That's all for now - have a good weekend!

From Mrs Simpson.