Summer Week 2: Visitors.

Hello Class 2 Parents,

As you know, the main event in school this week was that Ofsted paid us a visit. They came in to lessons and talked to children. Class 2 did a fantastic job - they showed off their learning and really impressed the visitors. One man was particularly impressed with their knowledge of The Battle of Hastings - he said he was amazed by how much they knew! Well done Class 2. 

We have finished our short topic on The Battle of Hastings now - we finished it off by looking at William the Conqueror's legacy of castle-building. The children designed one motte-and-bailey and one stone keep castle for the new king. 

In writing the children have been writing diaries based on 'The Storm Whale.' The aim this week has been to add more detail to make the writing really interesting. For example, 'I put the whale into the bath. He wriggled happily.' It's been a fun and creative week of writing!

In maths we have been looking at sorting 2D shapes and saying how they have been sorted. Then we started to look at naming 3D solids - the Year 2 children remembered a bit from last year.  

Thank you for the 2D shape homework you've sent me. As the homework was to use 15 lolly sticks/pens etc, one child asked what a 15-sided shape would be called: if you're interested, it's a pentadecagon.  

In spellings, Year 2 looked at the 'o' sound spelt 'a' after w and qu. We worked out that most of the words are actually decodeble, but the two words with double letters are a bit harder to remember. Their spellings are here. 

In phonics Year 1 have continued to revisit sounds and look at alien words ready for the phonics screening check. For homework, please go through some or all of the words on this powerpoint. At school, we usually spot the digraphs together first then sound out and blend the words. Some of the children will be quite speedy with the real words - just make sure that when they read the alien words they take their time to check! 

There is no maths homework this week. Instead, if you would like something extra to do, spend a bit of time online looking up some of the castles that William the Conqueror built!

Have a good weekend, 

From Mrs Simpson

Summer Week 1: The Battle of Hastings

 Hello Class 2 Parents,

I hope you had a good Easter, and welcome to the summer term! As ever, it was lovely to see your children's smiling faces after a two week break.

Last half term was a very short one, so this week we have been finishing off last term's history work by learning about the Battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings. The children have throughly enjoyed this, particulary the role play of the battles. 

You will have received an email from the office (or will do soon) outlining this week's Mantle of the Expert story - Turtle Watch. Please don't give anything away to your children - it's more fun if the learning unfolds as the story goes! I think the class will really enjoy this term's story. 

In reading and writng this week we have been looking at a book called 'The Storm Whale'. We've been doing a bit of whole class reading and have started doing some diary writing in role as the main character, Noi. 

The children have started a new unit of maths on shape. This week, they've been learning to name and describe 2D shapes. 

Maths homework is this:

Use 15 lolly sticks, pencils, felt tips, strips of card, sticks, or something else straight.
What different combinations of 2D shapes can you make using these 15 shapes?
What is the highest number of shapes you can make, and what shape are they?
Can you make one large shape with 15 straight sides and 15 vertices?

If you want to take some photos and put them in this folder, please do. However, please don't feel like you have to - you can just have fun with the homework! If you can't add photos to the folder and would like me to see them, please email them in.

In phonics the Year 1 children are revisiting a range of sounds and have started to look at alien words and real words in preparation for June's phonics check.

Due to this, their spelling homework will be a bit different this half term. To begin with, their challenge is to learn to spell numbers to 10 (some are easy, some are quite tricky. If your child finds them tricky, help them to learn as many as possible but don't worry about learning them all!)

In spellings the Year 2 children have been looking at words ending -ey. Their spellings are here and will be in their folders as usual. 

I think that's everything for now,

Mrs Simpson