`Spring Term Week 7.

 Hello Class 2 Parents,

It was as lovely as ever to see your children's smiling faces on Monday! We've had a great start to the half term. 

In our story, two children were playing on a street in London, when suddenly they saw fire leaping out from a nearby building. They needed to get a message to the Fire Marshals quickly. The class learnt about methods of communication in 1666, and decided that the children should find someone on horseback to deliver the message to a town crier, who would then alert the fire marshals. This is what happened, and the children (now in role as fire marshals) successfully put out the fire, using everything they had learnt during their fire marshal training. Later, the children learnt about The Rebuilding Act of 1667, which was written to ensure that London was rebuilt in a more fire-proof way. They took part in a meeting (as expert fire marshals) where some key decisions were made, and then designed some new London streets using the given criteria. 

In maths the children continued to look at the properties of 3D shapes. They had a good time using Polydron to build some 3D shapes and learnt how to describe them according to their faces, edges and vertices. 

In writing the children have been doing some independent writing for their purple progress books - they do this a few times each year and always enjoy looking at their books to see their progress. 

In phonics the Year 1 children learnt that the 'oo' sound can be made with 'u' (rarely) and 'ou' (also fairly rare!). 

In spellings the Year 2 children have been learning how to add a suffix (-er, -est or -ed) to a word ending in y. They have learnt to chop the y and add an i before adding the suffix. 

The Year 2 children have this homework this week, to practise this skill - it's also in their folders. 

Maths homework this week:
Please have a look at your child's maths challenge and any suggestions I've made, and continue to practise their maths facts with them. 

There is also a 3D shape hunt for Year 1 and this 3D shape maths homework for Year 2 children (in their folders). 

We've had a great week! There are a few photos below of maths and of the fire marshals putting out the fire. Have a good weekend and I will see you all soon. 

From Mrs Simpson

Spring Term Week 5: This and that

 Hello Class 2 Parents,

I hope you've all had a good week. We've had a great week in Class 2. 

In writing the children have spent the last two weeks writing diaries in role as a little mouse during The Great Fire of London. They've enjoyed role playing being the mouse and writing about what they saw. I'm hoping to get these written up and a copy sent home, but I'm not sure how long that will take so watch this space! 

In maths the children finished their work on place value and started a unit on shape. So far they have been looking at 2D shapes.

They all did a good job once again with completing their weekly maths challenge - as usual, their sheets are in their folders and if ready, I have moved them onto the next maths challenge in their booklets. 

In phonics the Year 1 children have been revisiting split digraphs (a_e e_e i_e o_e u_e). These can be tricky to spot, but the children are learning that if there is an 'e' on the end of a word they need to be on the look out for a split digraph. 

It would be good to practise this - there is a game here called Odd and Bob. Choose 'Phase 5' and when given options of sounds to practise, choose one of the split digraphs. 

In spellings the Year 2 children have continued to work on contracting words using an apostrophe. 

There's also a game for this! It is a key stage 2 game, but have a go!

In our story the children created some 1666 firefighting equipment (wooden ladder, leather bucket, water squirter and fire hook) and then took part in training to become volunteer fire marshals for the king, to ensure that a fire like The Great Fire of London will never happen again!

I am looking forward to catching up with you all next week - see you then!

From Mrs Simpson