Welcome to the Summer Term!

 Hello Class 2 Parents and welcome to Summer Term!

I hope you all had a good Easter. We've had a great start to the summer term in Class 2. The children were incredibly happy to see each other on Tuesday and spent the day catching up and comparing notes on Easter and lost teeth. 

The week has been a short one. The children have:

• Worked on subtraction in Maths. 
  Year 1 children have been subtracting within 20 by using counters and then crossing out pictures. Year 2 children have been subtracting a 2-digit number from another 2-digit number. 
  
  
• Heard the story of The Enormous Crocodile and done some writing around it. This story will be important in our Mantle of the Expert story this term. 
  
  
• Caught up with our science investigation. 
  Before Easter we were trying to find out whether beans need soil to grow. We planted four beans: one in soil, one on cotton wool, one on a blue paper towel, and one on some kitchen roll. They didn't do much before Easter, so the children were excited to come and see the changes. We spent quite a while looking at photos of their progress over Easter and then looking at the current situation. 
  
  
• Participated in phonics and spellings. 
  The spelling group looked at words ending in -il  (fossil, pencil, pupil, gerbil and April). See if you can find any more of these in reading books! 
  
  The phonics group are going to be spending the next few weeks revisiting this academic year's graphemes in preparation for the Phonics Screening Check at the start of June.

        ... and a few other things too. 

Homework  this week! 

• If your child is taking part in the Phonics Screening Check this year, you will find a slip of paper in their bookbag with a QR code on. If you scan it, you should be taken to some phonics screening words to practice!

• Year 1 maths homework is here and will be in their folders. To work out subtractions, draw the whole number and have your child cross out the part, in order to find the answer. Alternatively, use counters!
• Year 2 maths homework is here - mostly addition, but it looked fun! Take your time over this, don't worry if it's not done by next Thursday, just enjoy it!
  (to help, your child can draw 10s and 1s to solve the additions, or use a 100 square such as this one). 

Have a good week end - see you all next week,

From

Mrs Simpson

Happy Easter!

 Happy Easter!

There goes the second term of the academic year. We've had a really good term in Class 2 learning about The Great Fire of London (and The Great Fire of Northampton, of course). 

I hope you've enjoyed the Easter open afternoon and church service - the children worked very hard on their 'hop hop hop' song and their Easter poem. 

This week the children finished off their mini D.T. project - designing and making a new loaf of bread for Thomas Farriner to celebrate the end of The Great Fire of London. They baked and decorated their mini loaf (roll) before evaulating its appearance, smell and taste. See below for photos!

Over the holidays:

Please read with your child as often as possible. The children have two free choice reading books to keep them going. 

Please help your child to learn their common exception word spellings. I've updated each child's spelling card in their folder to show which words they spelt correctly on their recent test. Any un-highlighted words are the ones they need to practice. 

Continue to work on your child's target maths facts with them (see their maths booklets).

If you and your child would like to do more, you could:

* Visit Northampton Museum and spend some time in the History section, learning more about The Great Fire of Northampton

* Send me a postcard c/o the school, telling me about what you've been up to (a few sentences would do for Year 1, around 4-5 for Year 2!)

* Do some planting! The children have been learning about the parts of plants and what plants need to grow (we've planted some sunflower seeds but they haven't got far yet).

I hope you all enjoy the next two weeks and particularly have a restful Easter weekend. See you soon!

Mrs Simpson