Autumn 1
Literacy
In Literacy, we used our listening and communication skills to share a range of stories. We discussed why voting is important, explored the definition of democracy and demonstrated our understanding by writing our own school council speeches. We then voted for our new School Council leader and wrote our reflections. In our writing, we used our sounds, capital letters, finger spaces, question marks, and exclamation marks to write about different topics. Most recently, we used our listening and teamwork skills to use Now Press Play and listen to a story about our new topic, The Great Fire of London.
This term, Year 2 became real historical detectives to investigate The Great Fire of London! The children have been extremely enthusiastic to learn about how the fire started and the impact it had on London.
Using Chromebooks and laptops, they researched primary sources and read about Samuel Pepys' and how the fire started. They examined historical artwork and got hands-on with artefacts like heavy leather fire buckets to see how people fought fires in 1666. To bring history truly to life, the class used role-play to re-enact the chaos - passing bucket chains down the street and even "burying" their prized cheese in the garden just like Pepys!
To wrap up our historical adventures, Year 2 also enjoyed their first trip of the year. We visited St Paul’s Cathedral for a tour around the cathedral, headed over to London Bridge and Pudding Lane and finally finished off the day by using our artistic skills to sketch the Monument.
In Maths, we have continued to build our resilience while developing our mathematical skills through exploring place value, number properties, and measurement. Using concrete resources like dienes, the children actively built and manipulated numbers across hundreds, tens, and ones. We also expanded our measuring skills through hands-on lessons on weight, length and height. Throughout our learning, we focused on core mathematical vocabulary, including place value, amount, tens, ones/units, hundreds, and the concept of “same value, different appearance.”
This term our theme has been “Stories for Us,” and it has been lovely to see how much the children have enjoyed sharing stories together. They have listened with excitement to a wide range of stories and are learning how to look after books with care. We have spent time exploring our Book Corner and continuing visiting Curwen Library. Next week we have a special trip to Plaistow Library with our families and friends. Story time has become a much-loved part of the day, where the children delight in discovering new stories and rhymes. They have been confidently pointing to pictures and noticing the writing in books, showing a growing love for reading and storytelling.
The children are expanding their vocabulary by learning new words and phrases such as front cover, back cover, pages, author, and title. They have been actively using their imagination and experimenting with a variety of materials and resources to bring stories to life. Both independently and in small groups, the children have enjoyed creating pretty cottages and story settings for the characters, using different media and materials to express their ideas.
By listening to the stories and using real objects, the children have been learning and using new descriptive words such as big, medium, and small. They confidently matched the characters to the correct-sized beds, bowls, chairs, and spoons, showing their growing understanding through hands-on play.
