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.

We have been introducing and modelling new words for the children and encouraging them to use this vocabulary in their play as they acted out familiar stories, including making Goldilocks’ Breakfast using yogurt, strawberries, raspberries, mango and blueberries; yummy! Working as a team, they carefully checked the ingredients and followed simple instructions to prepare their own breakfast.

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.

Thank you for taking the time to read. Next term, we are excited to explore our new theme, “People Who Help Us.”

Please enter an introduction for your blog post here.

Please enter an introduction for your blog post here.

Spring 2 has been another busy half term for Year 2!

Literacy

This half term Year 2s have become experts at persuasive writing. How wonderful! We learned about the different features of persuasive language (using exclamations and questions, the power of 3, emotive language, and so on) to write a letter to the evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, begging her not to kill us (please, please oh generous, wonderful and merciful Queen!). We also continued using our persuasive skills to convince visitors to visit Ghana, our focus for Topic (Geography) this term. You won’t want to miss it!

Maths

We started this half term with some really tricky maths – but our children tackled tricky column addition (and for some of us, column subtraction) with aplomb. We then moved onto measures and reading scales for the rest of the half term, with plenty of opportunities for practical activities such as measuring length with trundle wheels, weighing mass with scales and measuring volume with measuring jugs.

Topic (Geography)

As we geared up for International Week, we focused on comparing Ghana and the UK for Spring 2. We started with exploratory learning on the laptops, looking at Google Earth and learning directional language to locate Ghana and neighbouring countries. We recapped and expanded our knowledge about the continents, oceans, the equator, as well as physical and human features to describe and compare the 2 capital cities.

This term our topic has been comparing Ghana and the UK. We used resilience and used maps to locate Ghana and identify its human and physical features. Through this we learnt about the different continents and oceans.  With what we have learnt about comparing Ghana and the UK we used our innovation skills to prepare for our International week.

In Literacy we have been looking at features of a persuasive letter and leaflet. We used our reflection skills from letters we’ve written in the past to help us write our letters. With this, it also helped us writing a persuasive leaflet persuading people to visit Ghana.

Maths this term has been about looking at units of measure. We explored a range of different ways we measure different objects and identified the most appropriate unit to measure in.  We used our teamwork skills and worked with our partner to read measurements.