Friday 21 October 2016

Week Beginning 21.10.16

Wow! What a half-term! I can't believe how much we have got through and the children's level of dedication and ambition. Every challenge has been greeted with enthusiasm, consequently the their achievements have never ceased to amaze me all half-term. Well done year 2/3!

Music

In music, we have learnt a song to help us remember the parts of the viola. Question us and see how much we remember and can describe. 

Literacy 

We have been doing lots of writing this week, as we start to use paragraphs in our work by grouping related ideas and information. We have structured our sentences using generalisers as openers and other tools to make the starts of our sentences more engaging for the reader. We have been using conjunctions to add detail and ensuring we us lots of rich description, as we wrote our non-chronological reports about dragons of our own design.

Science 

In science we continued our investigations, as we observed the behaviour and strength of different magnets. We looked at which poles attract or repel and tested the strength of a variety  of magnets. We were quite surprised when we realised that it was not necessarily the size of the magnet which could hold the longest chain of paperclips.





D.T

We had great fun on Friday, making our movable heads using origami to create our own monsters. When we are finished, we are looking forward to attaching our pneumatic system and watching them come alive. Also, well done to Harry for winning the Wonderful Work certificate for his much improved sentence work, whilst writing his dragon report. 





In other news...

Another parliament of owls went home this week reading to become home reading buddies. Congratulations on earning 35 stamps and the improvements in reading skills that come with all that hard work.










Friday 14 October 2016

Week Beginning 10.10.16


Music 

It was an exciting start to the week this week, as during our music lessons we got our violas out for the very first time. We asked and answers questions about the different parts and had a go at holding our instrument. We also worked with sticks to create rhythms using short and long beats. 





Science

This week we learnt about magnetic fields and discovered that planet Earth has a giant magnetic force field. We organised materials in our scrapheap challenge, into piles that are magnetic and non-magnetic. We were surprised to discover that not all metals are magnetic. 


We also made our very own compass by rubbing a magnet along a piece of metal to line up the particles. We were all amazed when we floated it in water and it pointed north. 


Literacy

Literacy we have been researching on the computers, playing games and reading all about dragons. We enjoyed some role play as we interviewed our expert dragon hunters for Dragon Watch TV. We have also been focusing on ways to make our sentence starts more interesting and using generalisers, so that our writing does not sound too repetitive.  We have also been looking at spelling with the suffix -ly. This week were pleased that we manged to change 6/7 of our jumping orange words green. Only one more left! Keep practising on the sheet that has been sent home.



D.T

This week we used an I.T package to investigate different types of pneumatic mechanisms. We also started to design our very own moving monsters on the computers too. 

In other news... congratulations to the first group of children who have received their reading owls and red ted bookmarks. They have all worked really hard at their reading at home, reading 35 to take home their reward. Well done!

Thursday 6 October 2016

Week beginning 3.10.16

Literacy

This week, we have been combining our word processing skills  and editing knowledge as we improved and typed up our newspaper reports. Pop in and see them displayed in the classroom. They look just the real thing. We have also been writing sentences using causal conjunctions such as: because, so, as, although.  These help us make our sentence structures more interesting and make sure we add more detail to our work. Finally,  have been looking at information pages and examining the content as we asked and answered questions about a text. 

In our spelling sessions, we have moved on from the prefixes un-, im, in,  and dis- to the suffix -ous. A suffix is found at the end of a root word:

Root word               Suffix  

 Danger         +            -ous     = Dangerous

How many can you name? Ask us to help! Don't forget to keep practising your spellings from your half-termly list.  Of course the Year 2s have their phonics sessions in key stage 1 so don't forget to check out Mrs Cryan's page for the latest spelling and phonic updates.                               

Maths

We have been working on our mental addition and subtraction skills. We have using number facts to help speed up calculations when adding or subtracting a single digit number from a two-digit number. We have also been adding up three or more numbers in a row by adding the larger numbers first. 

Science 

We are really enjoying our science at the moment and all of the practical elements it contains. Yet again, we had a double investigation this week as we investigated friction. We timed ourselves picking up dry jelly cubes with chopsticks and then jelly cubes covered in oil to see what effect reducing the friction had. 



We also investigated different materials such as: carpet, plastic, wood.  We observed  how the resistant force of friction changed with different surfaces and how it affects the movement of a wooden toy car on a slope. 

The Year 2s' have also been busy investigating and learning all about materials and their properties. Be sure to drop into Mrs Cryan's page to find out all about it. 

Geography 

We have been learning all about the different localities in the U.K as we researched some of our countries counties. We learnt about county capitals, rivers and geographical features and special features and attractions. 

In other news...

We enjoyed a fantastic performance of Wind in the Willows from the image theatre group on Thursday. Some of us were even chosen to do some acting and join the performers on stage. Well done Oliver and Meaghan for transforming into the naughtiest weasels!