Koalas - Year 2
Class Information:
Teacher: Mrs Brough
TA: Miss West
Our Focus Habit of Mind: Persistence and Taking Responsioble Risks
We will be Hardworkers and we won't give up when things get tough. We are Adventurers so we are not afraid to try new things.
PE
Our PE day is MONDAY. Please ensure your child has NAMED kit in school during term time. As weather can be quite unpredictable, we advise that both shorts and jogging bottoms are kept in PE bags, along with a sweatshirt for cooler days.
Homework
Homework is set on WEDNESDAYs and returned on TUESDAYs.
Reading
We would like children to read as much as possible- every night would be perfect! We will continue to award raffle tickets for those who read at least 5 times a week. Those children will also be able to choose a small prize from Mrs Brough's special box! We will collect in reading records on a MONDAY to count up how many reads your child has for that week.
Children are responsible for changing their own books. They can do this every morning before they do their morning challenge. We encourage children to reread books for pleasure, and to develop fluency which comes with reading familiar books.
We will regularly review reading levels to see if children are ready to move on. It is important that children read widely within their book band so they have a broad diet of books. Please encourage your child to read information texts, poetry and stories.
Reading can be done anywhere- cereal packets at breakfast, signs on the roads, etc. It is easy to get 5 reads in a week if you include all of the little bits that you do daily without even thinking about it!
While we would like children to read their book band books, please also feel free to share favourite or new books at home. These can also count towards daily reading.
Belongings
Please could you ensure tat all of your child's clothes and other belongings are named. This will help at the end of warm days or PE sessions when we have jumpers etc left over.
Water Bottles
Water is very important for health and learning! We have cups in class, but a named water bottle in school daily would be great!
12/07/18 Thank you all for coming to our afternoon tea! We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed making the yummy food!
06/07/18 What a wonderful day we had in Wells-Next-the-Sea!
11/07/18 Spellings
For the next two weeks, our focus will be on reviewing the spelling patterns we have been learning throughout the year. Please feel free to choose spelling lists from this page that you and your child would like to go back over. Some of the trickier spelling patterns have been: zsh, special w, -ge and -dge.
04/07/18 This Week's spelling focus is on the common exception words which can be found in the front of reading records. In an effort to be more environmentally friendly, I haven't copied the list again to save the trees! I have attached it here should you need to refer to it. Thank you for your support and understanding.
03/07/18 Look at the results of our science enquiry! Now we are going to water them all and keep them in the sunlight to see what happens to their growth now they have everything they need.
28/06/18 We found out more about the village of Eye by looking at lots of different maps and atlases.
28/06/18 Sports Day!
27/06/18 We have been reading lots of Katie Morag books. Today's was Katie Morag and the New Pier. The islanders weren't sure whether they wanted a new pier. We held a debate to see what we thought!
27/06/18 Here are this week's spellings. A review of contractions!
26/06/18 Today we set up our fair test to see what seeds need to germinate.
22/06/18 We have been adding money today! Here's Miss West's group playing coin dominos!
20/06/18 This week's spellings: revision of the suffixes learned this year.
15/06/18 We were so happy to have the chicks visit us this week! As you can see, they aren't really chicks anymore! They have grown so much since Florence and her family have taken them in. We hope we get another visit before the summer!
13/06/18 Here are this week's spellings: compound words!
08/06/18 This week Mrs fewtrell came into class for an RE lesson. We have been leanring about Christianity and Mrs Fewtrell talked to us about what it is like to live as a Christian.
06/06/18 Here are this week's spellings- adding -y to form adjectives
25/05/18 I am so proud of my koalas for working so hard on their 'special booklets' this week. Thank you to parents for your support in keeping this week low-key and stress-free for the children. The children have enjoyed a treat day to congratulate them for a job well done. Happy half term everyone! From Mrs B and Miss W x
23/05/18 This week's spellings: Year 2 Common Exception Words
21/05/18 Chick update! Thank you so much to Mrs Grange for sending in these gorgeous photos of our chicks! They are so big!
17/05/18 Today was Outdoor Classroom Day throughout the UK! Thankfully the weather had improved so we could get outside as much as possible! In maths, we went outside to do our GAS task. We were reading different thermometres to help us read scales. Then in the afternoon we went on a walk around the school grounds to draw a map. Then we decided where we would bury our treasure if we were pirates and wanted to hide our gold in school!
16/05/18 This week's spellings: more homophones!
09/05/18 Here are this week's spellings- zsh sound. Slight change to what is in the booklet. We will be back to homophones next week!
08/05/18 The weather was so beautiful today we just had to get outside to learn! We did our reading lesson out in the sunshine!
04/05/18 Koalas Update
This week we have been learning to:
- recognise and describe 3D shapes
- punctuate sentences correctly
- use the past progressive tense
- use conjunctions
We have also written a letter to Van Hage asking them to donate plants and seeds to our class so we can do investigations in science.
What a busy week! We deserve a nice long weekend in the sunshine!
02/05/18 This week's spelling list: Homophones 1
27/04/18 We said goodbye to our chicks today! We are all a little sad (Mrs B is VERY sad!) but we know that Florence is going to give them a wonderful home. We hope they can come for a visit when they have grown up!
25/04/18 This week's spellings: -tion words
24/04/18 Orange group made pizzas with shapes and then counted how many of each shape they used.
23/04/18 We FINALLY got a chance to hold our chicks!
20/04/18 Chick Update! We now have 6 gorgeous, fluffy chicks! Bert, Ben, Alex, Georgia, Debbie and Ethan! Mrs Brough held Bert while we all stroked him very gently. Next week we will able to hold them! So exciting! We love our brood!
18/04/18 This week's spelling lists.
17/04/18 As you know, Georgia won eggs to hatch in class when she entered a writing competition. They were delivered yesterday and today we watched in awe and wonder as our first two chicks hatched!
17/04/18 Playing Pirate Treasure!
17/04/18 Singing pirate songs!
17/04/18 We had an amazing Wow Day today- the children went to Pirate School and successfully graduated as Junior Pirates!
Our Summer Term Topic
We have a very exciting topic planned for this term! Is the Pirate Life for me?- a topic all about pirates, explorers and islands! Children will learn:
· History: all about historical explorers including some pirates!
· Geography: the continents and oceans of the world, map directions and symbols, plus what it is like to live on an island.
· Science: how plants grow
· Maths: shape, measures and statistics plus revision of all skills taught this year to deepen and embed our understanding
· English: our focus text will be 'The Night Pirates' and then we will look at writing information texts about explorers.
Our visit to Wells-Next-the-Sea is on Friday 6th July. We would love as many parents to come as possible- our only limitation this time is seats on the coach! Please let Mrs Brough know if you would like to come along.
Our wow day will be Tuesday 17th April and the children will be going to Pirate School! We hope that the children (and teachers!) can come to school dressed as pirates for the day! This can be done very simply. There are some ideas below for costumes.
Keep checking back to see all of the exciting things we get up to during this brilliant topic!
Aaaarrrrgh!! Me hearties!
28/03/19 Today in science we were finding out about food chains. We created our own food chains and identified the producers and consumers.
28/03/18 Homework Below is a list of words which cover all of our spellings from this term. As this is a revision week, you may choose to focus on a partifular suffix or have a go at them all. I've also assigned 5 different Mathletics tasks for the Easter Break if you would like to do some extra practice on any rainy days!
23/03/18 Hamerton Zoo Trip! What an amazing day we had! Thank you to our parent helpers for coming with us!
21/03/18 Today was World Poetry Day! We had 2 workshops with Mrs Fewtrell and our visiting poet Karl Nova. We learned a doubling rap, and performed a poem about a Ninjabread man! Great fun!
20/03/18 Our spelling focus this week is word class, so again there isn't really a list of words we can send home to learn. I've attached a couple of sheets which you may choose to do at home. As always, this is optional. If you have other ideas for this week, I'd love to see what you do!
16/03/18
It is with a sad heart that we said goodbye to Mr Monk today. I think I speak for all of the children when I say that Mr Monk has brought a lot of fun to our classroom and he has taught the children a great deal. We loved his outfits on dress-up days especially! Koalas won't quite be the same on Monday...
We wish Mr Monk the very best as he goes back to university and onto his next class. Don't forget us!
14/03/18 Spellings: Apostrophes for Possession
This is more of a grammar focus than a spelling one; there isn’t a list of words which can be practised and learned. Instead we have found a few activities which we thought might be useful for you to use at home this week. As always, please choose what is best for your child and for your time as a family. The sheets will be uploaded below.
09/03/18 Koalas Update!
This week in Koalas our learning has been:
- English: conjunctions. We then wrote a witness statement about what happened in How the Zebra Got His Stripes.
- Maths: adding amounts of money and finding change.
- Spelling: contractions
- Science: investigating how to keep ice from melting.
Next week we will be moving onto:
- Time in Maths
- Apostrophes for possession in Spelling
- Writing our own animal myth in English
- Finding out more about Antarctica in Topic
We will also be saying goodbye to Mr Monk on Friday, so that will be a very sad day!
06/03/18 Spellings for this week: Contractions
01/03/18 More World Boook Day photos! Here we are with a speech bubble we wrote for the character we dressed up in!
01/03/18 Spelling lists for this week.
01/03/18 Look at our amazing world book day costumes! Thank you to parents and carers for the fabulous outfits!
28/02/18 Today in our topic lesson, we were leanring about the human and physical features of Antarctica. All of the information was frozen in Fact Icebergs! We had to melt the ice to reveal the facts! It was very exciting, especially as the snow was falling outside!
22/02/18 It was Thinking Day in school today! Here are Koala Class' Rainbows, Brownies and Beavers looking smart in their uniforms!
21/02/18 What an exciting afternoon we had in Koalas! Our Science lesson was all about finding out wht animals need to survive. Miss Murdock brought Slinky the Snake into class to help us learn about how to care for a pet snake. What facts can you remember?
09/02/18 Thank you for supporting our superheroes day! The children looked great! Every penny will be spent on improving the dining room!
07/02/18 Today we went to Kenya! After a smooth flight we landed and unpacked. We looked at the items we brought and talked about the reasons why they would be useful or not in Africa. Then we watched a video about a day in the life of Evangeline, a little girl who lives in the countryside in Kenya. Finally we compared our lives with hers.
07/02/18 In English we went on a sound walk to immiate our poem. We heard....the tweeting of the birds, the rolling of the wheels, the blowing of the breeze and the tapping of our feet!
06/02/18 In English we have created a text map for our WaGOLL- a poem called The Sound Collector. Can you remember the actions and recite the poem by heart?
02/02/18
Thank you to Georgia, Ethan, Ewan and Jessica for bringing in answers to our optional homework challenge!
Mountains are all the same size.
True or false?
Here are the facts the children found out:
- The highest mountain on Earth is Mount Everest in the Himalayas in Asia.
- It is 8850m above sea level.
- Mount Everest is more than 8 times taller than Snowden.
- The smallest registered mountain is Mount Wycheproof in Australia.
- The hardest mountain to climb is Annapurna. Only 158 people have climbed it.
- Europe's highest mountain is Mount Blanc at 4808m in France.
- The UK' highest mountain is Ben Nevis (1344m) in Scotland.
Jessica has climbed both Ben Nevis and Snowden!! Very impressive, Jess! You are an inspiration to get our hiking boots on and get climbing!
Well done guys! Good to be Greens for you all!
02/02/18 In maths today we explored fractions of a set by making ice cream sundaes! 1/4 had to be chocolate!
01/02/18 Look at Liam C's amazing writing about his imaginary polar animal!
01/02/18 In our Geography lesson today, we used atlases to find out more about the continent of Africa.
31/01/18 Some of us braved the cold and went outside to find half of a set of cones!
31/01/18 OPTIONAL HOMEWORK CHALLENGE!
"All mountains in the world are the same height."
True or false?
Prove it!
This was an idea shared in class today and we thought it would be a great idea to find out if it was true!
If your child brings in an answer, there will be good to be greens galore!
31/01/18 This week's spellings- oven, love, gloves etc where the 'u' sound is spelled 'O'.
28/01/18 As part of our work in safety week, we went for a walk around the nature reserve. We looked for hazards and discussed how to keep safe. We also looked for what was in place to help keep us safe.
24/01/18 Spelling lists for this week's homework- all, ball, call etc
19/01/18 Today we made fraction pizzas! But we also learned some important DT skills too. We learned how to spread, sprinkle, slice and scoop food. Look at our pizzas. Can you see which fraction is salami? Which fraction is pepper? Can you say which fractions add together to make 1 whole?
17/01/17 We have learned a song to help us learn the names of the 7 continents.
12/01/18 In RE today, we were thinking about role models. We discused famnous role models such as David Beckham, Barak Obama and JK Rowling. Then we thought about their qualities and what makes a really good role model. Who is your role model? Why?
11/01/18 Pink ad Green English groups worked with Mrs B on using information books to answer questions. They used the contents and index pages too!
09/01/18 We used the information text Percy brought with him as our WaGOLL and created this text map! Can you talk the text at home?
08-01-18 We had an amazing delivery all the way from Antarctica! Percy the penguin has come to help us in our Topic, Science and English lessons.
05/01/18 Animal Kingdom Wow Day was amazing! Thank you to all parents/carers for the brilliant costumes! We had a fantastic day, learning about animal classes. We also read the story Rumble in the Jungle and investigated percussion instruments to see which animal class the sounds reminded us of. We then put together a short performance. The video is too large for the website so Mrs B will show it at the start of the maths information evening next week. In the afternoon, we did lots of craft activities. Come into class to see!
Our Spring Topic- Who Rules the Animal Kingdom?
We will be learning about animals’ habitats, lifecycles and food chains. We will be having our Wow Day on Friday 5th January 2018, where adults and children will be dressing up as animals for the day to bring the topic to life.
In English, we will be focussing on non-fiction initially. We will be writing non-chronological reports about an animal, then moving onto writing an explanation based on lifecycles. Our fiction work will focus on the story of ‘How the Zebra Got His Stripes’. We will also work on learning poetry by heart.
In Maths, we will be beginning work on fractions before moving onto time. We focus on o’clock, half past, quarter to and quarter past before finally looking at 5 minute intervals. Then the children will learn about money including coin recognition, calculating totals and giving change. In the final weeks of the term, we will learn about 2D and 3D shapes, including their properties, similarities and differences and classifying them.
In Geography, our focus will be on the continents and oceans of the world. We will be learning about two contrasting continents- Africa and Antarctica. We will look at climate, mountains, rivers, homes, animals, etc before comparing them.
Our Science learning forms the majority of our topic. We will learn about animal lifecycles, their habitats and their food chains. This will include our visit to Hamerton Zoo on Friday 23rd March 2018. Please let us know if you would like to accompany us on the visit.
15/12/17 The Final Performance of A King Is Born. Thank you for your support in learning lines and songs, and for the fab costumes! We hope you enjoyed the show!
15/12/17- Christmas Jumper Day!
13/12/17 Today we went on a village walk to learn about map symbols. We read the map to find out what the map symbols meant and when we found buildings which didn't have a symbol, we designed our own and added them to the key. Thank you to the mums who came with us on our rather wintery walk!
08/12/17 Here we are in our panto costumes! We look great....oh yes we do!!!
08/12/17 Look at these amazing sentences!
06/12/17 SNEAK PEAK! Here are some photos from our rehearsals of A King is Born. Sorry for the fuzziness- action shots are tricky! All children are working very hard. I'm sure you are going to love it when you come to see the show next week!
01/12/17 Koala News
Here is what we have been learning about this week:
English: -ly suffix to turn adjectives into adverbs and writing a new ending to Rainbow Bird
Spelling: plural nouns including irregular words
Maths: dividing using grouping and sharing to solve problems, including an investigation at the bakery.
We have been working hard on our Christmas play and it is coming along really well!
28/11/17 Please could you take a few moments each day to pracise your child's lines in the upcoming Key Stage One Christmas Spectacle, A King is Born. Many thanks.
24/11/17 We were learning about division as grouping today. Here we are using our group roles to investigate putting 20 cubes into groups of 2, 5 and 10.
23/11/17 We went outside today to Write the Room...no, Write the Outdoors! We applied the rules we have been learning to turn singular nouns into plurals.
21/11/17 Pink Maths group went outside to practise counting in 10s!
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21/11/17 Then they got musical!
17/11/17 Today we went outside and created multiplication arrays using natural materials. Can you guess what the number sentecnes are?
16/11/17 Today we created this story map for our new book Rainbow Bird.
15/11/17 Green and Pink English groups created this fab role on the wall for Bird Woman in our book Rainbow Bird. Florence cleverly linked it to our leaning on growth mindset!
10/11/17 Today in Maths we practised our knoweldge of the 2 times table by playing an awesome Minecraft themed game!
10/11/17 In science we were investigating materials. In our co-op groups, we sorted different materials according to their properties. Can you work out how we sorted them? The scientific words we used were: flexible and rigid; hard and soft; smooth and rough and see through and not see through.
09/11/17 Look at Lewis' amazing poem about Bonfire Night!
08/11/17 Here are some examples of the butterflies we draw in class, following Austin's Butterfly's example. You can see how much we improved in just an hour with the right feedback.
07/11/17 In our Growth Mindset Work today we came up with a list of things we can do to help us when we are in the Learning Pit.
03/11/17 Today was our whole-school Exciting Writing Day! We went outside to look at the fire and talked about what the fire was like. Then we came inside to learn wny we have bonfires on the 5th November.
03/11/17 We had a history learning question: Why did Guy Fawkes want to blow up the houses of parliament? We found out that King James I wanted to stop the Catholics from praying their way. We talked about their feelings, what they could have done about it and what they actually did. This picture shows our up-levelled feelings work and our flow map to show what happened.
02/11/17 Today we talked about having a growth mindset and how we can sometimes get into a learning pit when we are learning something new. We all know what to say to ourselves now if we want to give up!
01/11/17 Here are some useful documents to help you talk about growth mindsets at home.
19/10/17 The Great Eye Bake Off After we did our research we found out that children would like a chocolate chip bread at lkunchtimes. So we followed the bread recipe, making one change- chocolate chips! here we are in action and the delicious loaves we made. Yum!
20/10/17 Today we went out into nature to help us generate vocabulary for our own autumn poem. We thought about adjectives and adverbial phrases. Then we made an amazing tree map for all of the vocabulary we learned.
18/10/17 Here is the text map for our new WaGOLL- a poem called Autumn Days! Can you remember the actions?
10/10/17 For our DT project, we needed to do market research to see what flavours of bread there are. Here we are tasting some to see which flavour we would like to bake for the Great Eye Bake Off!
05/10/17 Today was our church afternoon and John from St Matthews came in to talk to us about the colours of the church season. Then we designed new robes and stoles for Mr Hurst using the church colours.
05/10/17- We started a new English unit this week on instructions. We have linked this to our topic by using a bread recipe as our WaGOLL (don't worry- we won't leave the oven on like Thomas Farriner!) We used our White Thinking Hat to find the features of the text, then we made a text map of it with actions so we can magpie the good language when we write our own instructions later on.
28/09/17 Here is Harry our Maths King for today! He has been solving greater depth problems in maths and using his reasoning skills to explain his ideas! Well done! We are very proud of you!
22/09/17 Today we learned about Rainbow sentences to help us write in sentences which make sense. Here are the sentences we wrote in co-op groups. Children: can you explain what each colour is?
22/09/17 We have been learning to compare numbers in maths. We have learned to look at the tens first, then the ones if the tens are the same. Here we are playing showdown! in our co-op groups.
15/09/17 Look at our amazing maths! We were working on place value in our co-op groups. Then we went on a Galloping Gallery to peer-asses our learning. We gave smilie faces if the group had 6 different representations, or we added things in if needed.
Pulling down houses as fire breaks
Making a water line to put out the fire
Bring out your dead!
09/09/17 History off the Page Day The Great Fire of London
Fire: Friend or Foe?
Our first topic is all about fire! We will be learning about the Great Fire of London in our History lessons, as well as about using maps and symbols in Geography. Our art will be about creating fiery images using paint and collage. Our DT lessons will be all about bread! We will be tasting different breads then baking our own flavours in the Great Eye Bake Off! We will be linking our English work with our topic, beginning with writing a story about a boy who lived in the times of the fire! Our maths work continues on the Maths No problem! journey. We begin with counting, adding and subtracting.
History off the Page
We will be having a very exciting day where we all get into role as Londoners at the time of the Great Fire! We will dress up and become craftspeople who gossip about who might have caused the fire! Then we become archaeologists, digging for evidence! History off the Page will be on Friday 8th December. We will need lots of adult helpers, so please let us know if you are able to come and dress up with us!