Grayling 3’s Blog

This week in Grayling 2, we have been continuing our learning about multiplication and division. We’ve been learning about these invserse operations and how they link together. For example:

10 ÷ 2 = 5
10 ÷ 5 = 2
2 x 5 = 10
5 x 2 = 10

In literacy, we have been writing our own adventure stories which the children have really enjoyed. We’ve also really enjoyed sharing them with our friends.

In R.E., we’ve been learning about Judaism and important Jewish symbols (synagogue, Star of David, the Torah) as well as the Passover festival and how this is celebrated. We’ve also been thinking about our favourite celebrations.

In Topic, we have just finished our learning about the polar regions which the children have thoroughly enjoyed since starting this at the beginning of the Spring term. We have loved sharing everybody’s home learning, so thank you for your support and encouragement with this! We will soon be moving onto learning about different polar explorers.

Have a lovely weekend everybody and see you next week!

This week in Grayling 2, we have just finished our learning on multiplication. We’ve been looking at arrays and word problems which incorporat the 2, 5 and 10 times tables. The children have been enjoying playing Hit the Button to practise these, too, which can be found through the following link:

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

In science, the children have enjoyed looking at different habitats and the animals that live in them. They had a go at designing their own habitat for a local insect or animal with a friend and have started to learn about adaptation and how different plants and animals have adapted in order to be able to survive in their habitat.

I’ve been blown away by everyone’s home learning over the past few weeks! It’s lovely to see how much the children are enjoying their Topic learning on the polar regions. We’ve loved adding our Rockhoppers and Blue Penguins to the many Antarcticas that have been brought in with the children recently!

The children also really enjoyed sharing their learning with you at our Stay and… session this week. Thank you to all of the grown ups who attended – it was lovely for you to be in our classroom again. Have a happy weekend everyone!

What an exciting week we’ve had in the Grayling 2 classroom – from beautiful sunshine to a short-lived downfall of snow!

In the classroom this week, we have been continuing to learn about and practise our times tables. We’ve now practised our 2, 5 and 10s! This week’s home learning will be to practise these at home. For an extra challenge, the children have been encouraged to have a look at these two songs:

In literacy, we have been looking at expanded noun phrases, for example:

the glorious, bright sunshine and the tall, icy mountain

At the beginning of next week, we will be having a go at rewriting the first part of Lila and the Secret of the Rain, incorporating our learning on expanded noun phrases.

We had a visitor in class earlier this week and enjoyed learning about how plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces and makes its way through the river catchment to our rivers and streams before ending up in the sea. We then had great fun looking through water samples and looking for different invertebrates under a magnifying glass. We have also started learning about living things in science and what helps us to identify whether or not something is alive, once alive or never alive. We had fun and went on a walk around the school grounds, trying to identify these things with a partner.

Enjoy your weekends, Grayling 2 – fingers crossed for some more snow!

The children have settled in really nicely since coming back from the Christmas holidays and have already thrown themselves into their learning!

In maths, we have started learning our two and five times tables. We’ve looked at how we can create groups of objects to help us to understand what multiplication represents.

If you’d like to practise your times tables at home, here are some links to games that children can play:

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/times-tables/coconut-multiples

In literacy, we have been enjoying the traditional tale Lila and the Secret of the Rain. We’ve been creating story maps, retelling the story in class and will soon be retelling the story ourselves.

In Topic, we have started to learn about the polar regions. The children have been learning about the Arctic and Antartica, where these can be found on a map, and information about the animals that live in these areas. We’ve also been reviewing our learning on the continents and the equator.

https://world-geography-games.com/en/world_continents.html

Somehow the end of the Autumn Term is upon us! We’ve been feeling festive this week wearing our Christmas / winter themed outfits on Wednesday and were entertained by our friends in Year 4’s talent show, The Xmas Factor! Yesterday, the children really enjoyed a well-deserved treat making festive Play-Doh!

Thank you for your kind words and messages today; we all wish you a lovely holiday break and enjoyable Christmas if you are celebrating. 

Thank you for sharing the children’s Victorian projects during this term’s home learning challenge. We have been inspired by the children’s knowledge and skills!

In maths, we have concluded adding and subtracting two digit numbers. Here are some examples of addition and subtraction questions without any renaming:

We used base 10 resources to help us when adding and subtracting with renaming.

I hope that you all have a lovely, relaxing Christmas and I am already looking forward to seeing you all next term. Merry Christmas, Grayling 2!

For this week’s home learning, please have a look at the lyrics for our Christmas performance next week! They have been attached to a document in this blog post.

Grayling 2 have done a tremendous job this week in our rehearsals and we cannot wait for you to see us in action next Thursday! Thank you to everyone who has brought in costumes already – please bring these in as soon as possible next week so that we’re all set to go.

Have a lovely weekend all!

Another week has zoomed by in Grayling 2! We very much enjoyed our trip to Shire Hall and learning about a VIctorian child called Harry Parker. We visited the courtroom and cells, made Victorian peg dolls and put our detective hats on to help decide whether or not we thought Harry was guilty. Thank you to the adults who came with us on the trip – your time and support was greatly appreciated.

In maths we have continued using the column method to add one digit and 2 digit numbers. We have talked about ‘renaming’. We add the ‘ones’ first, and sometimes this makes a number more than 10. Here’s an example of how we’ve set it out in our books: 

43 + 8 = 

First, we add the 3 ones and the 8 ones.

This makes 11 (so we’ve renamed the ones and made a new ten). 

Then we add the four tens (from 40) and the one ten (from 11). 

Sometimes we do not need to ‘rename because the ‘ones’ do not add up to make a number that is 10 or more like in this example:

Thank you for all of the sponsors that were sent in today for Children in Need! The children did themselves proud and all walked / ran / skipped one mile around our playground. Have a lovely weekend all and see you on Monday!

This week in Grayling 2, we’ve started our new literacy book Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers, celebrating the diversity of our planet. The children enjoyed thinking about our planet and learning about the solar system. They generated some lovely questions which we will be answering over the next half term!

In maths, we’ve continued to think about addition, using numberlines and column methods to helps us solve simple challenges. 

Thank you so much for sharing the children’s Victorian learning with us so far; the Victorian project will span several weeks so please don’t feel rushed to get something in! We’re looking forward to celebrating the children’s work with them once it’s in. 

In science, we’ve continued thinking about different materials and their properties. The children had a lot of fun creating their own riddles – using the materials and properties that we have learnt about so far – for their classmates to answer. For this week’s home learning, the children are bringing home a challenge that can be adapted, looking at making a boat using tin foil. 

I hope you all have a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing you on Monday!

Miss Hosking

This past half term seems to have flown by but it has been thoroughly enjoyable getting to know and teach all of the lovely children in Grayling 2! Thank you to everyone who joined us for our parent / teacher evenings – it is lovely to hear how settled your children are and how much they are loving the learning in Year 2.

A link is included below to a list of the Year 1 / Year 2 Common Exception Words – if the children are able to practise these at home, this will really help to support their learning at school. The link to an online game which could be played on an iPad / mobile phone is also included. Any additional learning will be sent out after the half term to allow the children the chance to have a well-deserved break over the holidays!

Common Exception Words game: https://www.ictgames.com/littleBirdSpelling/

Last week, we enjoyed a visit from King Kimba, poet and Hip Hop artist. He performed some poetry and rap for the children which they all really loved.

In literacy, we have been writing up our own versions of Baba Yaga. We have focussed on using and editing adjectives to help us describe the characters and the setting. We have learnt the story really well and have started to retell it to our friends using the story maps that we made.

In science, we have been learning about the different materials which can be used to make objects. We have also started to look at the properties of materials such as shiny, rough, smooth, soft, hard, transparent, translucent and opaque. In maths, we have started to practise our addition and have explored this using number lines, part-part whole models, column addition and tens frames.

Here are some links to games that could be used to practise at home:

1 / 10 more / less than: https://www.topmarks.co.uk/learning-to-count/chopper-squad

Addition: https://www.topmarks.co.uk/addition/robot-addition and https://www.topmarks.co.uk/addition/addition-to-10

I hope you all have a wonderful half term and I look forward to seeing you after the holidays!

Miss Hosking

It is the end of another busy week in Year 2!

On Wednesday in Grayling 2, we enjoyed discussing different religions and we found out some special features about Christianity. We recognised lots of words and symbols, such as the cross, and shared the story of The Good Samaritan. We linked this to the theme of kindness and thought about how we can share kindness in class. We all created a kindness rainbow for a friend which the children really enoyed giving and receiving today.

We also enjoyed welcoming adults into our class on Thursday – it was great to see so many of you and to share the children’s brilliant learning! 

We started to learn about traditional tales from other parts of the world this week; we learnt about a story that had been told in parts of Eastern Europe for hundreds of years about a mean witch called Baba Yaga. These pictures may help your child to retell parts of the story:

We’re looking forward to speaking with you during our parent / teacher conferences next week. Please see the links from the school email for booking access on the school cloud system. 

In maths we’ve been learning how to read number patterns and explore missing numbers in a sequence. 

We have to work out if the number sequence is getting larger or smaller. Then we have to look at the numbers given and calculate how much the sequence is changing by. For example, is it going up in 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s or a different number. If you have time you could try these challenges at home: 

Have a lovely weekend Grayling 2 and I’m looking forward to seeing you all on Monday!