Year 2 News 10.01.2025

Happy new year! It’s been a snowy but busy first week back and school filled with lots of learning and new challenges.

English

We have been exploring George’s Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl this week in our whole class reading and English lessons.  We began by using clues from the front cover to help Predicting Pip make accurate suggestions about the characters and plot. After reading the first chapter, we explored some of the language and carried out some word studies on the new, unfamiliar vocabulary such as mischief, dozing, grumbling and selfish. We then looked at the vocabulary that was used to describe grandma and used this to build up our own character descriptions. We began with simple sentences using adjectives then started to expand these using the conjunctions who and that. For example –Grandma is a mean, grouchy lady who is always complaining and bossing George around.

Spelling

This week we have been learning how to spell words where the y makes an igh sound. e.g. cry, fly, spy. This week’s spelling letter has an additional task to complete. Please can children have a go at this and show it to their teacher for an extra dojo! These were handed out earlier in the week.

Maths

We have continued exploring shape in our maths lessons this week with a focus on properties of 3D shapes. We began by recapping the names of a variety of 3D shapes. We then looked at what is meant by faces, edges and vertices and using practical shapes to support our learning, counted these and recorded them in tables.

History

A collection of strange artefacts arrived in our classrooms this week. We looked at each one carefully and made predictions about who they belonged to. Some of them looked very old and the photograph was in black and white so we assumed they came from somebody in the past. The owl seemed a peculiar item but the bandages gave us a good clue that they belonged to a doctor or nurse. We eventually guessed that they belonged to Florence Nightingale! We looked carefully at the artefacts and a photograph of her and wrote down our observations of her alongside making a list of questions that we would like to find out about her in our new topic. 

Computing

In our computing lessons this half term we are exploring how to use the 2Paint a Picture tool on Purple Mash to create pieces of artwork. This week, we looked at examples of impressionism from artists such as Claude Monet and discussed the techniques and colours used within the paintings. We then had a go at creating our own pictures inspired by impressionism!