English
In our English lessons this half term, we’ve delved into Lila and the Secret of Rain, exploring Kenya’s culture. For months, the sun has baked Lila’s Kenyan village. Lila is so worried that when her grandfather whispers to her the secret of making the rain fall, she decides to do something about it — even if it means confronting the sky itself. Lila’s quest to save the village is beautifully told in this book. The children have responded to the illustration, taken part in discussion about the text and created story maps. The topic ended with us writing our own information texts about Kenya!
Maths
The Fantastic Foxes have continued to work incredibly hard in their Maths lessons as we have been consolidating our knowledge of the 4 operations – addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Science
In our Science lessons we have been learning about Living things and their Habitats. We have learnt about habitats and microhabitats. In one lesson we went out to the field to make our own microhabitats with a partner. The children have also been learning about food chains and what different animals eat, including herbivores, carnivores and omnivores.
Art
The Year 2 children have been creating patterns using animals as inspiration in Art lessons. Texture has played a massive part in this and we have explored a variety of mark making techniques. We then applied this when we did some observational drawings and we made a teddy bear look as realistic as possible with the different techniques for texture.
History
History this half term has been The Titanic. We have learned about Delia, a young girl living in Ireland who embarked on a trip to America to try and make a better life for herself and all her family. Unfortunately, Delia was one of the unlucky passengers that did not survive the dreadful sinking of the ship. This topic will continue for us after half term and we will be looking at a timeline of events and investigating the events that led up to it further.
Computing
In our Computing lessons the children have been creating their own books. They have navigated the computers and were able to type as well as add pictures to the books!
Geography
Where the Land meets the Sea has been our focus in our Geography lessons this half term. The children have been learning lots of new vocabulary so far as well as knowing about the oceans and continents. Again, this topic will continue after the half term and we will be comparing and contrasting the physical and human features of the coastline at Bournemouth in the United Kingdom with those of the coastline of Townsville in Queensland, Australia.
Music
The Fantastic Foxes this half term in their music lessons have been playing the notes B A G on the classroom glockenspiels. We can hold the beater to create a lovely sound.
Using Charanga we have looked at the formal stave notation to recognise the notes B and A. We looked at the crotchet and minim and the crotchet rest and minim rest. We said the mnemonic to try and learn the line names ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Favour/Football’
We played along to the music, listening to the introduction and waiting to come in altogether then try and follow the notation as we play. We counted the tempo to keep ourselves in time.
PE
This term we have been working on our dance skills. We have used the beach and ocean to inspire our dances thinking about how we could show different kinds of wave with our bodies, create the shapes of seashell and how to jump and move like beach and sea creatures.
RE
We were very lucky to have a trip to the mosque in May. Whilst there we learned about Islam had the opportunity to ask lots of questions.
The whole school had a very special assembly one day with the Paralympian Michael Churm speaking to us all. We learnt all about his career and his achievements. Everyone took part in a variety of sponsored exercises and an impressive amount of money was collected.
Max the dog came into school and the Year 2 children were all fortunate enough to spend a bit of time with him. The children said that they felt happy and excited after seeing him!