Swallow (Year Two)

Swallow Class 2019/2020

Mrs Cooke, Mrs Wright and Mrs Johnstone

Library - books will be changed every Friday

P.E - children will have P.E on a Monday and a Thursday afternoon.

We are really excited to join the children alongside their journey of learning this year and make lots of fun memories with each and every one of them. Please check this website regularly to find out what the children have been up to and to also see if there is any further learning that could be happening at home to support the children towards becoming the best they can be .

Reading needs to happen daily. We will aim to listen to your child at least once a week but it is very important for them to be reading each morning or evening with a grown-up or sibling at home. Once your child is fluent then they can snuggle down and enjoy a story independently but it is still a good idea to get them to note down in their reading record what they have read so we can keep a track of how regularly they are reading and ensure they are accessing a range of genres. 

If you have any queries or questions, please do not hesitate to catch a member of staff at the start/end of the day or alternatively feel free to email Mrs Cooke:

scooke.3244@st-nicholas.oxon.sch.uk

Autumn Term 1

Week 7

This week the children have had lots of fun exploring Harvest and why we take part in the celebration 'Harvest Festival' each year. We thought about how lucky we are to have the food that the farmers have nurtured, grown and harvested. We also thought about how lucky we are to receive food from overseas because a long time ago we didn't have such flexibility with food choice. We can't wait to share our Harvest Prayers with you this afternoon and can't wait to have the opportunity to say a huge 'Thank you' to God for so many things. 

We have been looking at the tens frame in Maths and have been learning how to spot lots of different number sentences from just one image/object. The children have been given the option to bring some Maths home with them and hopefully they can do a good job of explaining the Maths we have been exploring this week .

We had a lovely afternoon of Art on Tuesday and we calmly used the colours yellow and red to paint our own sunsets. Our sunsets were graduated in colour and went from yellow, to lots of different shades of orange, to red. The children independently mixed the different tones of orange and took lots of care in their work.

Autumn Term 1

Week 6

This week the children had the opportunity to share their wonderful work with you at parents' evening. They have all been working so hard and parents' evening is the perfect way to celebrate their achievements and to discuss their next steps towards helping them to become the best they can be. Thank you for taking the time to share their work and praise them for their wonderful efforts. 

We have been exploring contractions in English this week and I was amazed by how quickly lots of the children grasped this new concept. A contraction is two words that have been squished together to form a shorter word. The new shorter word has an apostrophe to replace the missing letter/s. A few examples could be:

can not = can't

do not = don't

should not = shouldn't

There are also some exceptions to the rule where the contraction isn't as easy to make, such as will not becoming won't. We began using contractions in our writing so hopefully you'll notice the children having  a go independently at home too .

This term in Art we have been exploring primary and secondary colours and painting in the style of Piet Mondrian and Mark Rothko. We then used our knowledge of mixing colours to have a go at painting our own symmetrical butterflies. The children's work was superb. They were extremely meticulous with their symmetry and pattern making when they were carrying out the activity. Well done my Super Swallows! (Photos below)

This Week's Spellings:

(Common exception words)

door

floor

again

wild

children

climb 

parents

most

only

both

Autumn Term 1

Week 5

This week we had to say farewell to our beautiful butterflies as we waved them away on Monday. 

We were able to carefully observe the life cycle of a butterfly over the past few weeks and were fascinated by how quickly the changes we observed happened. The caterpillars grew extremely quickly and before we knew it, they had built chrysalis' around themselves and we then had to patiently wait for them to emerge as stunning butterflies. The butterflies enjoyed nibbling on some fresh fruit before they were strong enough to be released. 

The children have been keeping an eye out at break and lunch to see if any of our little friends have fluttered back to say hello...apparently they've been spotted quite a few times .

Our spellings this week are:

The /j/ sound spelt using 'g' or 'j'

gem
giant
magic
giraffe
energy

jacket
jar
jog
join
adjust

Autumn Term 1

Week 4

The Spellings we have looked at this week are:

The /j/ sound spelt using '-dge' or '-ge'

badge

edge

bridge

dodge

fudge

age

huge

change

charge

village

The children have kick started this week with a fantastic first few days! We have been eagerly waiting for our butterflies to break out of their chrysalis' and today we were lucky enough to meet all five of them! We will monitor them closely over the next few days and then will release them so they can be free and flutter away. We all loved taking part in a Science experiment where we were answering the question 'are children who are older faster than children who are younger?'. We were given six sensible reception and year one children before timing them when running across the playground. We did the same for some of our year 2 children and then compared the results. It turns out that age doesn't really make a difference to speed because we had a reception child who was actually faster than one of our year 2s! We also enjoyed a visit from Jonathan's Jungle today and some videos/pictures can be found below .

Autumn Term 1 Week 3

What a super week the Super Swallow's have had! We have been looking closely at Florence Nightingale in History, learning about the great impact she had on nursing and the wonderful changes she made over time.

We were extremely lucky this week to be visited by Emma, a local nurse who works in the Children's Ward in Oxford Hospital. This was a fantastic opportunity to hear all about Emma's job as a nurse and her daily roles and responsibilities.

Emma explained to the Year 2's the importance of working hard at school if they would like to have a job such as a nurse or doctor when they grow up! We learnt that Maths, English, Science and Reading are all very important skills that nurses and doctors must have, and Emma told us that she was always  working super hard at school, especially in Year 2!!

Have a look at some pictures below of us with Emma, discovering all the important equipment she carries in her bag!

The Spellings we have looked at this week are:

The /s/ sound spelt using a 'c'

race

ice

cell

city

fancy

face

spade

bicycle

circle

spicy

Autumn Term 1 Week 2

This week we have been super busy getting stuck back into learning about lots of different things. Here is just a snippet of what we have been up to:

In Writing, we have been exploring using conjunctions and the children are beginning to use a variety of these in their writing.

Conjunctions connect two simple sentences together to create a compound sentence. The conjunctions we look at in year 2 are: because, so, but, when, and, if and or

We teach the application of conjunctions by encouraging children to use the conjunctions to add more information for the reader and detail to their writing.

In Maths, we have been looking at tens and ones and partitioning them using some different models. The children are beginning to use cherry models and place value grids to confidently partition two digit numbers into tens and ones. Pop into class if you would like to see how these models look J.

In Art, the children had a super time finding out about the artist Piet Mondrian this week. They each had a go at creating a collage in the style of Mondrian and thought very carefully about colour choices!

The spellings we have looked at this week are:

The /r/ sound spelt using ‘wr’

Write

Written

Wrote

Wrong

Wrap

Wrist

Wreck

Wrestle

Wriggle

Wren

Term 1 Week 1

The children have had a great time this week and have all settled in very quickly. We have explored friendship and what it means to be a good friend. The children were able to give some beautiful examples of when they've played or worked well alongside a friend and they also came up with some special qualities that we all look for in friends of our own. We have also started to think about our new value of 'Respect' and how we can show this value both at home and at school. The children have explored reading, writing and representing numbers to 100 in Maths and have found out about the differences between adult and baby animals in Science. 

Here are the spellings that we have looked at this week:

The /n/ sound spelt using 'kn' and 'gn':

knock

know

knee

knitting

knife

gnat

gnaw

gnash

gnome

gnarled