Welcome to Year 2!
Our visit to Gilbert White's museum!
What a wonderful day we've had! We went on our very own expedition through Antarctica learning about the past and the present. We learned all about the perilous journey Captain Scott made with his extraordinary team of brave men and were shocked to find out that none of the explorers made it home to share their stories.
We investigated a range of artefacts and replicas to better understand the equipment they used, the food they ate and their living conditions. Finally, we had to use our strength to pull our teams in a sledge and realised doing this day after day for months on end with little food and horrific weather conditions how challenging an expedition through Antarctica would be.
George's Marvellous Medicine
During reading morning, we were joined by lots of our parents to explore the story of George's Marvellous Medicine. After reading the first chapter together, we realised that the author had made us really excited to read on and to keep us entertained!
We took part in several reading activities that were based on the book. We used the text to write a character description, designed an advert for a new Granny and even made our own Marvellous Medicine!
The children thoroughly enjoyed reading morning this half term and we would like to thank all of the parents for their participation.
In Maths, we have been solving problems using standard units of measure. We have explored capacity, length, height, mass and temperature!
We understand that we use a different unit of measure depending on what it is that we are measuring. For example, we use ml and l to measure capacity.
We have been practical in our learning approach, measuring the height of the iceberg in the classroom, the capacity of captain Scott's flask and the temperature of the school grounds in comparison to the Antarctic!
Check out some of our learning below:
We have generated ideas, language and vocabulary in order to write poetry about our favourite Antarctic animals. We have used similes, alliteration, adverbs and expanded noun phrases in our poetry to ensure that the reader can draw a clear picture in their minds.
Check out some examples below:
Our trip to Antarctica!
As part of our English learning, we have been focusing on the amazing animals that you can find in Antarctica. To stimulate and generate ideas, we took a trip to Antarctica where we spotted lots of animals hiding amongst the icebergs.
Scott of the Antarctic!
In Year 2, we have started the New Year with our new topic focus - Antarctica!
We have become explorers of the amazing Arctic, generating questions, ideas and enquiries to help us find out more about our History focus - Scott of the Antarctic!
Hampshire Fire and Rescue!
This week, we had a visit from the Hampshire Fire Service! The children thoroughly enjoyed finding out about fire safety and can talk confidently about how to stay safe at home and at school. The children were able to explore the fire engine in order to get a feel for what it is like to prepare for a real 999 call! They used the hose to put out a pretend fire and some of us were lucky enough to steer the fire engine!
"Matches and lighters never touch, they will hurt you very much!"
"Get out, stay out, call 999!"
We would like to say a big thank you to parents for being so supportive of their children and their home learning. We can already see an improvement in the children’s ability and a noticeable difference in their confidence. Keep it up!
Remember! Please log everything that you have done with your child at home so that we can easily assess whether you have met the Home Learning requirements.
Science - The Fairy Forest!
During transition week, the children were extremely excited by a ‘mysterious’ letter sent from Mr Weeks. He told the children that there were tiny people fluttering around in the meadow and that they must investigate!
After exploring the school grounds, the children found ‘glitter’ covering a variety of flowers and plants in the meadow – but why?!
We used this as a ‘hook’ into the children’s learning. We talked about creating our own fairy forests to attract even more fairies to our school grounds!
The children had to use their understanding of plants and flowers to predict, plant and investigate which would grow best and where (which season, which area of the school, etc). The children were given a bulb each to plant. They had to think carefully about the area of the school grounds that they would choose to plant it and whether it would have enough sunlight, water and a suitable temperature to grow well.