Welcome to Life at KPS for Year 2

Mrs Sandhu and Mrs Morgan warmly welcome you to Year 2.

The aim of this page is to highlight some of the fantastic learning that has been happening in Year 2, this page will be updated monthly, with photographs and information about the learning we have completed during the month.

We hope you enjoy looking through these updates and do discuss your child’s learning with them to celebrate their success. We look forward to any suggestions you may have to make your child’s learning a pleasant experience.

March 2021

DT

Textiles is our DT topic this term. We are focusing on blanket and running stitches on felt. We will be making 3D sweets for decorations. This work is linked to our English Traditional story Hansel and Gretel. To get started, we worked on our stitching skill which appeared to be a challenge at first, but with practice we have improved. What a lot of resilience we have! Next, we came up with our own designs which we used as templates for our final pieces. Now, we are in the process of creating our 3D sweets.  These will be amazing when completed.

English

In English we have been reading Michael Bond’s version of Hansel & Gretel. The children have had the opportunity to begin writing about their likes and dislikes aswell as remember how to write 2a sentences to describe events from the story. They have thoroughly enjoyed role-playing each character, especially the evil witch! Before acting the story, however, the children used their imaginations to think like each character and write what each of them would say to each other. Some have now begun to retell the story in their very own words using adverbs and 2a sentences.

Gardening

Our Science topic is Plants. We couldn’t have chosen a better time to do this than now, after a national lockdown. It is timely as we get the pleasure of working from both in and outdoors. We started off by exploring different types of seeds, particularly herbs that we planted in our classrooms. We are in the middle of an investigation on growing conditions of plants, where we put our prediction skills to test.  A range of seeds growing in the classroom will be ready for transplanting to our allotment area in April.  We can’t wait to see them growing there!

Maths

This term we have re-visited telling time on an analogue clock including quarter past, quarter to and five-minute intervals. The children have also calculated durations of time in minutes, sequenced daily events, learned minutes in an hour and hours in a day. We have further explored fractions using the part-whole model aswell as by cutting shapes or quantities on a part-whole model. There was another opportunity to relate fractions to division too.

Music

Being back at school has made a huge difference to our class music lessons

The children have enjoyed playing rhythms and pulse together as a whole group.

They have learnt lyrics to a song regarding growing plants (linked to their topic)

Children are still not able to sing in a classroom due to Covid-19 restrictions but they have sung outside as they are able to spread out.

In addition, they have played rhythm and pulse playground games which is particularly good for their well-being.

PE

This term, children have been taking 3 PE lessons a week!  The children have taken part in fitness lessons, team building and sports/games.

The aim in our lessons this term has been to brush up on motor skills and get our fitness back up to scratch!  Children have been pushing themselves to increase their stamina and strength after being away from their normal school life for such a long time.  We have been going on daily walks, doing shuttle runs and lots of sprinting games.

We hope that the children will keep their fitness training going over the holidays so we can continue with many more sports and games when they return.

PSHE

We have been working on mental wellbeing so far this term. Mindfulness has been incorporated into our daily routine by focusing on the present moment of our thoughts and feelings.  Daily Simran helps with this aswell as circle time opportunities that have enabled the children to speak up about any concerns including relationships with family alongside those with others at school.  A focus on reflecting on any negatives from the school day and how to overcome these to improve and maintain good mental health has proven to be very effective in shaping a more positive outlook.