We had a fabulous day at Staunton learning about different animals and their habitats! We particularly enjoyed exploring the rabbit and guinea pig habitats. We also saw a large African snail and stick insects. Some of us enjoyed feeding the lambs but it was rather scary when they charged at us for their milk bottles.

Although the day started out rather drizzly we were lucky enough to have a picnic in the afternoon.

Please continue to learn times tables and number facts at home. We are enjoying looking at the children’s home learning projects. Please remember we do not expect something every week. We have spoken to the children about ideas from the learning pyramid and they are aware that they could spend a few weeks on developing an idea before bringing it to school.

At last the sun seems to be remembering what to do during summer so we hope that you all have a lovely weekend.

https://blog.stpeterswaterlooville.co.uk/year1/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/04/disciples.pdf

Please remember that the above home learning is due into school on Wednesday 4th May 2016. This will form part of our lesson on the Wednesday afternoon and children will be expected to share something from which we can learn.

We have seen some lovely home learning in the last 2 weeks. A panda habitat (well done Esther), a hedgehog habitat (well done Amelia) and a minibeast habitat (well done Islwyn). Very creative – we look forward to seeing more of your creations.

In other news our caterpillars are growing fast and look like they may be beginning to make their cocoons. It is fascinating to watch as we continue to learn about habitats.

Also my apologies for the incorrect dates on the trip letter and I hope that you all received your parent mail. We are going to Staunton on the 11th May 2016!!

Have a fabulous long weekend, we look forward to seeing you all next Wednesday (don’t forget we have an INSET day on Tuesday).

Best wishes,

Mrs. Luter and Miss Allen

This week we have been learning about habitats. We have even made our own habitats for woodlice. We investigated places around the school grounds to find out where woodlice live and then made our own choice chambers. Unfortunately our first group of woodlice escaped so we had to improve our experiment.

Some new classroom pets have arrived. They will help us to further learn about habitats, food chains and life cycles. Children explain what creatures we have in our classroom!

We have been learning how to use all of the different sentence types in our writing – see if your child can remember all 4. We were a bit confused about the new way of using an exclamation but have made excellent progress.

We look forward to seeing your child’s home learning there seems to be lots of projects on the go!

Have a happy weekend,

Mrs. Luter and Miss Allen

Please open the attached home learning pyramid for ideas about queens and kings activities.

Bloom’s HL template THE ROYAL FAMILY 2016

Please open the attached common exception words that children must be able to read and spell to reach age related expectations in year 2.

T-L-5089-Common-Exception-Words-Years-1-and-2-Word-Mat

Last week eight children from year 2 visited Crookhorn School for the morning to visit Professor Cranium! Conundrums galore greeted them and a great time was had by all.

The children had to answer lots of general knowledge questions and complete various tasks. And…. they won!! We are very proud of the children who attended and have enjoyed listening to their stories and admiring their trophy!

If anyone would like to see the trophy it will be on display in the entrance at school soon.

Well done Matthew, Leon, Esther, Hannah, Amelie, Annie, AJ and Joe. Also thank you to Mrs. Wickes for taking the children to the event.

Other news in year 2….

We have been planning stories about Samson the mouse who has left his Titanic adventure behind for a new life in New York. We have been thinking of different and interesting ways to start sentences. We are beginning to look at paragraphs and the content that should be in each one.

Bug Club has been updated where appropriate. Please keep reading! The children really need to be reading every day to reach the age related expectations in year 2. Please visit the library and inspire your children to read. Every child should have a book from the school library. Please give a gentle nag if they are not coming home with one. If you were able to attend the spelling workshop at school you would have received some spelling lists with words that children must be able to read and spell by the end of year 2. Google ‘exception words year 2′ for a copy (this was also given out at parents’ evening). We are also testing the children on these words weekly – they are sent home on a Friday please practise them.

In maths we have been learning about fractions. We have been trying to use the language of fractions in our lessons to further develop our understanding. Many cakes have been shared and we now know which fraction of our favourite cake we would prefer …. 1/3 or 1/4?

On Friday we are going to South Downs College for a mini Olympics event. Please send children to school in their PE kit but it is not Spring yet please make sure children have jogging bottoms a school jumper / cardigan and a warm coat.

I will post some photos soon!

Mrs. Luter

Welcome back!

We can barely believe we are into the second half of the Spring Term already. It won’t be long before Easter.

Today we had a beautiful liturgy with Father Vitalis and were joined by lots of parents. The theme of our liturgy was forgiveness. We have been thinking in class about how and why we forgive and how forgiving helps us to live more like Jesus.

The children were superbly behaved and were prayerful throughout. Well done children!

Tomorrow there is a meeting for parents about spelling in year 2. It will begin at 10 and there will be a short presentation in the hall by Mrs. Bowen. This will be followed by the opportunity to see what happens during a typical spelling session in the year 2 area. We set for spelling so you may find your child is in a different classroom to usual. Every week we will be sending high frequency spellings home. You can expect to see these stapled into your child’s home learning diary every Friday and we will test the children on the spellings during the following week.

We are continuing with our Titanic topic this half term but moving on to focus on Queens in the next couple of weeks. When appropriate we will send home some new ideas for home learning.

Please read daily with your child. As we are sure you are aware the expectations for children in all areas of the curriculum have increased and it is important that children develop a good degree of fluency in their reading.

Kind regards,

Mrs. Luter and Miss Allen

We have been learning to play this marvellous, fascinating instrument in Giraffe Class!

Today we showed some of our mums and dads what we have been learning. After half term it will be Elephant Class will get to learn how to play the Bamboo Tamboo!

We will be continuing with our Titanic topic after half term but will move onto learning about Kings and Queens. So please continue with Titanic home learning we have been amazed by the quality of work that the children have produced!

Have a wonderful, restful half term!

Mrs. Luter and Miss Allen

Hello all,

Please click below to open a copy of home learning for this half term. It is a long list! However the expectation is that your child completes one challenge. They can absolutely do more than this if they choose and we look forward to sharing every Friday. If your child wants to build a model they may add to it each week but bring it in at the end of the half term or even after half term. They could record through pictures what they do each week or take photos to share if they would like to.

The children are very excited about our topic and so I am sure they will would like to bring something each week to share.

Have fun,

Mrs. Luter and Miss Allen

Titanic_homework_grid

We had a fantastic time at the Sea City Museum on Friday! Thank you so much again to all the parents and grandparents who were able to offer their time to help us. We really do appreciate it, as without you our wonderful trips cannot take place and as you saw this one was so beneficial to the children’s learning around this topic.

We all learnt lots of amazing facts about the Titanic and found out what it would have been like to be on board back in 1912! Hope they have been sharing them with you over the weekend.

The children enjoyed dressing up as ship staff and passengers who would have been on the Titanic as well as learning about names of real people and whether or not they survived the tragedy! We explored different items that would have been on the ship as well as trying to match up different smells to areas of the ship. The children also had a go at discovering how many compartments needed to fill with water before the ship would sink. We found out that if Titanic only had four compartments filled with water then it would have survived!

We are excited to find out what is inside the topic box which we bought back to school with us from the museum. All shall be revealed next week when we begin lots more work around the Titanic!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Miss Allen, Mrs Luter, Mrs Wickes, Mrs Chapman and Mrs Hewett

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas break! Well done to all the children for working so hard with completing their home learning over the holidays as well as taking part in the Bug Club Challenge with reading lots of books!

We have had a lovely first week back settling into our learning and we are very excited that we have now launched our new topic for the term which is Titanic where we have been learning lots of facts and acting out what it might have been like to be a passenger on the ship at the time of the disaster! We are all excited to find out more on Friday when we visit the Sea City Museum!

During numeracy we are continuing to practice our addition and subtraction skills. There is homework on Abacus to support this learning. Thank you so much for your continuous support with the home learning, it is showing great impact on the children’s learning.

Miss Allen, Mrs Luter, Mrs Wickes, Mrs Hewitt and Mrs Chapman