Teaching Assistants: Mrs Irvine and Mrs Kennell
Reading
From Monday to Thursday we have a daily comprehension lesson to develop our retrieval, inference, prediction, vocabulary and sequencing skills. In these lessons we enjoy reading a range of texts including stories, non-fiction and poems. On a Friday we read for pleasure to help our fluency progress.
Please make sure you bring your reading book every day so you never miss a chance to read to an adult in school.
P.E. will be on a Wednesday. Please ensure you have your full P.E. kit with you.
Fridays:
9/02 - Chinstrap Penguins
23/02 - Little Penguins
1/03 - African Penguins
8/03 - Emperor Penguins
15/03 - Adelie Penguins
Below are some exciting websites where you can practise your writing and maths skills.
Penguins have found our Unity Day on gender stereotypes very interesting! We were surprised to look on a toyshop website and find that all of the children playing with dolls were girls, and all of the children playing with cars were boys. All of the dolls wore pink outfits and all of the cars were blue or green. We decided to design our own dolls that would appeal to everyone. Penguins have also been learning about Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly to 14,000ft and thoroughly enjoyed meeting police officers who were female. We even got to go in their police car and van and put the siren on!
Penguins have had a fantastic morning deciding what they would like to go on top of their pizzas, making them and the best part - tasting them! We evaluated what we did well, and what we would change if we were to make them again. However, it was agreed that they tasted delicious!
We have painted and finished our clay animal sculptures - they look fantastic!
Representatives of NatWest Bank came to help us kick-start our topic of Money in maths. We talked about how to spend, save, donate and even invest money!
It was so lovely to have Mrs Foster in to teach Year 2 about Lunar New Year. We loved hearing about how her family celebrate and particularly enjoyed the sweet treats she shared with us at the end!
Penguins have loved Maths Rocks Day! We had a 'number of the day', played on TT Rock Stars, coloured rock star pictures and had our Rock Kidz concert. We danced our socks off!
We made our animal sculptures out of clay, using the techniques we had been taught at the Hepworth Gallery. We used tools to add detail, while pinching to create limbs, wings and fins! We will leave our sculptures to dry until we paint them next week.
Penguins have started work on 'The Big Book of the Blue' in English. We discussed why it is non-fiction and labelled a text about dolphins with non-fiction features.
Following on from our trip to the Hepworth Gallery, Penguins have been comparing the work of Barbara Hepworth with Antony Gormley. We looked at both of their sculptures and chose our favourites; thinking about what we had learnt at the gallery, including texture, colour, material, size and shape.
Penguins had an amazing time at the Hepworth Gallery. We learnt all about the work of Barbara Hepworth and were interested to find out that Brimham Rocks was one of her inspirations! We enjoyed a workshop with a real artist, who taught us all about abstract sculptures, and we had the opportunity to design and create our own. It was a fantastic learning experience that has prepared us for our work on animal sculptures this term.
We had such an exciting day on Friday! Not only was it Christmas Jumper Day, we also had our Christmas lunch and party, as well as a visit from Father Christmas himself! Everyone received an early present and enjoyed party games, including Musical Chairs.
Penguins have worked incredibly hard on their version of The Polar Express. Their vocabulary and writing techniques have been impressive! Well done, Penguins!
We have started to make our wind-up toys in DT. Firstly, we painted our shoe boxes for the background. Next, we will create our animal to go inside.
As part of representing Harrogate for 'Zero Carbon Walk to School Day', we also took part in some additional physical activities. We started off a chilly Friday morning with a jog around the playground - it warmed everyone up!
Victorian Day has been lots of fun. We have been learning in a Victorian classroom (which we realised is very strict!), carried out chores such as shoe shining, played Victorian games on the playground and made paper dolls.
Penguins started off Maths Week by recognising that maths is all around us. We looked for shapes and numbers around the classroom, matched odd socks, searched for patterns, put sunflowers in order of height and did lots of counting. We also did some 'magic maths' where we followed a sequence of problems. No matter which numbers we used, the answer was always 3!
Our topic this half-term is ‘Happy Me!’ In History we will be discovering all there is to know about houses in Harrogate! We will learn all about the main features of houses and the similarities and differences between different types. This half term we will be looking at animals including humans. We will investigate how animals and humans change as they get older, and what they need to stay healthy. In Art we will be learning how to draw a self-portrait, particularly focussing on the work of Romero Britto and Frida Kahlo.
Penguins enjoyed our woodland walk for an English Experience Day. Once we had collected lots of autumnal items, we came up with adjectives to describe them by using our senses. Ideas included 'heavy', 'smooth', 'juicy', 'crunchy' and 'bright'.
Penguins took a trip to the school library and each chose a book to take home and read. It was very exciting and lovely to see everyone so enthusiastic about books!
This week we have been learning about adding numbers using a part-whole model. We have been exploring the relationships between ones and tens. For example, looking at the similarities and differences between number sentences such as 7 + 3 = 10 and 70 + 30 = 100.
In Computing we had lots of fun practising taking photos on the iPads. Building on what we had already learnt makes a good photo, we focused on if a subject looks better in portrait or landscape. In English, we were learning about contractions and matching whole words to their contracted form.
In RE this week, we learnt about Judaism and the Torah. Penguins discovered that Jewish people treat the Torah with a lot of respect and avoid touching it. We made our own versions of a yad, which is used to read the Torah. We also wrote an explanation of how the Torah is treated with respect.
Penguins have enjoyed writing all of the things that make us incredible! We wrote about what we are good at, what we enjoy and the people we love. We have also been comparing numbers in Maths - with the help of some friendly (but greedy) crocodiles!
What a busy week! Penguins have been working hard. Some highlights have been matching offspring with their adults in Science, drawing portraits in Art, learning how to take photographs in Computing, partitioning in Maths and writing down all of the things that make us incredible in English.
Penguins have had a fantastic first day. We began learning about the story 'Incredible You' which celebrates everyone being unique. In English we wrote down our favourite animals and after learning about verbs, we wrote down what each animal would do. Penguins have also made the most of the nice weather and played some team-building games during PE.