Home Classes Welcome to year 2 - beech, cherry and rowan classes

Welcome to Year 2 - Beech, Cherry and Rowan Classes

Teachers:

Miss Theobalds

Teacher: Beech Class

.

Miss Cohen

Teacher: Cherry Class

Miss Owen

Teacher: Rowan Class

My name is Miss Owen and I have taught at Sandown Primary School for 12 years. I’m passionate about teaching and love to see the children gain confidence in their different subjects, especially with their reading. Out of school I love spending time with my family, including my two children and dog called Teddy. At the weekend we like to go on long walks in the countryside or take our bikes up to Bedgebury Pinetum. I have recently moved house so this year is all about decorating and keeping the garden looking as tidy as when we moved in.

TAs:

Miss Starnes

TA:

Miss Featherston

TA:

As children work towards their SATS at the end of year 2, our main aim is to encourage them to be more independent, to be resilient learners and to enjoy their learning. The curriculum is taught in a variety of inspiring and engaging ways.

We also have some exciting events and visits taking place throughout the year:

Christmas singing concert
A visit from a Theatre Workshop during the topic of The Great Fire of London
Trip to Ashdown Forest
Ice Cream Parlour
Sports Day

Communication between home and school is crucial throughout your child’s time at school. You can contact us easily through notes in home-school link books, speaking to us in the mornings/afternoons when you drop off/pick up your child and through Class Dojo messages.

Our door is always open!

TERM 1

WOW! What a great start to the year! The children have quickly and positively settled into year 2 and responded well to new routines.

Stunning Start:

We kicked off the term with a stunning start for our Geography topic, The United Kingdom. The children had to demonstrate both listening and teamwork skills to complete a huge scavenger hunt around the school grounds. They had to work together to read and decode each clue in order to find the next. At the end, they had to solve the puzzle in order to make each flag of the four nations. We then continued to look at where in the UK we live, the four nations and their capital cities.

Story Telling Festival and STEM Week:

The last week of this term saw a whole school celebration of everything creative. We celebrated Hasting Storytelling Week with a visiting puppet show production of ‘Oldilock and the three bears’. We also invented and designed Nessie catching machines and entered an engineering competition in the hope that we can get some of our inventions made.

Fantastic Finish:

This term Year 2 have been reading the story ‘No Such Thing as Nessie’ by Chani McBain and Kirsteen Harris-Jones. We have been busy predicting, clarifying, summarising and reflecting upon this story so we can retell it fluently. To finish our English this term we enjoyed making Nessie’s favourite treat – Shortbread biscuits!

Outdoor Learning:

We have been lucky to have outdoor learning sessions on Thursday afternoon where we have been planting, caring for our wormery and getting arty in the woods with mud tree sculptures. We love outdoor learning and can’t wait for next term when we get to continue these sessions.

TERM 2

What a fantastic term, it’s certainly been a busy one! All the children have amazed us with how well they are engaging with their learning and working so hard.

Reading, reading, reading!

In Year 2 we are passionate about getting the children to be more confident readers. This term we have had a huge focus on phonics and all the children have taken part in the Phonics Screening Check. The class text ‘Finn MacCool and the Giant’s Causeway’ has really engaged and inspired the children to produce some wonderful pieces of writing. We had a visit from a librarian who talked to the children about how they can use their local library service to access lots of fantastic books for free! He also spoke to the children about his job as a librarian and the children asked some interesting questions.

Fire, Fire!

This term Year 2 have continued to learn about the Great Fire of London in our history lessons and deepen their understanding of how we know about the events that took place 350 years ago. Linked to this in Design and Technology, the children have been researching, designing and making Tudor style houses. They investigated the best materials to use to make a model house and what shapes are used to create strong and stable building structures.

Christmas Shenanigans:

Christmas is always such a fun time of year at school. It’s when the children can really start to get excited about the arrival of Father Christmas. This year the children have got to take part in a Santa dash around the running track, enjoy a delicious Christmas dinner and even got to meet the Mr or Mrs Santa Claus themselves. On a more serious note, they have learnt in RE how Christians today prepare for Advent in the Church. We had a visit from a local vicar who explained what an advent ring was and identified the symbolism of each candle on the advent ring.

Christmas Concert

The children absolutely loved performing all their Christmas songs for you and worked so hard to learn all the words and actions. It was a wonderful way to finish the term and we really hope you enjoyed the concert as much as we all did.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Term 3

What a great two terms we have had! We are SO impressed with how hard the children are working. Our topic has been Coastline and the children have really improved their geographical knowledge. They have used maps to locate seaside towns in Britain and they have also used a compass to say whether they were in the north, south, east or west. The children explored how Hastings has changed as a coastal town over time by looking at photos of the past and today.

Our DT topic in term 3 was Beach Huts. The children researched the features of a beach hut like an apex roof before designing and constructing their beach huts. They were extremely careful with using the saws to cut their pieces of wood even though it was hard work and their arm muscles were aching! The children’s final decorations were bright and colourful to stand out on the beach even on a gloomy day like we sometimes have!

Our science topic in term 3 was materials. This work supported our DT work as the children had to think about what is the best material for a specific task and why. They investigated the properties of different materials by testing how strong, absorbent or smooth they were. The children also went on a materials walk to explore the different materials they could find in school and whether they were natural or manmade.

In maths, the children learned about mass, temperature, money and started to learn about 2D shapes. They know that shapes have different properties like the number of sides and whether they are symmetrical or not.

Term 4

Term 4 has been super busy!

In maths, the children have continued their learning of 2D shapes before moving onto 3D shapes and now fractions.

A real highlight of the term was World Book Day! It was great to share stories with Holly Class. The children loved playing Guess the Character and were super confident at knowing the characters which just shows how much they love reading!

Year 2 also thought Career’s Week was great! Nina’s mum, Mariam, came into school and it was interesting to find out how challenging but rewarding it is to be a nurse. The children had lots of great questions and afterwards thought carefully about what jobs they might like to do in the future and what essential skills they would need to do the job.

Science Week was also in term 4 and it coincided with Career’s Week so we researched the work of a marine biologist called Dawood Qureshi. The children were interested to learn what skills you need to be a marine biologist and what it’s like studying wildlife around the world.

The children have worked hard in school and our excited for the Easter holidays now. They have learnt all about the Holy Week and should be Easter Experts!

Term 5

We started term 5 with a trip to Hastings seafront. Year 2 visited the RNLI lifeboat station and the Fisherman’s Museum to find out more about our coastal town and its history. The children completed worksheets identifying the physical and human features of the coastline. It was a great day and the ice cream at the end was a treat for all the children’s hard work!

In term 5 we launched our Magnificent Monarchs topic which continued into term 6. Through the topic we have created a timeline of all the kings and queens of England and Britain from Alfred the Great until King Charles III. To launch our topic we had a perform workshop where we learnt about the life of King Charles III. We also acted out the coronation procession before watching it at home with our families. As a school we celebrated the coronation with our picnic in the sun.

Our science topic for terms 5 and 6 has been Animal Survival. We have looked at invertebrates and their characteristics as well as the microhabitats where you can find them. Our learning in class was supported by observing living things in various microhabitats during outdoor learning.

Our art project for terms 5 and 6 has been Portraits and Poses. We have learnt all about portraiture through analysing the portraits of Tudor monarchs and comparing Tudor portraits with selfies today. We have used photo editing software to create royal portraits.

Term 6

Our Magnificent Monarchs topic has continued where we have focused on 6 significant sovereigns: Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II. The children have looked at how the power of the monarchy has changed over time and discussed which monarch they think is the most significant and why.

In science in term 6 we have identified and researched what an animal needs to survive. We have constructed simple food chains, learning the terms ‘producer’ and ‘consumer.’ We have explored how humans can harm and help animals’ habitats and made posters to persuade people to help habitats. We have looked at the stages in animals’ life cycles and matched the offspring to the adult. We revisited learning about the four seasons and explored how animals’ behaviour changes across the seasons and how this links to their life cycles. Through outdoor learning we have thought about how humans can have a positive impact on wildlife and we built bug hotels to encourage wildlife in our school grounds.

We have been active in term 6! As well as our brilliant sports day we really enjoyed the Game On Challenge Day. Through working as a team to design our own sports we focused on our 8 essential skills. We worked as a team; we listened to each other and gave our own ideas; we were creative with our ideas and we problem solved when we needed to change something about our games. It was a really positive and motivational day, especially listening to Courtney Orange tell us all how we can overcome challenges and turn them into strengths. We tell ourselves ‘I… CAN…DO…IT!’