Welcome to Year 2 - Beech, Cherry and Rowan Classes

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!