Hello everyone!
Well, I think we can all agree that its been a funny old year so far! But it fills me with such great delight to finally welcome our new Year 2 class back into school.
We’ve had a fantastic week and have settled back into the school routines so quickly that you’d think we’d never been away. Obviously, some things are very different than before and these changes will take a little more time to embed into their (and our!) routines but we are taking it all in our stride.
Thank you for your understanding and flexibility in helping us to reopen as safely as possible and I can clearly see just how much work you have all put in at home. Thank you again!
This week’s post is a little update on what we have been doing during our first week back.
In English, we have been creating ‘all about me’ bunting to display in our classroom and the children have worked so hard to form their sentences and have been challenging themselves to use conjunctions to make longer, more detailed sentences. These look fantastic!
In Maths, we have been focusing upon counting and number recognition. We made our own board games and wrote numbers as high as we could to help people navigate around our games. We also did some data collection and interviewed our classmates about their favourite things. We will be using this data to create our own pictograms next week.
We have had a big focus on talking, sharing our thoughts and thinking about our strengths and talents. We have thought carefully about adjectives we would use to describe ourselves and have been thinking of ways we can show kindness to others.
Finally, we have been doing some lovely craft work and have painted our very own pebble bumble bees. We will be using these to make a list of the characteristics we need to have to ‘bee’ successful and fulfilled learners. The children's ideas were amazing!
Just a few bits of additional information…
Reading
I have not sent books home this weekend but these should hopefully be ready to take home on Monday. Until we complete our accelerated reader assessments on the computer, we will allow children to pick the books they are interested in. Due to the social distancing and safeguarding conditions surrounding Covid-19, books returned to school must undergo a 72 hour isolation period before they can be returned for selection. Therefore, you may find that new books aren’t sent home as regularly as before the pandemic. Please use the Oxford Owl website (oxfordowl.co.uk - username: olayear2 password: olayear2) to select books during periods in which we may not be able to send one home. These can still be written in the children’s reading record as you would with books sent home. Also, please feel free to read any books you may have at home!
Reading is so important so please do try to read as often as possible. A strong reader has strong language, writing, understanding and knowledge! It underpins everything! As restrictions ease, we will review our isolation period for returned books.
PE
PE for Year 2 will take place on a Monday and a Wednesday starting from the week beginning 14th September. On these days, please send your child into school in their full PE kit.
PE will be done in groups of 15 in order to minimise risk as much as possible.
Homework
Homework will usually be sent every Friday (where possible). This will be either in the form of worksheets taken home or tasks set on the weekly website post. This week’s homework is to practise forming letters and numbers correctly. Lots of children have forgotten how to form sounds (particularly those sounds with two or more letters) and are writing letters and numbers back to front.
Here is a collection of the sounds to practise reading and writing. (Sets 2 and 3 are meant to be printed back to back so you will find that the 1st page is mirrored on the second page (e.g. the ‘aw’ card on the right of page 1 matches the ‘aw’ sound on the left of page 2)
Set 1 powerpoint Set 2 Cards Set 3 Cards
I’ve also attached the common exception words children must know by sight from Year 1 and year 2. Please could you practise reading and writing these words regularly.
Y1 and Y2 Common Exception Words
Finally, if there are any important queries you need to talk to me about during this isolated period, I can be contacted via the Class Dojo app. I will check the app most weekdays up to 5pm.
I hope everyone enjoyed their first week in year 2 and I hope you all have a lovely weekend,
Mr Whetnall and Mrs Bowdell
