Good afternoon everyone,

This coming Sunday marks the first week of our season of advent. In school and in church we will be lighting our first purple candle: the ‘hope’ candle. We look at all that we have suffered and lived through in these past two very challenging years and we look forward with hope to the good things we still have waiting for us. We are all hopeful that better days are coming and we pray together for health, love and prosperity for all our friends and family.

This Week

In English, we have been learning all about explanation texts. We have explored the features of these texts and have considered how we might include them in our own writing. We have also learned about glossaries and why they are so important for non-fiction texts. We’ve grown our brains by learning some new vocabulary and written our own definitions of key phrases.

In Maths, we have focused upon addition and subtraction. We have learned how to use number squares to solve problems, including finding bonds of numbers which make 100. We have also began to think about what happens when we add or subtract a single or multiples of ten to solve calculation and have developed both our written and mental methods for this.

In RE, we have been very creative. We have used our Holy Trinity designs to create clay models and have been busy painting them to make them as eyecatching as possible. I hope to add some photos of us doing this to the bottom of our blog.

In Geography, we have learned more deeply about the continents of our planet. We have used books and iPads to research a specific continent and write interesting facts about them.

In Science, we have learned all about the needs of human beings. We learned that humans need more than their 4 basic needs to be healthy, happy and to thrive and have explained the things that are important to us and why this is the case.

Nativity

Practice is well underway for our Nativity performance. Unfortunately, we will only be able to record our performance and send a link for parents to be able to access it but we hope you are as excited to see it as we are to perform it.

On the ‘homework’ tab of our year 2 section of the website, I have put a backing track for ‘Away in a Manger’. I would greatly appreciate if you could practise this with the words sent home on Thursday.

Thank you to those of you who have already learned your lines – it is incredibly helpful! Please could I ask that you all continue to practice the lines with your child as there are still several who aren’t able to recall any of their words. Many thanks.

Homework

Practicing our lines is our main homework at the moment. However, I have sent some more common exception words to practice. Please do practice these spellings as they are so incredibly important to the children in developing their writing skills. I have also sent home a worksheet to practice adding tens to a two-digit number by drawing tens (chunky chips) and ones (peas). This is some of what we have been doing this week.

Award Winners

Golden Award – Roma - For being a fantastic role model who always tries her best, shows great manners and helps others.

Writing Award – Hallie-Jayne - for working so very hard on her handwriting.

Maths Award – Jacob - for super addition work, particularly on adding tens.

Gallery

Here are some pictures of us working hard to create and paint our Holy Trinity clay models.