Good afternoon everyone,

We are now in our second week of Lent. Year 2 have been thinking carefully about their Lenten promises and how they can be better to allow them to move closer to God. We have been applying this alongside our school values of care, learn and respect to give us a focus for our spiritual journey.

This week we have discussed how the three things we try to do during Lent are to pray, to fast and to give alms. As a class, we have decided that we will say the Our Father everyday. We have also chosen what we would like to give up for the Lenten period. Next we will focus upon our giving: how we can help others.

This brings us on to our almsgiving step in our Lenten journey. This Lent, Our Lady of the Assumption is looking to fundraise for both CAFOD (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development) in its campaign to ‘Walk Against Hunger’. We will make it our own ‘Pilgrimage’ during Lent knowing that each little step we take will make a BIG difference. Each class will set its own Lenten walking target and in Year 1 we have chosen to do our walk around the school grounds. Year 2 will set out daily during the last two weeks of term to do a full circuit of the school grounds, thinking about those less fortunate then us with each step that we take. We will do this walk each day for the last two weeks of the school term. (Start date for Year 2 27th March - 6th April)

As a school are asking parents/families to sponsor their child/children to undertake their special ‘Pilgrimage Walk’. Once we’ve completed our walk, we will add our kilometres to CAFOD’s ‘ Walk Against Hunger Totaliser’. The aim nationally is 40,000 km! This is a massive challenge, but by joining together we can all help stamp out hunger one step at a time. The children will bring their sponsor forms home on FRIDAY 3RD MARCH and we are asking parents to send in the donations through PARENT PAY (by the end of this term, 6th April) and NOT send the money into school with your child. Please follow the PARENT PAY link you have been sent to set up your account - if you have any problems with this, please contact the school office. Please note you are sponsoring your child for the WHOLE challenge, not each individual, daily walk! Thank you for your support.

Sponsorship Form - in case your doesn’t make it home!

Parents Letter

English - This week we applied the skills we have learned to create descriptive sentences for settings involving powerful verbs, similes and personification (see if your child can remember what this means!). The sentences we wrote were amazing and I was blown away that they were written by Year 2-aged children! We also learned about the past progressive tense and used this in sentences.

Maths - We continued to make amounts of money in different ways. We realised that when we do this with combined amounts (pounds and pence) that it is easier to keep these separate. We demonstrated a great understanding of the different ways amounts can be made. We also practised adding together amounts of money to calculate totals.

Science - We wrote non-chronological reports all about our chosen world habitat.

RE - We learned about objects we see in our church and the symbolism they hold. We considered when we had seen these during Mass.

Geography - We began our new unit on islands by learning about what islands are and how we can identify them. We then learned about coordinates and simple two-figure grid references to help us to find places and decide whether they were islands or not.

PE - In indoor PE we continued to work on balances with our partner and performed to the class. In outdoor PE we continued to develop our dribbling, passing and trapping skills with a football.

Life Education - Steven and Harold the Giraffe came to see us from the Coram Life Education team. We learned about our body, staying healthy and how we can help people when they are feeling upset or lonely.

World Book Day - On Thursday we celebrated World Book Day. It was fantastic to see so many wonderful costumes - thank you so much for your amazing efforts! The children drew pictures of their chosen character, wrote a book review about their favourite book and created their own monster bookmarks.

Please continue to practise the Year 1 and 2 Common Exception Words - both reading and spelling!

Please practice learning the 2, 3, 5 and 10 times tables as later this half term we will be having times table tests on these.

Other Tasks

Spellings

Spelling homework this week is to continue to practise the Year 1 or Year 2 words that your child is still unsure of from the list sent home before half term. I will choose 10 of these words for the children to have a spelling test on Friday. I have sent home some practise booklets for you to use.

Handwriting

Please continue to practise the handwriting booklets.

We have noticed that fewer children seem to be reading regularly recently. Please could we ask that you read at home with your child as often as possible. The more they read, they more confident they will get. Reading is such an important skill for accessing the whole of the curriculum, including our special SATS work we will complete during May.

Golden Award -

Writing Award -

Maths Award -

Discipleship Award -

KS 1 will be marking British Science Week in school with a whole host of exciting and engaging practical experiments to really bring Science alive! We will be kicking the week off on WEDNESDAY 8TH MARCH (change from the original date of 10th due to a double booking on the company’s behalf) with a Wild Animals VR workshop from Education Group. We are really excited to start off our week with such a wonderful experience for the children. The teachers had then planned fabulous experiments for the children for the rest of the week - with each afternoon given over to Science!

To support us with this we are asking for a voluntary contribution of £2 per child from parents. If you are able to contribute, please go to your ParentPay account where this donation will be added. Many thanks. (The rest of the cost of the visit and the week will be met by school, with help from the PTFA - many thanks)