Good afternoon everyone,

This week in Year 2 has centred around respect, humility, remembrance and peace. Father Frank joined us for a class liturgy where he talked to us all about remembrance day, the significance of poppies and how we can be peacemakers. We sang a hymn together and reflected on the great sacrifice made by the brave people who fought for our freedom. We also created our own poems to reflect on the importance of remembering.

English - This week we have been exploring the features of a setting description. We looked at powerful verbs and adverbs, as well as adjectives and expanded noun phrases which we combined together to make descriptive sentences about the Great Fire of London.

Maths - In Maths we have been exploring inverse operations (addition and subtraction are inverse (opposite) operations) and have been using this knowledge to check whether calculations are correct, solve missing number problems and identify related facts.

Science - We learned about the human life cycle and how we change as we grow. We wrote about the different stages and discussed the differences between the life cycle of humans and other mammals.

RE - We have been looking at the Holy Trinity and how God is one God split into three seperate but together persons - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We explored different symbols for each part of the Trinity and discussed why each symbols was used, using our knowledge of the sacraments and stories of the Bible. We then designed our own symbol for the Holy Trinity which we made from clay and will paint next week. In our worship, we worked together to write our own pray of peace.

Geography - We learned about the difference between human and physical features and used satellite photos to identify some key physical features of Earth.

PE - Our indoor PE sessions focused upon bouncing a ball and our outdoor session focused upon kicking a ball.

Computing - We began our unit on algorithms by exploring a Scratch program and deconstructed how it is programmed.

Art - We continued our sketching unit.

Please continue to practise counting in 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s.

Please practise the year 1 and year 2 common exception words sent home before half term. The children need to be able to read and write (spelling correctly) each one of these by the end of year 2.

Spelling

Mr W’s group - Y2 Common exception words (second set)

Mrs B’s group - Y1 Common exception words (second set)

There is also a handwriting practise sheet for each group’s spelling words.

Maths

Missing number problems. Here is a poster to help you to solve them.

Just remember, some of these problems will have the = symbol at the beginning. For those type if the missing number is before the + or - symbol, do the inverse and if the missing number is after the + or - symbol, do a subtraction.

Reading

Continents reading comprehension.

Writing

Subordinating conjunctions - Complete the sentence by adding a clause after the conjunction. Then rewrite the sentence with the conjunction at the beginning. Don’t forget the comma.

E.g. I went swimming during my holiday. —> During my holiday, I went swimming.

Golden Award -

Writing Award -

Maths Award -

Year 2 PE lessons will take place on Wednesday and Friday. Please come to school in PE kit on these days.

Water bottles - all the children were given a new school bottle. This will come home each night to be cleaned and re-filled. Please only use the school bottles and ensure your child brings theirs each day. Lost water bottles can be replaced at the school office, but I am afraid you will have to pay for those. Year 2 have green tops.

I will not be in class on a Thursday afternoon, as it is my release time. This will be covered by Mrs Bowdell and Miss Andrew and is also when the children will have Music with Mrs Watson.

Party Invitations - I am afraid that Mrs Bowdell and I will not be able to give out party invitations in class. Please do not send your child into class with them for them to give out - it creates upset and fuss about something that takes place outside of school.Thank-you for your understanding with this matter.

Key Rings - please do not put key rings onto your child’s school bag, it creates fuss in class and then upset if they are lost.

School bags - please continue to use the red book bag that your child was given in Reception, we don’t not have the room to store large bags. Many thanks for your help with this matter.

At Our Lady's we like to support our parents/carers in Online Safety matters.

Keeping children and young people safe online is one of the biggest challenges facing society today and it is all of our responsibility to ensure that children are educated to make positive, informed choices when they are online.

This month’s online safety guide gives helpful advice about…

microtransactions – those in-app or in-game purchases which can tempt young users into regular online spending.

We hope you find these guides informative and helpful in promoting the positive use of technology to make the online world a better and safer place for us all.

The children loved having Mr Vincent and Bailey in school again this week. She will be with us every Tuesday and each child will have the opportunity to read to Bailey.