Home Learning Week 2

Good morning everyone!

I hope you all had a productive first week at home. I know it is a very unusual time for us all at the moment but I hope you have found some kind of normality and routine within your homes, where it is safe. Have we all had a go at Joe Wicks’ PE lessons? 30 minutes is a long time, isn’t it!?

Just to let you know that as a school, we have signed up to a new online resource called Oddizzi. It is primarily a geography website but has plenty of exciting activities to really bring the world to life! In this week’s Home Learning Pack (see below) I have included class logins for Oddizzi but if you cannot access the resource for whatever reason then the details are website: www.oddizzi.com username: OLAYear2 password: oddizzi please give it a go! The attached resource also contains links to this page.

Education City is still not up a running yet as far as I am aware so I will keep you posted and updated in regards to this, however, Sumdog and Times Table Rockstars are just as good so please, please keep using them!

If you are struggling with books to read with your child then please have a look at Pie Corbett’s Reading Spine for Year 2. It has a list of recommended books suitable for Year 2 children. Also look at the Year 1 and Year 3 books for a bit more range. Remember, being read to is just as important as reading to someone!

This week has also seen a wonderful new free (temporarily) maths resource come up - Carol’s Vorderman’s Maths Factor. www.themathsfactor.com. Please feel free to sign up and challenge yourself for free.

May I also remind you all to accept the invitation to Class Dojo that I sent to each and everyone of you via text message. I can see so far that 9 parents have created an account but it would be great if all of you could do this. It only takes 5 minutes to register and allows us all to keep in touch with each other. It is also a super way for you to send me over the work you have been doing at home!

Well done to those children who have already sent me pictures of the wonderful things they have been doing at home. Pictures of our learners of the week will be posted below!

Finally, I have created a youtube page. This page will be used to model the ways of teaching certain concepts that you may be struggling to explain. It will also hopefully help to remind the children of how we tackle these problems. So far, there are videos on addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and fractions. Please use these videos to help you feel more confident in supporting your child. Set your children problems involving these and see how well they do using one of the methods we have taught! The site is Mr Whetnall OLA Year 2 . Apologies for the quality. I am certainly not a youtuber! :)

Here are the links to this week’s learning.

Home Learning Topic Week 2

Voice In the Park Story By Anthony Brown

Voices in the Park Reading Comprehension

Maths Problems of the Day Week 1

Multiplication and Division Sheet

I hope you are all still happy and working hard for Mums and Dads at home. Stay safe, stay well and stay inside. Have a great week Year 2!

All our love,

Mr Whetnall, Mrs Bowdell and Mrs Debowska.

Week 1 At Home

Hello Year 2!

I hope you are keeping safe and well and are behaving nicely for your Mums, Dads and the other people who care for you!

Isn’t it lovely weather? Make sure you go outside in the garden and enjoy the sunshine - it’s very very good for you and will make you feel much more cheerful. Have you planted your seeds and bulbs yet? Don’t forget to keep checking on them to see how they grow. What do they need to grow well? Also, have any of your pea seeds grown yet? Ours have!

Remember to keep washing your hands before and after meals to keep yourself healthy too!

I hope lots of you have made a start on your home learning packs sent home on Friday and are enjoying your new teachers! Remember, don’t rush through them too quickly - I want you to concentrate on doing them as well as you can, rather than just trying to finish them all.

At school, we are sending home home learning work for the first week. This is in the form of a project. This week’s project theme is ‘family’. There are plenty of activities to go at, but again, try not to do more than 1 or 2 of each activity each day. As a guideline, I recommend a minimum of 1 and a half to 2 hours work a day - this is plenty so don’t feel that you have to fill every second of the day with learning. Enjoy the family time!

Home Learning Project One is here.

We hope you are all safe and well and we want you to know that we miss each and every one of you so much! The school is so quiet without you. Feel free to send me pictures of what you have been doing!

Lots of love,

Mr Whetnall, Mrs Bowdell and Mrs Debowska

'Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it." - Winston Churchill

The government have announced that due to the ongoing Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, all schools in England will be closing in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. I appreciate how difficult of a time this is for you all and I wish you health and safety for the potentially challenging weeks to come. I know many of you will have many concerns during this period, and that your child’s learning may rank quite low on this list, but, in an attempt to help us to support your children and maintain as much normality as possible, we as a staff have decided to send home learning packs for your child to complete at home. In these packs are a range of resources focused primarily upon maths, reading and spelling, punctuation and grammar which will act as revision aids to allow you to maintain the learning your child has engaged in so far this year. Obviously, the packs are a finite resource but the types of questions and aspects of learning that they propose can be used for you at home to set your child more work, based upon the template that these resources provide. I do hope that you find them useful in bringing routine to your child’s days during the quarantine period. Please do not return these packs at the end of the closure period, as this could further perpetuate any potential spread of disease.

Our school has set up year group email addresses which will be checked by staff at least once a week, should you have any questions about your child’s learning at home or queries about the content of the pack. The Year 2 address is year2@our-lady.blackpool.sch.uk . I will try to respond to as many of your queries as is possible!

As well as this, we would like to recommend other online resources that can be used in order to give your child a broader depth of curriculum experiences. These are listed below:

Twinkl – got to www.twinkl.co.uk/offer and enter the code CVDTWINKLHELPS to be able to access a fantastic bank of educational resources which can be printed – or copied or read on screen if you do not have printing facilities. Resources are easily grouped and can be accessed by going to KS1 -> Year 2 and then choosing the subject area you wish to focus on.

Education city – www.educationcity.com – login and password on packs.

Sumdog – www.sumdog.com – is a site with numerous useful resources. Account details on packs.

Times Table Rockstars - www.ttrockstars.com - Login and password on packs - practice times tables.

Starfall – www.teach.starfall.com – a reading and phonics website – although American, there are many useful resources here.

Reading Bear – www.readingbear.org – another site with a range of reading activities.

Phonics play – www.phonicsplay.co.uk – another brilliant Phonics resource site with interactive games.

Letters and Sounds – www.letters-and-sounds.com – Phonics resources

Oxford Owl – www.oxfordowl.co.uk  - Reading and phonics resources

Bee bot app – search ‘bee bot app’ on the google play or apple app store – computer programming skills

Explorify – www.explorify.wellcome.ac.uk – Lots of great Science resources

ICT games – www.ictgames.co.uk – Lots of educational games.

Topmarks – www.topmarks.co.uk – Lots of educational resources.

PE with Joe – youtube ‘the body coach’ – PE lessons for kids, new every morning.

Get epic – www.getepic.com – access to a free month for appropriate reading materials.

White Rose Maths – www.whiterosemaths.com/resources/schemes-of-learning/primary-sols/   - This is a fantastic maths resource site with home learning packs.

Primary Stars – www.primarystarseducation.co.uk/covid-19-year-2

Cosmic Yoga – www.youtube.com/user/cosmickidsyoga - Mindfulness through Yoga.

Go Noodle – www.youtube.com/user/gonoodlegames/featured - Brain activities to keep your mind fresh!

Audible – search the app store for ‘audible’, also available on Alexa and Google Home Devices – This audio book company are apparently offering free children’s audio books – great for letting them settle down to listen to a great story!

Amazon Kindle – available as an app on all devices – This is not free but I wonder whether a £7.99 Amazon Prime account would grant access to e-books for your child!

Finally, we will be sending home a ‘scrapbook’ for children to use for any writing activities they may engage in. I would like each child to keep a daily diary of anything they do or learn written in full sentences with exciting vocabulary. I appreciate that there may not be many exciting things to include in the diary.

Also, please focus on any of the following writing areas to maintain skills in these areas:

Narrative stories/fairy tales/stories about familiar places/adventure or quest stories

Non fiction texts such as explanations (e.g. life cycles), instructions (e.g. how to make a cake), letters (write to a famous person), reports (all about animals/places, etc)

Poems – use rhyme, rhythm and alliteration to write simple poems.

When writing these text types, please focus upon the follow grammar and punctuation: capital letters and full stops, adjectives to describe nouns, adverbs to describe actions, question sentences (what is your favourite toy?), exclamation sentences (what a fantastic day it was!/ How lovely that picture looks!), command sentences (get that toy!, come here, etc) commas for lists, words with suffixes (-ed, -ing, -ful, -less, -er, -est, -ness, -ment), time phrases (first, once, then , next, one day, the very next morning etc), conjunctions (and, or, but, because, so, if, when, until, etc), apostrophes for possession (John’s dog) and for omission (can’t, won’t, didn’t).Regularly practicing these will maintain your children’s skill in these areas.

Keep mindful that all future updates will be relayed solely through our school website. The address is  http://www.ourladyassumption-sch.co.uk/

We wish you all the best for the coming weeks and look forward to seeing you all soon.

God bless, stay safe and stay well,

Mr Whetnall, Mrs Bowdell and Mrs Debowska.

"So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall." - Roald Dahl

What an exciting week it has been! We have had lots of fun in Year 2, which penultimately culminated in lots of celebration on World Book Day!

Thank you so much for the effort and time you put into your World Book Day costumes - we are always delighted to see the variety of characters and books that the children like to read.

Our World Book Day was a day of engagement with reading. Reading is so important to what we do in school, it underpins absolutely everything! If you cannot read confidently, you will miss out on a world of activities and opportunities. Not only that, but think of all the fun you will miss out on without being able to cosy up with a good book! Grab a book and enjoy reading it!

To celebrate WBD, the children shared their books from home with other children. It was lovely to see the enthusiasm and joy as children shared their favourite books and discovered new titles for themselves. We also had a book scavenger hunt where we had to scour our reading area to find characters, topics and features hidden within stories. The children absolutely adored this! We made our own little monster book marks to help us to keep our page. They’re fantastic! We intended to have our own quiz but unfortunately ran out of time so this will hopefully occur at some point this week.

Outside of World Book Day, it has been another exciting week with lots of learning.

In English we have been learning all about informal letters and have been applying our skills by writing a letter home as Florence Nightingale detailing our experiences in the military hospital in Scutari. I’ve been very impressed by the standard of writing in these letters so far!

In Maths, we have been looking more deeply at multiplication. We have been solving problems by drawing arrays and also using our times table facts to help us to quickly solve 2x and 5x table problems.Remember, the better your child can recall their 2, 3, 5 and 10 times tables, the easier they will be able to solve problems in a range of situations, including their “special work” coming up later this year.

In Science, it’s been all about plants! We have been checking on our seeds and bulbs, many of which have started to germinate - ask your child what this means! We have also set up an investigation to see exactly what plants need to grow properly.

In RE, we have focused upon lent, making lenten promises and learning about some of the signs and symbols of lent.

In History, we have been learning about another revolutionary nurse - Mary Seacole! We learnt how she changed nursing and how she paved the way for both women and for racial equality. Can your child tell you a fact about Mary?

Finally, our grammar focus has been upon different sentence types - statements, commands, questions and exclamations. There is at least one example of each in this blog. Can you find them all?

Award winners this week…

Golden award - Oscar - for his kind actions in helping others.

Writing award - Emelia - for a super informal letter.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mr Whetnall, Mrs Bowdell and Mrs Debowska.

Happy Holidays!

It’s finally half term and we are all ready for a very well-deserved break! The children have worked hard right up until the last minute of today and have made me proud with what they have achieved.

In English. we finished our setting descriptions and I have been well and truly blown away by the use of metaphors, similes, adjectives and expanded noun phrases by all of the children! They are wonderful to read.

In Maths, we have concluded our work on money. I am so impressed with the level of skill the children have with using money and they have demonstrated this consistently recently. We are still struggling with word problems and I think this might be because we are rushing to finish and not thinking carefully about what we need to do.

In Science, we have learned about different materials and how they can be changed and have explored changing a variety of materials.

In RE we have learned about Jesus’ miracle when he fed 5000 people. We wrote a newspaper report about this.

Homework for half term is a SATS paper. It is for reading as I feel this is an area where many of the children still need a bit of practice! Please allow them to complete this as independently as possible as this will help you to gauge where they are with their reading development. The homework doesn’t have to be returned until 27th February so please do it in bits if this is easier.

Award winners this week are….

Golden award - Ruby - for always being a super role model.

Writing award - Joseph for super ideas and Avie for a super setting description.

Maths award - Isabella - for always getting stuck in and welcoming a challenge.

Have a lovely and safe half term,

Mr Whetnall, Mrs Bowdell and Mrs Debowska

We can all be significant...

Another hectic week in Year 2!

We have been learning lots of new things.

In Maths, we have finally finished our units on addition and subtraction! We have been solving word problems and have looked at different methods of adding 3 digit numbers together. Some of us have even solved problems involving more than one step!

In English, we have continued with our read write inc books. Mr Whetnall’s group have begun their new topic all about quest stories. We will be writing setting descriptions, instructions and our own quest story.

In Science, we have completed our experiment about which type of paper is the most absorbent. We tested 7 different types and recorded our results in a bar graph. Newspaper was surprisingly absorbent!

In RE, we have asked questions about the story of Jairus’ Daughter and have now moved on to look at the story of the Thankful Leper. We have thought about the significance of saying thank you to God.

In History we have explored significant people. We thought about what makes someone significant and that being significant might not always be for good reasons.

We also talked about the ways in which we can be significant by being gentle, kind and caring. This brings me on to my next point, regarding rough behaviour and play in Year 2. I have sent a letter home tonight to some children regarding behaviour expectations. It is available here. Please discuss appropriate behaviour with your child.

Golden Award Winner - Avie for being an excellent role model.

Writing Award WInner - Jacob - for a super non-chronological report.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mr Whetnall, Mrs Bowdell and Mrs Debowska.

We are hopeful

It is finally week 1 of advent and we have been making ourselves hopeful this week. We have been hoping that good things come to our family and friends and are hopeful or the arrival of baby Jesus.

It has been another very busy week in Year 2. Nativity rehearsals are well under way and I cannot thank you enough for your hard work in helping your children learn their lines. They are amazing!

In English, we have been writing our own action stories, based upon Fantastic Mr Fox. They are looking fabulous! We will be continuing these next week.

In Maths, We have been continuing work on addition and subtraction and have been making difficult subtractions look easy by drawing our tens and ones. We used lots of practical equipment to prepare us and have been busy drawing today!

In Science this week, we have concluded our work on staying healthy with a focus upon the importance of washing our hands. Take a look at this picture of different pieces of bread and see what you think about washing your hands! We were shocked!

In RE, we have made our own advent wreaths and have begun to write our weekly advent promises.

Award Winners This Week…

Golden Award - Joseph

Writing Award - Hallie

Maths Award - Ayson

I haven’t been sending home homework recently as I want children to focus on their Nativity lines and their reading. However, if you would like an activity to complete this week here are two Maths sheets involving addition and subtraction which the children can draw their tens and ones for. See if they can remember how to use tens and ones to solve these. Remember, when taking away “If the ones we take away our bigger than the ones we have, swap 1 ten for ten ones.”

Addition Sheet

Subtraction Sheet

Have a lovely weekend,

Mr Whetnall, Mrs Bowdell and Mrs Debowska.

Lest We Forget...

Today in Year 2 we have had a very important visit from the Blackpool Fire Service. They came in to talk to us all about fire safety and to talk us through what to do if we hear our smoke alarm going off at home. The children listened very carefully and learned all about staying safe in the event of a fire. We acted out a fire plan we might have in our home.

The Firemen left us some homework:

1. To learn our home address

2. To check we have a working smoke alarm

3. To make a fire plan with or families.

In English this week we have finished out Great Fire of London diary entries - they are fabulous! We have also begun to plan our explanation texts on the life cycle of frogs.

In Maths, we have focused upon addition and subtraction and have been learning how to use tens and ones equipment to solve simple addition problems, relating this to column addition.

In RE, we have been wondering about God’s world. We have asked questions which have no right or wrong answers and have been sharing our own ideas on these. I have been blown away by the level of thought Year 2 have put into them.

In PE, we have begun our second dance unit all about the seaside (on the wettest day of the year so far!) .

We have been talking about poppies and Remembrance Day and next week we will be making our own poppy pictures and poems. The children have been tasked with observing a two minute silence on Remembrance Sunday.

Award winners this week…

Golden Award - Lexi Rose

Writing Award - Max

Maths Award - Jacob.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mr Whetnall, Mrs Bowdell and Mrs Debowska.

E=MC2 - We are genuises!

It has come to the end of a very short - but very busy - week in Year 2. The children have hit the ground running and have got right back into the swing of things.

In English, we have begun our work on explanation texts. This will lead up to us producing our own explanation piece on the life cycle of a frog! We have engaged in lots of discussion and thinking about animals and how they grow. We have also thought about the importance of asking and answering questions in our writing, making sure to use question marks at the end of our sentence.

In Maths, we have really focused upon comparing number sentences using < > and = (see homework) and have begun to think about ‘shortcuts’ - is there a number bond? Do the number sentences have something in common? Can we do quick counting? We have really got our heads around this!

In PE, we have continued with our ball skills topic and have been practicing moving whilst passing the ball to get into a better space.

In History, we have been planning our diary entries for the Great Fire of London, which we will write next week.

On Thursday, it was World Maths Day. We all came in fantastic costumes and enjoyed a day full of maths! We built 3D shapes out of matchsticks and straws, made our own exciting word problems, timed our activities during PE and designed posters all about why we love maths! It was a lovely day with some real hard work. Thank you all for your efforts in finding and creating such wonderful costumes.

No award winners this week as we have had our All Saints Day Mass in church.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mr Whetnall, Mrs Bowdell and Mrs Debowska.

Here are some pictures from World Maths Day…

This week in Year 2...

It’s been another action packed week in year 2.. We have worked very hard and I can see our skills developing every week!

In English, we have continued with our Read Write Inc literacy groups and are making fantastic progress. In class, we have begun to plan our stories with a familiar setting where we will be looking at standing up to bullies. Next week, we will begin to write our stories!

In Maths we have been ordering and comparing numbers - give us a list of any numbers to 100 and we will be able to order them or use the greater than and less than symbols to compare! I have been very proud of the work they have produced.

In Science, we have taken a close look at how humans change as they grow. We have been able to look at all the ways we have changed since we were toddlers and how we will continue to change.

In History, we have been writing fact files about Samuel Pepys after learning all about his life. Our sentence formation and handwriting has been exceptional!

In RE, we are learning all about baby Moses and how he was chosen by God before he was born. We will continue to link this story to how God has chosen us to share his love with others.

Our Maths Award Winner - Ayson for super reasoning.

Our Golden Award Winner - Amelia for a super attitude towards learning.

Our Writing Award Winner - Avie for a super retelling of the story of Abraham.

Homework has been sent home. Could it please be returned by Thursday?

Have a lovely weekend,

Mr Whetnall, Mrs Bowdell and Mrs Debowska

Below are some pictures from our European Day of Languages last week. We learned “tete, epaules, genoux, pied” (ask your child ;)) , made tourist posters for France and created our own art straw Eiffel Towers.

Another exciting week

This week in Year 2 we have been very busy again and have all worked incredibly hard!

In English we have been getting to know our new Read Write Inc groups and have been really practising our reading and writing skills.

Our Maths has been a continued focus upon partitioning two digit numbers as we are finding this quite a challenging topic. However, we are using our mastery approach, using varied representations of numbers and have been exploring the different ways numbers can be made out of tens and ones. We’re getting there!

In Science, we have looked at how animals change as they grow and the 7 life processes all living things must do to be alive. We have begun to discuss the differences between living things, once living things and things which have never been alive.

In History, we have been compared life in modern London to how things would have been in 17th Century London. We explored the importance of electricity, brick houses and petrol for making modern life much easier!

in RE, we have been looking at the story of Abraham and Sarah and how Abraham was chosen by God to lead his people. We have been retelling the story and thinking about the meaning of the events which occurred.

In Computing, we have been programming our friends to follow a path, ready for when we begin our coding topic in the coming weeks. We gave clear directions and showed a good knowledge of coding skills.

Our maths award winner this week was Rion for his super fluency and reasoning skills.

No golden award or writing award so far this week as we haven’t had assembly.

I would also just like to explain: you may find your child coming home with easier looking reading books. This is due to a scheme based upon raising comprehension skills. The children take an initial quiz on the computer which determines their comprehension level. Books are then assigned based on this level - easier books allow children to focus upon their UNDERSTANDING rather than simply word reading. As they complete books the children will take quizzes based upon their books. As time goes by, the level of difficulty in the books will increase as they score higher points in these comprehension quizzes.

Just to mention.homework was ready but wasn’t given out today. I will hand it to the children on Monday and they will have until Thursday to complete it.

Also, don’t forget… it is European Day of Languages on Thursday. We will be focusing upon France so please come to school in red, white and blue clothing.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mr Whetnall, Mrs Bowdell and Mrs Debowska

Settling In

Can you believe it’s already the end of our second week in school? Time certainly flies! The children have settled in very well and are really pushing themselves to be Perseverent Peters by facing new challenges head on! We have completed some wonderful work and I cannot wait to see just what we can achieve this year.

In English, we have been learning about recounts and have been writing our own recounts of the summer holidays, using conjunctions and time phrases. Towards the end of the week we have also done some dictionary work and are now experts and finding words in our dictionaries.

In Maths, we have been focusing upon place value and counting to 100 using our Power Maths scheme. We have been demonstrating our mastery knowledge and all the ways we can represent numbers. We have begun to focus upon partitioning numbers into tens and ones but lots of us are still finding this a little tricky so I have attached two worksheets to print out and try for homework.

Tens and ones Sheet 1

Tens and ones Sheet 2

In Science, we have been learning about classifying different groups of animals and have also been learning how they change as they grow. We have produced a wonderful piece of writing about the life cycle of a butterfly.

In RE, we have been learning about how we are all God’s chosen people and how we each have special talents and can use these to thank God.

In History, we have started our work on the Great Fire of London by looking at Samuel Pepys diary and using it to sequence the events of the Great Fire. The children are absolutely loving this and cannot wait to do even more!

Our award winners this week are…

Maths Award - Frankie

Golden Award - Zak

Writing Award - Ruby.

Have a fantastic weekend,

Mr Whetnall, Mrs Bowdell and Mrs Debowska