On Wednesday Key Stage One visited Harewood House. As the day approached all the teachers were studying the weather with some trepidation and anxiety, refreshing the BBC Weather page in the hope that they had it wrong, they didn’t. The trip was certainly wet, however all the children came to school well prepared and we knew that we were in for a soggy but fun day. As we drove down the drive all the children cheered and clapped with excitement. During the day we each had a session in the walled garden about where our food comes from and we also had lots of time to explore the bird garden and the house. Although many of the children have visited Harewood with their families they were all very excited to be there with their classmates and it was lovely to hear them making links with our curriculum as they walked around. The highlights were seeing the snowy owls and penguins from our Frozen Planet Topic (Year Two) and our Animals Topic (Year One) as well as reading lots of signs about the different habitats that the birds and animals come from. It was a great opportunity to recap the children’s learning about classifying animals and learning about the things they eat. The children also looked at historical artefacts that tied in with our History topics. We were so proud with how the children conducted themselves and behaved throughout the visit. Well done!
“I liked the secret door because it was really interesting to see it hidden on the wall with fake books.” Honour (Year 1)
“My favourite part was when I saw the owls sitting on a branch.” Harry C (Year 1)
“I liked it when we saw the ghost in the doll’s house!” Heidi (Year 1)
“I really enjoyed it because I got to see all the animals we have learnt about in our topics.” Kara M (Year 2)
“I enjoyed looking at the penguins and watching them float past the glass.” Amelia (Year 2)
“I liked looking round the house and seeing the haunted dolls house.” Hannah (Year 2)
We have been making a start on the cars we designed last week. We are learning to measure accurately and saw the axles for our cars carefully and safely. Watch this space for the finished products later this half term.
This week we have been investigating the effects that exercise has on your body. We chose five exercises and did each one for a minute. Exercise has lots of different effects in your body including making your heart beat faster, making you out of breath and making parts of your body ache. We also learnt that exercising can make you feel happy because after exercising your release endorphins.
Leeds City Skipping Festival Final
On Tuesday the whole of Year Two went to the Leeds Beckett University Campus to take part in the first ever city wide skipping final. There were eleven schools there and over three hundred children. When we arrived you could feel the excitement and anticipation in the air. To begin all of the children skipped at once, a fantastic site to behold and then after that the real competition began. Each child or pair of children took part in their chosen skill against other schools. All the children showed fantastic skipping skills and determination to skip their best and I was very proud of them all. Jess F and Ellie both won gold certificates for their skips and we all cheered on the other winners during the presentation ceremony. Although on this occasion we did not win overall we had fun talking part and enjoying such a fantastic event. Well done Year Two!
We have been continuing our learning about patterns by looking closely at patterns in nature around us. We went outside and did careful observational drawings of lots of different natural patterns. We tried really hard to add in extra detail and take our time.
This week we have been collecting information in a tally chart to answer a question.
We then put the information into a bar chart and thought about what the data told us.
This week we have been making our own bug hotels. We thought about what an animal might need and included food, water and shelter. We also added extra things to entice the animals such as a bug escalator and a comfy place to sleep.
This week we have been exploring pattern in our Art lesson. We really enjoyed making different patterns in our sketch books and looking at what ideas our friends had and comparing them to our own.
This week we have started our new topic all about habitats. We have been outside exploring our fabulous grounds, using the ‘Learnpads’ to take photos of the different microhabitats around our school.
We have been learning about fractions of shapes and numbers. We were set a challenge of showing a fraction using some of our classroom resources. Here are some of the ways we did this.
This week we have been learning about instructions. We made Easter Nests and then wrote our own instructions. We really enjoyed making them and enjoyed eating them even more!
This week we have been looking at different seeds and sorting them based on what they look and feel like. We are now excited to see what some of them grow into.
This week we have been using clay to make our own Arctic animals. We found it trickier than we thought but all had a really good try.
We have been learning about algorithms. We learnt that an algorithm is a set of specific instructions. We all gave each other algorithms to create patterns on a grid. We then wrote the instructions using arrows and symbols. After that we made our own algorithms to play the Angry Birds Game, which got progressively harder. We learnt that sometimes you have to persevere and debug your algorithm when it isn’t quite right. Here is the link to the website if you would like to try the game at home.
Year Two are continuing to think about the seasons and how things change and grow. This week we have been planting crocuses and anemones next to our classroom. We were interested to learn that before you plant a bulb it is dormant, then you plant it and the next time you see anything from the bulb will be when it is pre-bloom. We are also growing a hyacinth in a vase in the classroom so we can see what is happening under the soil too. We have estimated how long we think it will be until we can see some pre-bloom. We are excited to watch our bulbs grow!
This half term we have been reading Paddington by Michael Bond. We have enjoyed listening to the stories and learning about all the different scrapes that Paddington gets himself into. We have written character descriptions and letters from Paddington to his Aunt Lucy in Deepest Darkest Peru. We finished this topic off by imagining that Paddington visited Primrose Lane and writing our own stories.
We have been focusing on place value, addition and subtraction. We have been trying really hard to learn number facts for numbers to 20 and have got much better at our recall of these. Mrs Bailey has been helping us to develop our reasoning skills by encouraging us to explain how we have arrived at an answer and what number facts we have used. We can now add and subtract 10 and multiples of 10 from a number really confidently.
Year Two have been focusing on online safety this half term. We talked about where you can access the Internet and found that you can get the Internet on lots of different devices such as phones, tablets, ipods and laptops. We talked about how the Internet is great because you can get lots of information from it but that you also need to be careful as anyone can put information on the Internet so it might not be correct. Lots of the children knew about Facebook and Snapchat so we discussed that these were not appropriate for Year Two children to use. We looked at the SMART rules and discussed how these can help keep us safe when using the Internet. We used the Learnpads to look at safe websites for children to use such as Cbeebies. I was really impressed with how well the children worked together to navigate around different websites and do a range of activities.
We have been learning all about materials. We have spent a lot of time learning about the difference between a material and an object. For example a key is an object, it is made from metal and metal is hard. We discussed the properties of materials and thought about how these properties make them suitable for the objects that they make. We have conducted an investigation to find out which is the best material to soak up a witchs potion and which material is best for Paddington to have his coat made out of.
We have really enjoyed watching Autumn unfold outside our classroom window. This half term we have experienced the hottest day of the year and also a lot of rain. We loved looking at a rainbow and learnt that a rainbow is created when the sun is reflected in the raindrops. We took pictures of one tree each week to watch how the leaves changed over a month. We were really excited to look back through the photos and see how the tree had changed over time.