Class Newsletter
Class 2 Newsletter Spring Term 2017
Happy New Year and welcome back to school. May we thank you all for your generous Christmas wishes and gifts; they are much appreciated and most kind – we have had a lovely time in John Lewis! We hope you have had a restful and festive Christmas break and that you are looking forward, with us, to a busy Spring term.
As you will all now know, Miss Sabin will be leaving us at the end of this term to have her baby. This should have no impact on the children’s learning and we look forward to welcoming Mrs Hall to our team before Easter.
We outline below the children’s planned learning for the term.
English
Writing skills will continue to be developed this term with an ongoing focus on basic punctuation (capital letters, full stops and question marks and commas in lists) as well as encouraging the children to extend their sentences with greater description and conjunctions such as ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘so’. We will be learning together to check our own work for accuracy and sense, with a view to making the children pro-active critics of their own writing. We will be reading a range of stories with a fox theme (linked to our new class name, The Foxes) including Fantastic Mr Fox, which will form part of a Roald Dahl author study. We will also be writing poetry and looking at non-chronological reports (information texts), increasing the children’s confidence to use the conventions of a range of text types.
We would encourage you to continue listening to your child read, discussing their understanding of the texts they are reading. The children will read daily in class, either with support or independently, with regular handwriting, grammar and spelling activities.
Maths
The children have made a good start with developing their independence and their presentation in maths. We will continue to build on these skills this term as well as developing the children’s times tables knowledge (division facts as well as multiplication). Children will be introduced to the x sign and will record the 2, 5 and 10 times-tables. They will also start to multiply by 3 and 4 by arranging objects into arrays (groups) and make links between grouping and multiplication by showing division using the division sign. The children will continue to focus on place value, using this to help them add and subtract numbers and will use a number line and counting on to help them find the difference between two numbers as well as ordering and rounding 2-digit numbers to the nearest 10. The children will add and begin to subtract 9, 10, and 11 from a number and will continually use their number bond knowledge to support them in adding and subtracting numbers, particularly when finding change from 10p and 20p and from £10 and £20. They will learn to recognise and know the value of all coins, using them to make amounts. The children will also learn to identify to properties of 3D shapes and to tell the time to the nearest quarter on analogue and digital clocks and understand the relationship between seconds, minutes and hours. Their learning will be re-enforced with practical work both within the classroom and at home through homework activities.
Geography
Our topic work this first half term will have a geography focus, looking at island environments both in the UK and in a contrasting locality (Madagascar). This exciting topic will support our non-fiction writing in English and will provide further links with our DT work as well as broadening the children’s geographical knowledge of the world beyond Europe.
History
In history, we will be learning about changes to modes of transport within living memory. This will involve children interrogating on-line and print sources as well as interviewing members of their family to extend their understanding.
Science
In the first half term we will continue to look at everyday materials, finding out how the shapes of solid objects made from some materials can be changed by squashing, bending, twisting and stretching. In the second half term, children will learn about healthy animals. They will notice that animals, including humans, have offspring which grow into adults and find out about and describe the basic needs of animals, including humans, for survival (water, food and air). They will also describe the importance for humans of exercise, eating the right amounts of different types of food, and hygiene. Children will be involved in lots of practical investigations to develop skills in planning and organising fair tests. We will be making cross-curricular links with Maths when recording data.
Computing
We will be using the school laptops and Bee-Bot programming equipment to teach the children to develop their early programming skills. Children will use logical reasoning to predict the behaviour of simple programs and will learn to create and debug simple programs. E-safety will continue to be re-enforced when using the internet for research. Developing the children’s fluency in typing continues to be important and regular practise at home will be extremely beneficial.
Art and DT
In art this term we will be looking at the use of pattern in art and producing our own print images. We will also be designing and making our own tile for the school outside area, using a range of techniques to create 3-d effects. Later in the term, we will look at the art of the London Underground, designing our own images for a ‘Clavering’ station to support our topic studies on transport.
Our DT learning will link with science, considering the properties of different materials and choosing the most appropriate materials to make our own pirate ships.
RE and PSHE
In RE, we will be thinking about new life as we approach spring and will be learning about special people in a range of religions. The themes for the children’s work in PSHE will be ‘keeping safe’, including knowing who to turn to for help when necessary, and ‘medicine and drugs’.
Music
Year 2 Music will continue to be taught by Mrs Ford on a Wednesday. This term the children will learn to play a range of tuned and untuned instruments, experimenting with combining sounds for musical effect.
PE
Having now completed their term swimming, the children will need their PE kits in school for PE on Wednesday afternoons and on Thursdays/Fridays. Mr Dyce will be working on gymnastics and on a Thursday, we will be developing skills in creative dance. Each child will need trainers suitable for use on the field as well as the playground and warm outer layers to be worn over PE shorts and T-shirts.
Mrs Rudkin and Miss Sabin
Class 2 Newsletter Autumn Term 2016
Welcome back to school! We hope you have all enjoyed a wonderful summer holiday and that the children are ready for a busy term ahead. This newsletter outlines the curriculum areas to be covered this term as well as ways you can help us to ensure the children get the most from their time in Year 3.
English
Reading will continue to be a key focus for your children’s learning to enable them to access a wider range of reading material; listening to your child read and discussing their understanding of their reading are both important to support their development. We will be giving daily classroom time to reading as well as teaching phonics daily, supported by handwriting and spelling practise. Together we will be reading some lovely texts related to where we live and linked to habitats in science, beginning with Town Mouse, Country Mouse and moving on to The Bog Baby. Children will be learning to differentiate between sentence types and to build increasingly varied and specific sentences of their own. We will also be writing poetry and studying information texts related to our history topic after half term.
Maths
This term, we will be consolidating the children’s understanding of number size and place value, establishing their knowledge of number bonds to 20 and ability to double numbers to 15. We will be building on the children’s existing mental maths skills, with an emphasis on times tables (beginning with x10). The children will be working on addition and subtraction of single and 2-digit numbers and measuring length, using the language of position and direction (clockwise, anti-clockwise). They will also learn the properties of 2-d shapes, sorting them and identifying right angles. The children’s learning will be re-enforced with practical work both within the classroom and at home through homework activities. Using money regularly to make given amounts will support their classroom learning in this area.
History and Geography
We begin the year with a study of our local area and the natural environment. We will be visiting the park before designing our own parks for the village and plotting our routes to school. After half term, our history will focus on The Great Fire of London (350 years ago) and the experiences of people at the time, including a study of Samuel Pepys.
Science
To begin the term we will be looking at animal habitats. We will explore and compare the differences between things that are living and things that are dead. We will identify that most living things live in habitats to which they are suited and describe how different habitats provide the basic needs of different kinds of animals and plants. In the second half term, we will be studying the uses of everyday materials and we will investigate and identify the suitability of a variety of everyday materials.
Computing
We will be using the school laptops to teach the children to combine text and graphics and will be consolidating their word processing and keyboard skills. E-safety will be an ongoing theme when using the internet.
Art and DT
The focus of our art this term is the creation of mixed media collages (inspired by the text ‘Window’) and the use of our sketchbooks to plan for and design a 3-d sculpture for the school, inspired by the work of Henry Moore (we hope to take the children to Perry Green to visit his studios), including making miniature, clay maquettes of our intended design. We will then work collaboratively to create a sculpture for the school.
In DT, we will be making a miniature playground for the village, linked to our geography visit to the park; the project will require the children to measure carefully, to choose appropriate materials and to consider how best to cut and join the materials to ensure stability and strength. We will also be making Christmas puddings ‘from the bakery in Pudding Lane’ in food technology.
RE and PSHE
In RE, we will be considering special things in nature and special people, with an additional focus on Judaism and Buddhism. Our PSHE learning will lead us to think about citizenship and values, discussing how we can make a positive contribution and considering our feelings and relationships with others.
Music
Year 2 will be being taught by Mrs Ford on a Wednesday. The children will be combining the musical elements of rhythm, pitch and pulse with singing and playing musical instruments, following a theme of Baboushka as we near Christmas.
PE
Year 2 has swimming this term and this will take place on a Monday morning. The pool requires each child to wear a hat as well as their own swimming costume/trunks. Whilst additional adults accompany the children to the pool, we would appreciate it if you could work with your own children to improve their speed and independence getting changed. The children will need to keep their PE kits in school for PE on a Wednesday afternoon with Mr Dyce. Each child will need trainers suitable for use on the field as well as the playground and warm outer layers to be worn over their PE shorts and T-shirts.
Homework
In addition to hearing your child read whenever possible, as the term continues, the children will be set spellings to learn each week on a Friday, ready for a test on the following Friday; please assist them with look, cover, write, check activities to consolidate their learning.
The children will normally have one piece of homework to complete each week to allow time for reading. Maths and Literacy homework will be set on alternate Fridays for return the following Thursday. Maths homework will come home in plastic folders and Literacy homework activities will be recorded in Learning Logs. We may occasionally set additional homework to support classroom learning, although this will be the exception rather than the rule, and any whole school homework will also be sent home on a Friday where possible. Please support your child to ensure that they understand what has been asked of them and that their work is clearly and neatly completed.
If you have any concerns or issues you would like to discuss regarding your child, we are always available at the end of the day (Mrs Rudkin on Mondays and Tuesdays and Miss Sabin on Thursdays and Fridays) so please don’t hesitate to ask us any questions.
A plea for help
Are you able to spare any of your time to come in and listen to children read or to help us with trips out of school? Please complete and return the attached slip to let us know of any particular areas of interest and potential availability so that we can look at putting together a timetable of support and arranging clearance as necessary – many thanks.
Mrs Rudkin, Miss Sabin, Mrs Carline and Mrs Prentice