Mr Applegate

Just a quick reminder that we have our Space Day on Wednesday this week (20th November). The children are welcome to come in non-uniform (or any space related clothes if they have them). We will spend some time at the beginning of the day making space themed hats and accessories. Please don’t send children in any special clothes as we will being doing lots of art based activities during the day (including paper and paste), and whilst we will wear aprons, we wouldn’t wish the children to ruin any clothes that are special to them or you. Thank you for all of the bottles and newspapers you have sent in. Please keep sending in any newspapers as we get through lots when we are doing our paper and paste.

On Friday, we gave out parts for our Christmas Nativity, which we are all very excited about. We will begin our rehearsals on Monday this week, so if your child came home with lines to learn then we would really appreciate your support in helping them to learn them. We asked the children what roles they would like to do and have tried our best to match parts according to what they said, but as I’m sure you can appreciate, with 90 children it can be tricky to get this spot on for each child. If you have any concerns, please speak to your class teacher. We will aim to get costume letters home to you by Friday. We do have some costumes in school for key nativity characters and we will let you know if this applies to your child’s part.

Homework was also given out on Friday and is due in on Friday 22nd November. We send this homework home every two weeks, but children are encouraged to continue using RockStar Timestables every week and to practise their spellings each week. A number of children are missing their homework books in each class. If you could double check at home for these then that would be helpful.

As I’m sure you are aware, we have made a few changes to our reading scheme. Each child should now be bringing two individual reading books home and a library book each week. The Oxford Reading Tree Book will be the book that your child reads with an adult in class and this will then be exchanged for another book from the scheme. The Big Cat book that they bring home may be swapped on a daily basis. We would like to encourage you to read as much as you can with/and to your children at home. It really makes a substantial difference to their learning and academic progress, as-well as instilling a life-long love of reading. It really is one of the most important things you can do for your child and is lots of fun too!

We look forward to seeing you at one of our Christmas Performances on 9th, 10th & 11th December. We would also like to invite you into classes as you drop off your children on Tuesday 17th December (8.30am-9am) so that the children can share some of their learning about space and ‘Fantastic Explorers’ as part of our project outcome.

Thank you. Please pop and see us if you have any questions.

The Year 2 Team

The children have well and truly engaged with our project for this term: Globe Trotting Around North America. There has been so much learning in the last two weeks, let alone what is left to come for the rest of this term! Hopefully, you have received our ‘knowledge organiser’ and ‘topic web’ so that you are aware of what we are teaching this term. Our knowledge organiser is packed with facts, useful information, vocabulary and ideas for additional learning so please take a look this weekend if you haven’t already.

Our project started with our ‘Hook’ early last week where the children were put into teams and given a list of 20 places in North America. They then had to go on a search around school to find a picture clue which they read and tried to match to one of the places on their list.

Here are some of the clues which they were given…

Since the hook, the children have been busy learning about so many aspects of North America within Geography, English, Reading, DT, PE and Maths lessons making it a great project for cross-curricular learning and enhancing knowledge.

In Geography, the children have been locating the seven continents and have found out the names of the countries in the continent of North America. Additionally, the children have learned what ‘states’ and ‘territories’ are and located the states in the USA. As you may have read, Year 5 are having a ‘state off’ next  month; the teachers and children are already busy revising them for this fun Geography competition!

The children have also discovered that North America is the only continent which contains all the biomes! The children have found out the characteristics of each biome and where each biome is located in North America.

In Maths, the children have just finished a two-week unit about line graphs and different types of tables. We used this opportunity to teach them more about North America such as the temperatures of different parts of this vast continent. They also looked at information such as country size, country population and the native languages of these countries.

Our new English unit, based on the book ‘The Midnight Fox’, has captured the children. This book was written around 50 years ago and is based in the USA so both the subject matter and language is certainly a talking point. In this book, the main character has been sent to his Aunt’s farm for a couple of months whilst his parent are away. Despite not wanting to go originally, spotting a rare black fox has left him mesmerized. Using this book as a stimulus has produced such high-quality writing which we are looking forward to sharing with you later this term.

It’s quite amazing how much learning has happened over the last couple of weeks! We look forward to giving you an update on our DT and Art projects in a few weeks’ time.

Guten Tag! Yesterday we held our exciting ‘hook’ to immerse the children into our new history-led WW2 topic, Keep Calm and Carry on! We began with a ‘slow reveal’ of the first illustration in our focus book, Rose Blanche. Piece by piece, more of the interesting illustration was uncovered and the children made brilliant predictions about what this book might be about.

Initially, many of the children thought the image showed British soldiers either about to go to war or returning, hence the happy faces. Once the Nazi flags were revealed, the children then realised that this was in fact set in Germany showing a celebration of war being announced. We gathered together as a year group to discuss the whole picture, before being rudely interrupted by the ‘fat mayor’ who can be seen in the illustration overlooking the town square below him! He gathered us all together in our very own German market square outside Year 6 where we had to put ourselves in the shoes of the German children at this time. We learnt that the idea of war and Hitler’s views would have been welcomed by many German people in order to build a stronger nation as the years between WW1 and WW2 were punitive. Although this was initially tricky for some of the Year 6 children to understand, they were able to try and empathise.

Imagining they were German children, they took part in 3 activities: learning some German numbers and phrases, looking at propaganda posters and trying some German delicacies!

We will be exploring ‘Rose Blanche’ further in our Book Club and English lessons, following Rose’s experience of WW2. As tempting as it may be, please avoid sharing this book with your children until after we have finished using it!

Of course in history lessons, the children will learn how our amazing country was able to ‘Keep Calm and Carry on’ in order to eventually win the war and shape our nation as it is today.

Our key question for this half term is “Were there any true winners from WW2?”, with a key concept of ‘peace’.

On Friday, children will come home with their knowledge organisers for them to share with you. We would love for older generations in your family to share any experience of WW2 with the children to make it even more meaningful for them. If any family members are willing to come in and share experiences with our Year 6 children in a small assembly, we would greatly appreciate it. Please let your child’s class teacher know if this is something you could offer.