The battle of the rhyme!

This afternoon, after a busy morning of practising for our Sports Day in two weeks, we continued to have just as busy an afternoon!

2P spent some time exploring different words that rhyme and enjoyed having a rhyming battle! 

Jasmine and Oscar were rhyming warriors and everyone was very involved, excited and supportive when we were playing the game! Play this at home by deciding a word to begin on and take turns to say a word that rhymes with the starting word.  You cannot repeat a word and it does have to rhyme!!

Meet Dave...

Dave is an old friend of 2P... He also has a great love of number! Due to the fact that he has spent the last year in the loft at school, he needs a bit of inspiring again and we have started that today! 

We have taught Dave about more than and less than symbols and how they are used, as well as working on how to calculate a missing number in a sum and exploring adding using different methods.

Here is Bunty teaching Dave how to find a missing number in a sum with three numbers, for example: 

? + 8 + 8= 20 

Michael Recycle!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACQkFrNxqDM

This term in Science we will be making and doing, investigating and exploring!  Today we started our quest to gain our green Blue Peter badge by listening to the story of 'Michael Recycle', there is a video of the book on the above link.

The children began making bug jars today with the jars brought in from home, (thank you) and when complete we will be studying some bugs!  These can then be recycled to be used as a pencil holder or a storage jar when we have finished collecting bugs.  When we have finished making our bug jars we will talk about how to be fair to the insects that we collect and make sure they have everything they need!  We will also take a photo and organise a letter to send off to Blue Peter.

Monday Maths!

Yesterday was a particularly mathematical day! We started with a visit from Michele, Rory's mum who kindly came in to talk to us about her new business.  The children were very interested in Michele's germ killing powder and asked some great questions! We were so inspired we spent the rest of the day doing our business research, designing our fruit kebabs and calculating cost.  Thank you to Michele for coming in.

We also went through our mental maths questions and are doing very well!  We did manage to stop for some French with Madame Lelarge! Tres Bon! 

Below is our business logo designed by Oscar and chosen by Michele!

Weekend Challenge ~ Reading Comprehension

We have continued with a big focus on reading comprehension this week, the class have worked really hard to develop their questioning and answering techniques.  We have been answering questions about a 'Beach Detective' newsletter and the children understand that, when they are writing the answer to a written question, about a text, they must answer in full sentences!  To help them with this, they could underline the key words from a question that they need to use in their answer.

Please see an activity below, the extract is taken from Roald Dahl's, 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', our current class book!  We are aiming to read the whole book in preparation for our Roald Dahl topic next term!  Children should repeatedly refer back to the text when answering the question.

'The Buckets, of course, didn't starve, but every one of them- the two old grandfathers, the two old grandmothers, Charlie's father, Charlie's mother, and especially little Charlie himself- went about from morning till night with a horrible empty feeling in their tummies.

Charlie felt it worst of all.  And although his father and mother often went without their own share of lunch or supper so that they could give it to him, it still wasn't nearly enough for a growing boy.  He desperately wanted something more filling and satisfying than cabbage and cabbage soup.  The one thing he longed for more than anything else was . . . CHOCOLATE.

Walking to school in the mornings Charlie could see great slabs of chocolate piled up high in the shop windows, and he would stop and stare and press his nose against the glass, his mouth watering like mad.  Many times a day, he would see other children taking bars of creamy chocolate out of their pockets and munching them greedily, and that, of course, was pure torture.' 

Example:

Q: How do we know Charlie and his family were very hungry?
A:  Charlie and his family are very hungry, because they go from morning till night with a horrible empty feeling in their tummies.

Questions to try at home:

1. What is Charlie's surname?
2.  Who does Charlie live with?
3. What does Charlie long for more than anything else?
4.  What makes Charlie's mouth water on the way to school?
5.  How do you think Charlie feels when he sees other children eating chocolate?

Business as usual...

In maths this week we have began discussing our new business venture! The children made a poster about money, including all of the vocabulary they could think of to do with the subject and added coins and images of jobs that people can do.  The children also did very well on Monday with their mental maths skills and we will revisit this next week. 

The children have started designing their logo for our class business: 'BGS Fruit Kebabs'.  We will be designing our kebabs and pricing them, moving onto to calculating profit and change from payments!

Here are a selection of some of 2P's logo designs:

 

Fun in the sun!

What's better than sharing a book in the sun with friends!?

Places of Worship

2P have been enjoying some in depth discussions at the beginning of our new RE focus, 'Places of Worship', we will be discussing where different faiths go to worship and how worship can be in many different forms.

Today, we thought about a special place of our own, where we might go to think, be happy, play or if we are feeling sad or angry.

The children also remembered some excellent facts about Buddhism, our topic from last term.  

The Election

We have had some really interesting discussions this week about the upcoming election! We have had a very basic look at some different parties and the children have been sharing what they know.  

There are some nice videos on the below link which we have also been looking at:

http://www.parliament.uk/education/teaching-resources-lesson-plans/introduction-to-parliament-ks2-video/

Reading Comprehension

Our English focus this week has been reading comprehension.  We have been building on many skills including questioning, using clues in the text and answering using a full sentence.  The children have been coming up with their own questions about the book 'It's Them Monkey Pirates Again!' and answering them.  We worked on the skill of using the words from the question, to answer in detail.  

We have also enjoyed playing a word comprehension dice game, both in the sun and in the classroom and this has enabled the children to do lots of talking about texts with a partner.

Bristol Aquarium!

Year 2 enjoyed another successful trip yesterday as we toured Bristol Aquarium. After a leisurely stroll down Park Street in the sunshine we arrived at the aquarium. 

Firstly we had a guided tour with Sam, high points were definitely feeding fish and seeing the turtles! 

We enjoyed lunch by the fountains, despite having to cling tightly onto sandwiches as we were surrounded by some very enthusiastic seagulls!!

When returning to the aquarium the children were then able to explore at their leisure, accompanied by their group leader.  Everyone enjoyed using the scratch cards to answer some under the sea quiz questions.

We ended our trip with a slightly more leisurely walk up Park Street. When we arrived back at school the children sketched some different species they had just seen at the aquarium. 

Two days of brilliant maths work from 2P..

Next week, we will be starting a new project in maths- the children will be starting their own business! More information to follow next week...

Ahead of next week, we have been recapping our addition and subtraction skills again, focussing on being able to swap between the two strategies and choosing the best strategy that works for the children.

Lots of interesting conversations came out of our lessons.

* making sure that you read the question, some children were misreading the symbol so we agreed it was important to double check the calculation.

* use two strategies to check your calculation.  For example,  If you have done it mentally, double check your answer using a number line! 

* if you are solving a sum mentally, partition the number into more manageable chunks! 

Here is an example of some of the language we used when exploring these concepts in class discussion, the children chose their favourite way of referring to addition and subtraction! 

Book buddies

We enjoyed our first book buddy session today, everyone in 2P will be getting to know their Reception buddy this term as we share a book every Friday morning. 

2P's first dance lesson this term!

Today in dance with Miss Sampson, 2P started looking at interpretive dance. The were focussing on swirls, twists, folds an falls.  

Fruity Fish Fun...

Wow! I have really enjoyed looking at the children's fruit fish picture and sharing them with the class today, keep them coming! They also double as a healthy snack!