Author: Miss Newman

This week our poem was called I’m Glad to be Me. It linked nicely to our Me and My Community Week as it was all about celebrating ourselves and what makes us us! Our focus words were ‘precious’ and ‘personality’.

This week, we’ve been thinking all about the different communities we belong to. Here’s what we got up to each day…

Monday:

Our school community is very important to us and we thought about what makes it so special.

Moortown Primary is a happy and healthy place to learn.

We discussed what our school logo represents and how it makes us feel.

It represents friends because they’re playing together.

It shows people helping each other and being respectful because they’re holding hands.

It represents being healthy because they’re jumping and moving.

Our school is diverse and we looked at the different ethnicities and languages we’re lucky to have in Year 2.

Tuesday:

On Tuesday, we looked at how we can be different to others in are community and that’s something we should celebrate as we’re all special! What’s important, is that we also show respect to everyone despite our differences. Your children created a shield of strength to show who they are and what they’re good at.

Wednesday:

We had a jam packed day on Wednesday, filled with lots of exciting learning.

We looked at our community of friends and what makes a good friend. Although we might have lots in common with our friends, it’s okay to like different things too. We played a game of Bingo Amigo where we got to find out what we had in common with each other in Year 2.

We then had a very interesting visit from the Deaf and Hearing Impaired Team (DAHIT). They taught us a little bit more about the deaf and hearing impaired community and how we can support these people. We even got to learn and practise some sign language!

Thursday:

On Thursday, we explored our local community. Your children got a chance to walk around Moortown Park and talk to Pat about what it offers to our local community. It was lovely to learn more about all the great things happening right on our doorstep.

Beyond Moortown, we learnt about the United Kingdom and its countries and capital cities. We were able to place Leeds on this map too.

 

Friday:

To finish our themed week, we looked at our family community. All families look different and that’s what makes them special. We must always respect that other people’s families might look different to ours. We spoke about what we enjoy doing with our families and what makes them unique.

My family is unique because I don’t have any brothers or sisters.

My family is unique because we all have different coloured skin.

My family is unique because I just live with mummy.

My family is unique because my Grandma lives with us.

It was also our identity day, where your children were able to dress in something that represented there identity. Have a look at some of their wonderful outfits!

After learning about what innovations there were after the Great Fire of London, it was the children’s turn to come up with their own ideas!

Improvements and innovations that we have from the GFoL:

They built houses out of bricks and metal because wood set on fire.

They put gaps between the houses so they fire wouldn’t spread.

They had firemen and women to help put out the fire.

Innovations that buildings and houses have today that keep us safe:

• water sprinklers
• smoke and fire detectors
• security cameras
• door bells that connect to phones
• burglar alarms

We used these innovations to design our own safe homes out of Lego. Have a look at your children’s creations…

Help at home: ask your children to name their 5 favourite facts they’ve learnt about the Great Fire of London.

This week our poem was called Pile of Leaves by Denise Rodgers. In writing this week, we’ve been looking closely at adjectives and we were able to spot lots in our poem – big, plump, crinkly, red, gold and brown.

This week, our Living and Learning has been around one of the British Values, democracy.

We use voting within the classroom. For example, what class reward the children would like or which book to read at the end of the day but this week it’s our Junior Leadership Team elections so all the children had a difficult decision to make when giving their vote at the polling station.

Year 2 did a fantastic job delivering their speeches to be elected for the Junior Leadership Team (JLT).  The children thought about what would make them a good leader and what ideas they’d bring to the JLT.

Every child had their democratic vote by deciding who they’d like to see represent our class in the JLT.

Help at home: think about voting and why it is a fair way to make a decision. Are there any times you vote at home?

Yesterday, we worked as scientists by conducting an experiment to test the importance of washing our hands. We began by speaking about germs and how these can make us very poorly. To stop germs spreading, we discussed ways we can be hygienic…

We should wash our hands.

We can wash our face.

We should shower or bath.

We should brush our teeth twice a day.

We should sneeze and cough into our elbows.

To test how effective hand washing is, we conducted an experiment using bread. We had a control slice which we didn’t touch, a dirty slice which we all touched without washing our hands and a clean slice which we touched after washing our hands with soap and water.

We’ll be observing the bread over time to see how the mould grows on each slice. Stay tuned for our results….

 

This week our poem was called Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf by Roald Dahl. It’s a poem inspired by the famous fairy tale. This week, we discussed the direct speech used in the poem and how we can change our voice when we read this. For example, the word ‘cried‘ helps us know how to read Grandma’s line.