Author: Mrs Taylor

Manners are words and actions that we can do to help us be kind and respectful to others. Good manners help us to get on well with others.

We thought about examples of good manners and we did some role play to model these good manners.

We linked manners to our reading lesson using these two poems.

Help at home: reinforce this message about using good manners at home as well as at school. Encourage your child to greet the adults on the gate as they arrive at school.

Also, have a go at this manners quiz to check your child’s understanding.

This week in Living and Learning we have been thinking about the 8Rs for learning and how these characteristics can make us better learners. This 8Rs for learning parents’ guide shows how you can support your child at home.

One of the 8Rs is being responsible and we are encouraging the children to take responsibility for their learning when they are at home. That might be practising spellings, completing their homework, spending some time on Numbots or asking an adult to hear them read their e-books.

E-book logins and reading record books will be coming home this week so please access your child’s reading book and record in their reading record book once they have read. Reading record books should then be returned to school.

Well done to Raffi, Mannat and Thea who received the first Numbots certificates of Year 2! Certificates are awarded every Tuesday.

You will find your child’s Numbots logins stuck in the inside of your child’s reading record books.

For any access or login problems, please let us know.

At the start of the new school year, the children have been reminded about rules and the importance of rules in our daily life.

Before focussing on our revised school rules, we started by thinking about…

Why do we have rules?

What rules can you think of?

What places have rules?

Who makes the rules?

Rules tells us what to do.

We need rules so we don’t hurt each other.

Rules help us to know what is right and what is wrong.

Rules help us to be happy and healthy.

In our school we have three school rules.  Three, two, one, stop is one of the most important instructions the children will hear at school.

We concluded that following our school rules will make our school a happy, healthy and SAFE place to learn.

We also agreed our Living and Learning ground rules.

Finally, we considered our rules about online safety at school. Your child has brought home their Being online – acceptable use agreement for pupils and parents/carers which should be read through, signed and returned to class.

Any questions, please do ask.

Help at home – think about our revised school rules and talk with your child about what that might look like or sound like in the classroom, the playground or at lunchtime.

The children have settled really well in their first couple of days in Year 2 with lots of new routines to learn and an earlier start time of 8:45am.

We look forward to meeting you over the next few weeks but for now, here is some key information about Year 2.

Mrs Taylor – Monday and Tuesday

Mrs Lake – Wednesday, Thursday and Friday

Mrs Maqbool also assists in the class.

Important days and dates

PE – Tuesday and Thursday

Spelling test – Friday

Library – Friday

Class assembly – Wednesday 18th October at 2:40pm

Water bottles

These should be brought to school daily and they will be brought home every day for refreshing and cleaning.

Milk

Please contact the office if your child would like to have milk in Year 2.

Homework/Spellings

Whole school homework is set every Friday (along with new spellings). Homework and spellings can also be accessed from the website.

Reading

Your child will be bringing home a letter explaining about their reading. Daily reading, whether this is their e-book, a book from home or the library, is key to making progress in reading and to develop fluency.

Numbots

We continue to use Numbots in Year 2 (using the same login as Year 1) and certificates will be awarded every Tuesday for children who complete the different stages and make the most improvement over the week.

For spelling practice, reading and Numbots, little and often (10/15 minutes a day) is recommended.

Uniform

Please do check the uniform policy to ensure your child is wearing the correct items including for PE days. Earrings must be removed on PE days.

Acceptable Use agreement

The children have brought home the acceptable use agreement for their use of the internet at school. We have talked through this together but please read it with your child and sign and return to class.

Finally, please do ask if there are any queries and keep checking back on class news to find out more about your child’s learning!

Mrs Taylor, Mrs Lake and Mrs Roth would like to thank you for all our kind and generous gifts and cards.

We have had a great year with the children and it has been a pleasure to teach them and see how much they have progressed and matured over the year. We shall miss them!

We hope you all have a happy and healthy summer holiday.

This half term, our science learning has been all about animals including humans. We have been biologists. Here is the key vocabulary we have been learning and using.

This video introduced the learning by helping us to think about what animals need to survive – what are their basic needs?

This text helped us to learn about life cycles.

We carried out an investigation to see if older children have bigger heads (and they did!). Ask your child why that is.

Our latest science learning fit in well with our Being Healthy themed week learning all about exercise and why our body needs it and why it is important to have a balanced diet based on the Eatwell Guide.

Year 1 and 2 joined together for this learning.

Finally, we learnt about the importance of hygiene and keeping ourselves clean.

We also concluded our observations over time. Here is the tree in our front playground with photos taken in January, May and July. We discussed the differences between the photos and the reasons for these. Ask your child what type of tree this is and how they know.

Every week, we measure the temperature and we observe the weather. We looked at how these have changed over the year and the link between the seasons.

Help at home: Can your child suggest some ways they could become healthier at home?

On Tuesday, we had a visit from Dave from d:side. Dave talked to us about keeping our body healthy.

There are three things that should go in our body (also known as our basic needs which is part of our current science learning). These are:

• food
• water
• air

If we have all these things, we might still get poorly so Dave reminded us of keeping safe around medicines and who should (and shouldn’t) give us medicines.

But where does the food, water and air go in our body?

We learnt about different parts of our body and where they are found. We recreated it correctly too!

Help at home: Ask your child, what were the different parts of the body we learnt about?