Living and Learning: Me and my money themed week
Living and Learning: democracy
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 is 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 would bring to the JLT.
Every child had their democratic vote by deciding who they’d like to see represent our class in the JLT.
Well done to Lydia May and Zara Mae for being voted as our new members of the JLT and thank you to Teddy and Rowan for doing such a good job representing the class as our junior leaders for the past year.
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?
Watch us while we work
Thank you to those parents who were able to join us for our watch us while we work session earlier this week. We hope you found it useful.
Here’s a summary of how we are encouraging the children to become more responsible for their learning at home.
Spellings – use the spelling guide for ideas to help with learning weekly spellings.
Sentence practice – use spellings to make silly sentences. Use a picture as a stimulus for writing sentences including asking questions about what they can see.
Daily reading – we thought about some of the reading skills the children are learning in Year 2 (fluency, prosody (using expression in their voices), retrieval, interpret and learning new vocabulary). Reading needs to happen daily to build up these skills. A brief note in their reading record books is needed after reading at home. We will continue to monitor the use of e-books at home. Please alert us to any access issues.
Maths – number facts such as counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and number bonds to 10 and 20 are really important to secure this year. Hit the Button is a great online game to build up the recall of these facts.
Numbots certificates are awarded every Thursday and it’s great to see children already achieving their next levels in Year 2.
Finally, here’s the help at home section of the website.
Please get in touch if you need any further support with your child’s learning at home.
Geography fieldwork
What a fantastic time we had on our Geography fieldwork this week! The children showed excellent awareness of how to stay safe while carrying out their investigations.
Before setting off, we reminded ourselves of our important safety rules:
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We wear our hi-vis jackets so we can be easily seen.
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We stay with our group and our adult at all times.
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We listen carefully to our adult’s instructions.
Our fieldwork question was: “What trees are there in Moortown Park?”
To find the answer, we took photographs and collected leaves from different trees.
Back in class, we examined our leaves carefully and used an identification guide to find out which trees they came from. We discovered a wonderful variety of trees in the park, including oak, birch, sycamore, beech, and holly.
Help at home:
Why not explore the trees in your local area? Use a leaf identification guide to see what types of trees you can find near you!
Letter writing!
We’ve just finished our class novel, Yours Sincerely, Giraffe — and to our surprise, we received a very special letter in the post! It was from Whale, one of the characters in the story!
The children were so excited to write back to Whale, telling him all about themselves. We’ve been focusing on our presentation skills and making sure to include capital letters, full stops, and finger spaces, as well as using commas in a list.
Take a look at some of our wonderful writing below!
We’ve enjoyed using our Oracy skills to read our letters out loud too!
Well done Year 2!
National Poetry Day
This week it was National Poetry Day and we’ve enjoyed sharing poems that we have read as our weekly poems so far in Year 2. We thought about what we liked about them.
In our whole school assembly, we enjoyed performing Don’t feed the animals by Robert Hull.
There was some great prosody in the children’s voices and some excellent voice projection too. Well done, Year 2! We’ve really enjoyed reading and learning this poem.
Help at home: have a look at this website to listen to and read a variety of poems at home.
Maths: tens and ones
This week, we’ve been exploring numbers to 100 in lots of exciting ways! Using part-whole models, 100 squares and place value charts, we’ve been breaking numbers down into tens and ones. Take a look at our brilliant work!
Help at home: Pick a number between 20 and 99. Work out how many tens and ones it has, then write it as a number sentence.
Example: 45 has 4 tens and 5 ones → 40 + 5 = 45
Questions
This week, we’ve been learning all about questions (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip). We learnt a question is a sentence that ends with a question mark and we discovered that many questions begin with words such as what, who, when, how, why or which.
We then came up with our own questions to ask Giraffe, the main character in our class novel. After writing them down, we had fun playing a game of hot seating. In this activity, the children took turns stepping into the role of Giraffe and answering questions as if they were him.
Help at home: Think of three interesting questions to ask giraffe or another character from the book.
Living and learning: manners and courtesy
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 our daily poem to manners to reinforce this important aspect of Living and Learning.
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.
Leeds Rhinos play offs
PLAY OFF ACTION RETURNS TO AMT HEADINGLEY
Following the conclusion of the regular season Leeds Rhinos will take on St Helens in a mouth-watering elimination play off at AMT Headingley Stadium on Saturday 27 September 2025, kicking off at 8pm.
Tickets are on sale now at Leeds Rhinos – Online ticket sales
We hope that you will join us for what promises to be a fantastic occasion as we aim to get within 80 minutes of the Grand Final at Old Trafford.
Further info can be found here Play Off Eliminator tickets on sale now
