Design and Technology: food
This week, Year 2 have been using their food preparation skills to create their latest product, fruit salad.
This forms part of our Design and Technology food learning which involves following a recipe to create a product each term.
First, we got ready to cook.
Here are some of the skills we used.
Draining
Peeling and segmenting
Bridge hold (for chopping)
Claw grip (for chopping)
Measuring
Mixing
Finally, the children got to enjoy their fruit salad.
I LOVED my fruit salad because it had lots of different fruits in it and it is so healthy.
I especially liked the strawberries and I would add more next time.
Next time, I will add different types of fruit like pineapple or melon.
Next time, I would add more orange juice.
I’ve never had kiwi fruit before but I really liked it.
I will try frozen raspberries again. They are really juicy.
We always evaluated our product afterwards to see how it could be changed it next time.
Well done to all the children who worked safely and sensibly with Ms Canning.
Help at home: your child has taken this recipe home. Can they demonstrate some of their food preparation skills by making this again at home.
What is a microhabitat?
Today in Science, Year 2 explored microhabitats in the school grounds.
First, we thought about different microhabitats and what living things might live there.
We looked for living things in different microhabitats. We discussed the microhabitat’s features and how it meets the living things needs for survival.
World book day!
Today we celebrated reading in Year 2!
The children looked fantastic in their world book day outfits. We enjoyed talking about our favourite characters and books.
We started the day with an assembly celebrating the origins of world book day and listening to some of the teachers read extracts from their favourite books. Mr Wilks talked to us about how books can mean different things to people and how to spend the £1 book token.
Later in the morning, we enjoyed paired reading with Year 4. It was fantastic! all the children enjoyed sharing their favourite stories and reading aloud to a Year 4 child.
Finally, after playtime, we had a webinar with John Patrick Green – author of the Investigators books. We listened to how he creates the books and had a go at drawing some of the characters. The drawings were fantastic!
Help at home by discussing the activities your child has done today and looking at the free books they can buy with their £1 book token.
Living and Learning: I know we’re all the same and we’re all different
Last week, in Year 2 , we have read the book ‘Elmer’ by David McKee and considered things from another’s point of view. How might Elmer feel about being different from the other elephants? Why did Elmer want to look like the other elephants? How do the other elephants view Elmer?
Through this book, the children were able to discuss how the elephants are the same and different. We have applied this to ourselves too.
Help at home: What similarities and differences are there between all the people in you family? Encourage you child Say what they really like about someone else and why.
Class assembly
The children have been working hard to get ready to share their learning at our class assembly tomorrow, 6th March.
See you at 2:40pm.
We hope you enjoy it!
The Secret Garden
It was a pleasure to welcome M&M productions to perform ‘The Secret Garden’ for us. It’s a classic story (written in 1911!) about resilience and friendship. They gave it a modern twist with some familiar songs – it was very entertaining!
What a start to the week it was! Keep your eyes peeled for what we get up to on World Book Day, this Thursday.
Help at home by discussing what your child liked about the performance using the pictures above! Can your child retell the story?
We loved it!
Y2 – I really liked it because Master Colin was able to walk. He believed in himself.
Y6 – It was funny and had all the things a play should have. I’ll definitely be checking out the book from the library.
Y3 – The sign language song was cool and interesting!
Y5 – I liked the show because they had a creative way to change the scene. They had a great voice projection.
Big Walk and Wheel
We are taking part in the 15th year celebration of Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel, the UK’s largest inter-school cycling, walking, wheeling and scooting challenge. The challenge runs from 11-22 March 2024. It’s free to take part and we would love everyone to be involved.
Last year, in our category of small primary schools, we finished in 24th place out of 514 schools with an average of 91.14% of our journeys to school being active. We achieved the highest national (24th) and Northern England (5th) ranking out of those schools in Leeds taking part.
What do you need to do?
Encourage your child(ren) to walk, scoot or cycle to school on as many days as possible during the event. Park and stride can also be included if you park at Marks and Spencer or further away from school and walk/scoot or bike the final part.
Why we are taking part
Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel is a great way to build physical activity in children’s daily routine which is important for their physical health and mental wellbeing.
Active school journeys also help to reduce congestion and air pollution outside the school gate. A 2021 YouGov study showed nearly half of UK children worry about air pollution near their school. And that children thought active travel was the best away to bring down these pollution levels.
Plus there are some great prizes to be won every day if we get enough children taking part!
Useful resources
To help you prepare, Sustrans has developed a handy free guide to walking, cycling or scooting to school. It is packed with advice to help you have hassle-free journey to school.
Download your free family guide using this link: https://www.sustrans.org.uk/sign-up-to-receive-your-free-school-run-guide/
For more information about the event go to www.bigwalkandwheel.org.uk . Enjoy the challenge!
Skipping school
This week, Year 2 had a great skipping afternoon with Katie from Skipping School and the children showed great perseverance and resilience during the session.
We learnt all the Year 2 skipping individual and group skills that we’ll be performing at the Year 2 skipping festival in June. More details to follow.
If your child would like to buy a skipping rope to practise these skills at home, they are available in class for a subsidised cost of £3 per rope. We are subsidising the cost with the PE and Sport Premium as a way to encourage physical activity out of school.
Cross country star
Congratulations to our Year 3 runner who represented Leeds today in the West Yorkshire cross country final. Competing against pupils from Calderdale, Bradford, Wakefield, Kirklees and Leeds, he ran a fantastic race at Temple Newsam and should feel very proud of achieving a top 15 finish.
Being biologists and safe online
For our science learning this week, we used secondary sources to find out about animals that live in polar and desert habitats. Using non-fiction books and the internet, this gave us chance to put into practice some of our safer internet day learning. Not everything we read on the internet is true.
We could check more than one website to see if it tells us the same thing.
The National Geographic website is a website I’ve heard of. We could look at that one.
The children were also being safe online by showing an adult if something popped up on the screen before continuing.
Help at home: have a look at a non-fiction book at home with your child. Ask them how to use the contents and index pages.