In English, we have been focusing on apostrophes. We learnt how to use apostrophes for single possession (like the dog’s bone) and for contractions (such as can’t and I’m). The children have been spotting apostrophes in their reading and using them confidently in their writing.

In RE, we answered our big question by using everything we have learnt in this unit. We have really loved learning about prayer in Islam, especially understanding why and how Muslims pray. The children shared thoughtful ideas and showed great respect and curiosity.

We also had lots of fun celebrating NSPCC Number Day. We took part in different maths activities, including making colourful times tables flowers and joining in with an exciting TTRockstars tournament. 

Star of the week:

Penelope for being a super role model to her peers and always showing the school promises and being eager to learn!

Reminders:

• Remember to book your parents' evening slot.
• Keep getting sponsorships for our Sports Champion visitor!
• PE days for Term 3 are Tuesday (yoga) and Wednesday (tag rugby).
• Please bring in reading books and reading records every day and read 5 times a week at home. Remember an adult needs to sign the reading records.
• Spellings will come home on Monday. Please practice these every day at home ready for our spelling test on Fridays.
• Practice your times tables on TTRockstars using the login stuck in your reading record.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Knapp

For maths, we have focused on arithmetic style questions and reasoning questions to help us with strategies for answering these types of questions. It was a good chance to recap all the learning we have done so far in year 2!

In history, we answered our big question 'What was the impact of the Great Fire of London'. The children used all their knowledge from autumn term to create posters and mind maps to showcase their answers.

Our nativity rehearsals have been going brilliantly, and we are excited to show you all next week! We are still missing some costumes, so please make sure you have brought them in as we will be doing a dress rehearsal on Monday.

Star of the Week is….

Camilla! For always demonstrating our school promises.

Reminders:

• PE days for Term 2 are Wednesday (hockey) and Thursday (team games).
• Please bring in reading books and reading records every day and read 5 times a week at home. Remember an adult needs to sign the reading records.
• Spellings will come home on Monday. Please practice these every day at home ready for our spelling test on Fridays.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Knapp

In English, we finished our unit on diary writing. The children imagined they were in 1666 when the Great Fire of London started and wrote a diary entry about this. They made sure to write in the past tense, use time conjunctions, expanded noun phrases and included their thoughts and feelings.

We started looking at money in maths this week. We looked at the different coins and notes and made given amounts. We also used different coins and notes to make the same amounts.

In music, we continued to look at how music can help tell a story. We looked at Little Red Riding Hood and used dynamics and tempo to help tell the different parts of the story.

We had our last forest school session this week. The children wrapped up warm and got stuck in making their shelters. Mr Summers even made a 'swing' which the children loved.

Star of the Week is….

Tom! For great expanded noun phrases in his diary writing.

Reminders:

• PE days for Term 2 are Wednesday and Thursday.
• Please bring in reading books and reading records every day and read 5 times a week at home. Remember an adult needs to sign the reading records.
• Spellings will come home on Monday. Please practice these every day at home ready for our spelling test on Fridays.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Knapp

In maths, we have been adding and subtracting 10s. We used the base 10 to help us with the calculations and noticed that when adding 10s, only the 10s change, the ones stay the same!

We finished our collages in art this week. We used a variety of paper to create a London Skyline on our watercoloured skies we created. The children thoroughly enjoyed collaging and they turned out amazingly!

Star of the Week is….

Oscar! For an improved positive attitude to his learning.

Reminders:

• PE days for Term 2 are Wednesday and Thursday.
• Please bring in reading books and reading records every day and read 5 times a week at home. Remember an adult needs to sign the reading records.
• Spellings will come home on Monday. Please practice these every day at home ready for our spelling test on Fridays.

Have a wonderful half term!

Miss Knapp

The children are very excited to show you it all next week in the church.

In English, we have finished our own versions of 'Where the Wild Things Are'. The children worked really hard following the structure of the book but innovating it with their own ideas. They made sure to include all the correct punctuation, expanded noun phrases, coordinating conjunctions and different sentence types.

We have moved on to addition and subtraction in maths. This week we looked at number bonds to 10, 20, 100 and fact families. The children enjoyed using different manipulatives over the week to help them develop their understanding before moving onto problem-solving and reasoning questions.

In music, the children worked in groups to create their own call and response rhythms. They practised them with claps first, then moved onto using percussion instruments.

We have continued to think about creation in Christianity and this week we thought about what kind of things Christians and others do to look after the world and why they would want to. The children discussed and shared many ways we can look after our world and that Christians want to because they want to look after something God created.

Star of the Week is….

Blake... For brilliant effort and improvement with his phonics.

Reminders:

• PE days for Term 1 are Wednesday (gymnastics) and Thursday (team games).
• Please bring in reading books and reading records every day and read 5 times a week at home. Remember an adult needs to sign the reading records.
• Spellings will come home on Monday. Please practice these every day at home ready for our spelling test on Fridays.
• Harvest Festival on 9th October 9:30am Yatton Keynell chuch.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Knapp

Ned brought us his giant courgette he grew at home to show us all. It was huge! We loved seeing the vegetable as it linked with the lyrics in one of our songs we are singing for harvest. The children asked if they could try some, so Mrs Slade and our lovely cook got some ready for us, and we all tried some. The feedback from the class was that it was delicious!

 (Miss Knapp's 750ml water bottle for size reference!)

In English, we have loved immersing ourselves in the book 'Where the Wild Things Are'. This week, we innovated the story ready to make our own version. The children changed it so Max went to space and met some aliens, or he went to unicorn land! They then created new characters and a new setting using expanded noun phrases to describe.

We created an online safety rap about 'Think Before You Click'. We learnt about how we have to be careful with ads, pop-ups and links when we are online and what we should do if you are not sure.

In history, we learnt how the Great Fire of London started! 

Star of the week will be given out on Monday because we were celebrating European Day of Languages today.

Reminders:

• PE days for Term 1 are Wednesday (gymnastics) and Thursday (team games).
• Please bring in reading books and reading records every day and read 5 times a week at home. Remember an adult needs to sign the reading records.
• Spellings will come home on Monday. Please practice these every day at home ready for our spelling test on Fridays.
• Donations for harvest going to the foodbank are still welcome.
• If you have any old magazines, paper, tissue paper that you no longer need, we would love it to help us create our collages in art later in this term.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Knapp

Lots of you also asked for a copy of the handwriting handout we have in class. Here are the images and I will save them in Home Learning on our Kestrels page.

In worship this week, we continued to focus on our value of thankfulness and in our KS1 class worship we thought about who we are thankful for. The children gave brilliant answers and explained why they thought we should be thankful to all these different people. 

In English, we have been looking at different sentence types. We have written statements, commands, questions and exclamations and used 'Where the Wild Things' to inspire our sentences. Here is some work on statements and commands:

We were very lucky this week in PE as year 6 joined us to teach us different team games. The year 6's were great young leaders and the children loved learning new games that they can play together at break and lunchtimes.

In science, we were comparing and grouping different materials. We learnt words that can be used to describe the properties of materials and used these to help us group different materials. 

Star of the Week is….

Ariana! For brilliant repeating sound patterns in music.

Reminders:

• PE days for Term 1 are Wednesday (gymnastics) and Thursday (team games).
• Please bring in reading books and reading records every day and read 5 times a week at home. Remember an adult needs to sign the reading records.
• Spellings will come home on Monday. Please practice these every day at home ready for our spelling test on Fridays.
• We are collecting for Doorway for harvest. Please see the poster below so that we can help them.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Knapp

We enjoyed the last day of turnaround with our new teacher and I loved getting to know my new class for September.

Kestrels wrote letters to me to tell me all about their favourite things from year 2. It was lovely to read all about the things they have enjoyed this year.

We answered the big question in Science: What do we need to stay healthy? The children put all their learning from the term to create a poster answering the question. 

It would be great to see lots of children receiving certificates in September for completing The Summer Reading Challenge with the library. It is a great way to keep reading during the summer holidays, plus you get lots of cool stickers and a badge.

It has been a wonderful year in Kestrels. We've learned so much and grown in confidence every step of the way. It's been a year full of curiosity, creativity, and lots of fun. Well done to all our brilliant Year 2s – we’re so proud of everything you've achieved!

Have a wonderful summer holidays!

Miss Knapp

In English, we finished and edited our poems about the ocean and pollution in the ocean. The children then wrote them up in the neatest handwriting and created artwork to go with them. 

We have been focusing on arithmetic in maths this week and putting all our learning through the year together.

In computing, we continued exploring ScratchJr. We had to use a given design to make the sprite have a speech bubble when tapped and then make the background change. The children loved getting to use other command blocks on ScratchJr and making their sprite do different things.

We then used our new knowledge of using a tap function, backgrounds and speech bubble to start creating a quiz on ScratchJr. We had the question 'Who lives here?' and tapped the different sprites which would make a speech bubble appear with yes or no. We used the background feature to help know who lives here too. 

Reminders:

• Please come and support the children's artwork they created for By Brook Valley's Gallery Night on Tuesday after school. We would love to see you all, and the children are excited to show you all their artwork! 
• Turnaround Days are on Thursday and Friday (and the following Monday). Please make sure your child(ren) goes to Ospreys for these days.
• PE days for Term 6 are Wednesday (ultimate frisbee) and Thursday (athletics).
• Please bring in reading books and reading records every day and read 5 times a week at home. Remember an adult needs to sign the reading records.
• Spellings will come home on Monday. Please practice these every day at home ready for our spelling test on Fridays.
• Practice your times tables on TTRockstars using the login stuck in your reading record.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Knapp

We loved exploring how we could create different textures with paint. We used a variety of different materials to paint with to create different effects and textures.

We then moved onto using our paintwork to create collages. We drew an outline of a bird and then ripped pieces of the paint up to create our colleges. You will have to come to the Gallery Night to see our amazing finished pieces!

In our RSHE lessons, we looked at how we change from babies and how we will continue to change as we age. The children thought of things they could or couldn't do or will be able to do at different ages. We also discussed the scientific names for body parts.

Reminders:

• PE days for Term 6 are Wednesday (ultimate frisbee) and Thursday (athletics).
• Please bring in reading books and reading records every day and read 5 times a week at home. Remember an adult needs to sign the reading records.
• Spellings will come home on Monday. Please practice these every day at home ready for our spelling test on Fridays.
• Practice your times tables on TTRockstars using the login stuck in your reading record.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Knapp