St Mary's RC Primary School

Year 2 Gallery of Events 2022-23

Take a look at some of the fun things we have been doing in Year 2.

The Great Fire of London - Final Art piece! - January 2023

Last term, the children were looking at blending and smudging techniques to create different effects.

Today, all their skills culminated in their final art pieces of The Great Fire of London! I’m sure you’ll agree, they look fantastic!

NSPCC Assembly - January 2023

This morning the children attended a “speak out stay safe” assembly. This is run by the NSPCC and teaches children how they all have the right to speak out and stay safe. We made lists of our trusted adults who we can speak to if we feel upset and discussed things that aren’t ok such as hitting, bullying etc.

NSPCC resources - (parent.carer.schools) - spring 2022

[pdf 379KB]

Design Technology: Create! - January 2023

This afternoon we got stuck in to the fun of creating our puppets! The children absolutely loved it! And I was beyond impressed with their skills of cutting around templates. We had to fix the two pieces of fabric together using PVA glue, then decorate our puppet using the design we sketched into our books. The final product will be evaluated tomorrow.

Design Technology: Plan and Design - January 2023

Today we revisited our puppets project and began our “plan and design” part of our sequence. The children looked through their research of different hand puppets and selected some features that they liked. They then used these ideas to sketch their own puppet! They had to be careful about sticking to their template.

Reading Comprehension - January 2023

Now we are starting a new year, we are starting a brand new lesson!

We are beginning our chapter book “The Boy Who Grew Dragons”

This lesson is a lot more mature than phonics and the children have absolutely loved it so far!

We all have a copy of the chapter book and follow on as either myself or the children read aloud to the class. This is a great chance to focus on our expression when reading.

After each chapter, we summarise what we have read and predict what will happen next. They were desperate to carry on after chapter 1 and couldn’t believe we had to stop for dinner time! Eventually, we will introduce different types of comprehension questions to prepare them for examinations further in the year.

This is the next stage of reading for our year 2 children, we are scaffolding the change from sounding out and blending words to becoming fluent readers.

Reset Week - January 2023

As we do each half term, our first week is our behaviour reset week. We dedicate time to revisiting our Always Rules and what is expected of us around school.

This morning, we all made posters about:

The Always Rules

- Do your best

- Show respect

- Use friendly language

- Choose safe behaviour

- Be in the right place at the right time

- Dress to impress

I’ve got to say, we’ve all been excellent Always Children this morning! Like we’ve never been away

DT: Trial and Error - December 2022

Today the fun started!

Our DT sequence has been designed to allow children to peruse success through a trial and error process. That’s why we make time to practise the skills we need BEFORE attempting to plan or design our own product.

Today’s skill was to cut around a template and fix it to fabric. Cutting the paper template was easy but LOTS of resilience was needed once we started to pin it to the fabric squares but no one gave up! And we produced some good practise templates!

Our next skills lesson will be choosing a successful method to join two templates together.

Christmas Nativity - December 2022

Year 1 and Year 2 have had a great time performing in our Christmas Nativity. Well done to everyone!

Design Technology: Lesson 2 - Textiles - December 2022

Today we continued our research into hand puppets in children's entertainment! The children were thrilled to research into the life and purpose of Sooty the little yellow bear. We discussed how puppets need a puppeteer to help them come to life and how, by the end of this project, we will all be puppeteers! The children discussed the purpose of a hand puppet and concluded that Sooty's purpose is to entertain young children. We will be thinking about this purpose as we begin our own designs in the next lesson.

Design Technology: Lesson 1 - Textiles - December 2022

We are SO excited to begin our first DT project! Our topic this term is “textiles” and the skill we will learn is how to join two pieces of fabric. Our final project will be to create our own hand puppets!

The History of Manchester - December 2022

Today we did our “research” lesson all about Manchester and it’s history within the cotton industry. I’ve challenged the children to spot as many old cotton mills as they can in our community and if they nip into Manchester.

Christmas Jumper Day - December 2022

Christmas Jumper Day and the snack and sing-along morning organised by the school PTA.

Family trees! - November 2022

Today in history, we explored the purpose of a family tree. It was very funny at one point as someone said “I don’t have a family tree I have a Christmas tree.”

We took some time talking about the term “tree” and how families branch off into cousins, siblings, parents etc. Thank you SO much to the children who brought some examples of their own family trees in as this was an excellent teaching tool! It was wonderful discuss.

The children then built up The Royal Family tree and explored the term “line of succession”. We talked about who the current monarch is and who would take over from him, then who next and who next etc.

It was quite a heavy lesson and a difficult concept but the children just loved it and really soaked up so much new information!

Improving our accuracy! - November 2022

Today in PE, the children were learning how to improve their accuracy when aiming for a particular shot. They played “space invaders” where they had to eye up a target and use a push pass to hit the cone, collect it and bring it back to their home planet. It was so much fun! And I was amazed at how their hand eye coordination has improved over the last few weeks! Well done everyone.

Hockey - November 2022

Today we started our brand new unit in PE! Some of us were a little nervous to start hockey as it is a sport we had not heard much about however once we got started there was simply no stopping!

I was amazed at how the children had such good control over the ball. This lesson really tested our hand eye coordination!

Day of the Dead - October 2022

We had great fun celebrating Day of the Dead!

Art - November 2022

Today we finished our printing projects! They look absolutely fabulous. The children had to carefully plan out their patterns onto foam squares and then use our printing techniques to transfer their patterns onto the paper. A great, messy way to spend an afternoon!

Be Yourself! - October 2022

We’ve had such a blast this morning, celebrating all the different things that make us special and unique. Mrs Clerkin was very impressed at how the children were able to talk about our charity in assembly this morning. So far, we have raised a staggering £42 for Take 5 hub! In such difficult financial times, we are so very grateful for your donations to this worthy cause. Thanks a million!

Celebrating Hello Yellow Day - October 2022

Year 2 each received a positive affirmation card as they arrived in class. They also completed a 'Hello Yellow' treasure hunt-searching for all things yellow. They were also reminded by the wellbeing ambassadors of their 3 challenges.

1. to say something kind to a teacher

2. to wave or smile at a friend

3. tell a joke during a special World Mental Health Day assembly.

Maths - Flexible Partitioning! - October 2022

One of the biggest concepts we learn in year 2 is how to partition a number. We’ve been working like champions all week long on splitting numbers into tens and ones and we’ve smashed that target!
The next (and trickiest) step is to then understand that we can flexibly partition a two digit number.
So 48 can be 40 + 8, but it can also be 30 + 18, 20 + 28 and so on.
The way we’ve tackled this today is by becoming the tens and ones ourselves!
The children loved it and really understood that by physically moving as a ten themselves, they could flexibly partition any number in lots of different ways!

Tens and Ones - September 2022

In maths, we are learning lots and lots about tens and ones! In year 2 we have to learn how to partition numbers into different digits. Today we used our tens and ones to show several different ways to make the same number.

Flexible Partitioning - October 2022

Y2 have been practising being 'flexible' with their partitioning - making numbers in different ways using their tens and ones, for example, 26 = 13 + 13 or 26 = 16 + 10.

Wellbeing - September 2022

Our new story this week is “The Hairdo that Got Away” by the 2022 Children’s laureate, Joseph Coelho. This story follows a child who’s hair gets out of control as his feelings start to overwhelm him. We’ve talked a lot about how we can support our own mental health when feelings get tangled and knotted like our hair.

We will be continuing to focus on using adjectives to describe nouns this week. We will be trying hard to write descriptive sentences using capital letters, finger spaces and full stops.

Student Council Competition - September 2022

Our representative, went to his first school council meeting today. He came back to class and told us all about the attendance poster competition! All entries are welcome, please see the attached photo for more details. I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

The Oceans - September 2022

Today’s Geography lesson was all about the 5 oceans. We sang a new song which we might love EVEN more than the continents song! We plotted the oceans on the map and practised “map hopping” to to different oceans while the song played.

Adjectives and Nouns - September 2022

In English, we are working really hard to write an “expanded noun phrase”.

This is when we can use an adjective to describe a noun! I was blown away today at the amazing vocabulary the children generated to describe the lion from our story. Tomorrow is our first chance to write in our “Publishing Book”, where we write our very best pieces! We will be using our plan to write a character description of the lion. I wonder who’s work will be posted to dojo? Keep your eyes peeled!

Job Selection - September 2022

A huge congratulations to the children who have been selected for very important jobs today! Please welcome…

Joshua - School Council Representative

Louie and Miley - Wellbeing Ambassadors for Year 2P!

It was such a hard choice but I know that these children are going to make such a positive difference to school life. Don’t be disheartened! We are still to announce Eco committee next week and class charity monitors!

And congratulations to our Golden Book children this week, Felix and Tate! What great examples of Always Children they are, well done boys!

Imaginary Instruments - September 2022

Listening to Bolero by Ravel in music - acting out the instruments they could hear.

Story of Creation - September 2022

Picture of children proudly holding up their RE work showing the sequence of the Story of Creation.

Habitats Topic - September 2022

Our topic this half term in science is 'Habitats' and the children are loving it so far!

Today they explored five different habitats;

- The Arctic

- The Desert

- The Rainforest

-The Woodland

-The Ocean

They discussed the features of each habitat and matched a photo to the correct name.

Over the coming weeks we will be learning all about how different animals are adapted to certain habitats

PE: Gymnastics - September 2022

This afternoon was our first PE lesson! And what a blast we had! Our PE for this half term is focused on gymnastics. The children had to make shapes with their bodies and hold the shape without wobbling.

Geography: The World - September 2022

Today we started our geography lessons! Our topic is all about 'The World'.

Today we explored our new vocabulary for this topic. Our new words are:

- continent

- equator

- Northern Hemisphere

- Southern Hemisphere

We will use these words in every geography lesson!

Maths: 3D Shapes - September 2022

Today we revisited our 3D shapes. I hid the shape in a bag and I needed helpers to describe what they could feel to the group. We talked about the names and properties of a sphere, cube, cylinder and cone. Afterwards, we played 4 corners with the shapes and had so much fun!