News
Year 2 have been engrossed in our new text ‘The Darkest Dark’ by Chris Hadfield which is about a little boy called Chris who wants to be an astronaut, but he’s afraid of the dark. After the promise that he could watch real astronauts landing on the moon, he finally falls asleep. He dreams of going into space himself. Chris realises that on the moon, it is totally dark. So that night he turns off the lights in his room so it’s dark. He can still see shadows that looked a bit like aliens, but he’s no longer frightened. He wants to explore the night sky. In the story, Chris realises that you’re never alone because your dreams are always there with you. Dreams about the life you want to lead – that really can come true.
We discussed what hopes and dreams are, what the children want to achieve when they grow up and why dreams are important. Neil Armstrong achieved his dreams and is now a significant person in history. The children looked at facts about him and using reasoning skills, sorted them into ‘definitely true’, ‘could be true’ and ‘definitely not true’. This raised much discussion, and some children were awarded Polly the Parrot for excellent awareness of other feelings during talk, pair, and share.
Using the statements that they found to be ‘definitely true’, the children creatively designed a poster to show what he had accomplished, when it occurred and why it is important today.
During news writing, the children discussed what they have done over the weekend. Questions to think about were: When did it happen? Where did they go? Who did they see? How did they feel? What did they do? What did they eat? What toys did they play with? Just some questions the children were encouraged to think and write about. They were also expected to consistently use capital letters, full stops, and exciting vocabulary. *Please continue to spend several minutes prior to Monday, discussing what you have done over the weekend*.
In Phonics, we have been learning about the /er/ suffix and making comparisons using the /er/ and /est/ suffixes. Our focus Rainbow words were poor, door, floor and climb. Can you spot any of these words in your reading books this weekend?
In Maths, we spent a little more time on cementing concepts about addition/subtraction and using this knowledge to work out money calculations giving change. We began our new sequence about comparing and ordering numbers from 0 up to 100; and using <, > and = signs.
What a wonderful day we had on Friday, celebrating our topic’s ‘Marvellous middle’. We were fortunate to have a ‘Space Dome’ at school and Year 2 explored the theme ‘Earth and Beyond’. It was great fun!
We wish you a lovely and restful half-term.
