Year 2 Autumn 2021-22
Welcome to Year 2!
Year 2 have had a great start this week. We have all settled in nicely into our new routines and it has been wonderful getting to know all the children. This week we have been learning about New Beginnings in PSHE. We have carried out many activities, including; recognising our strengths, knowing how to be a good friend and recognising emotions. A wonderful start year 2. Keep it up!
Place Value
Today we worked on place value and identifying numbers to 20, 50 and 100. The children used practical resources to support their learning and identified tens and ones within their numbers. Children realised that if they grouped their numbers into tens they could also reach 100.
Outdoor Learning
Today, year 2 have been taking part in some outdoor learning. We worked on our team building skills, using our senses and problem solving. Year 2 created some wonderful stick men using resources found outside and all really enjoyed taking part.
Sketching Skills
In art, we have been learning about portraits. We have compared similarities and differences between different artists' work and created our own meaningful portraits using objects that have meaning to us. Today, we have been practising our sketching skills in preparation for drawing our very own self-portraits. We experimented with different grades of pencil and how to create different shades, tones and textures. We are very excited to create our portraits next week! Stay tuned...
'Incredible You'
We read the book 'Incredible You' and discussed if we had ever felt like the character in the story. We then talked about our strengths and what we like about ourselves - what makes us special? Take a look at the artwork we created to show all the things that we think makes us INCREDIBLE!
Timelines and Historical Sources
Today we have started learning about our history unit of The Great Fire of London. We used our understanding of timelines and number to order events in chronological order to gain a better understanding of how long ago this event took place. We also worked in groups to compare sources from London 1666 and modern day London.
Hello Yellow
Today was World Mental Health Day and year 2 had a wonderful day. We took part in a number of activities to support good mental health and help us recognise feeling unhappy and strategies to help us become happier. We tried some beautiful yellow fruits, did some Cosmin Yoga, took some great pictures in our school photo booth, shared some objects from home which make us feel happy and that we can refer to when we are feeling sad. We left school feeling very positive and children have some great coping strategies if they are ever feeling unhappy or worried.
Music-The Click Song!
We listened and appraised ‘The Click Song’ by Miriam Makeba (nicknamed Mama Africa). We learned she was an award winning South African singer and a civil rights activist. We also discovered that ‘The Click Song’ is a traditional song of the ‘Xhosa’ people and is sung at weddings in South Africa to bring good luck. ‘The Click Song’ is a nickname in place of Xhosa, (the songs real title) as people could not pronounce it. The Xhosa title literally means knock, knock beetle which is a popular name for various species of beetle that make a distinctive knocking sound by tapping their tummies on the ground. The beetles are believed by Xhosa people to bring good luck and rain. We began by finding the pulse, we thought it would be fun to pretend we were knock, knock beetles and tap our tummies with our hands to find the heartbeat of the song. We talked in pairs to establish if we liked the song and listened to each others opinions. We listened to the song again to concentrate on which instruments we could hear. The children told me they could hear loud drums. We listened carefully to established how many singers we could hear and if the voice was male or female. We revisited the word tempo and discussed the meaning. We decided the song was quite slow all the way through. The children were aware that the lyrics were sung in South African language. Well done Year 2!
Printing Patterns
Year 2 have created some beautiful printed patterns. We used styrofoam tiles and cut them into a pizza shape. Then, using a pencil we carved in our pictures or and designs into the styrofoam. Next, we used felt tips to colour the picture on our tiles, and sprayed it lightly with water. We then pressed these onto paper to print our designs. We repeated this method in a circular shape around the page and created some wonderful repeated print designs. They look fabulous on our calendars!
Discovery Museum
Year 2, visited the Discovery Museum today and we had such a great time. As part of our Great Fire of London unit in history we took part in a workshop, where we learnt about The Great Fire of Gateshead and made comparisons between the two subjects. Afterwards, we explored the Science Maze, which the children loved. They learnt about shape, shadow, light, sound and more. They particularly enjoyed the mirrors. We then took part in an artefact hunt around the museum.
Rhythm and Pulse
We really enjoyed music today. We listened carefully to the music and used our bodies to show we recognised the rhythm and clapped out the beats.
Walk Wise
Year 2, have been taking part in Walk Wise. A project which teaches children, about how to keep safe when we are travelling from place to place. Children have learnt strategies to help them know how to cope with traffic and identify safe places to cross and safe routes to take. Children learnt a song last week, which they loved and today we managed to get out and put some of the things we have learnt into practise.
Music-Similarities and Differences!
We listened and appraised the song Mbube/The Lion Sleeps Tonight sung by the Soweto Gospel Choir. We listened to the song and moved our bodies to find the heartbeat of the song. We learned it was another song from South Africa and discussed the similarities to the other South African songs we have listened to. We then discussed the on screen questions. Did we like the song? What could we hear? How many voices were singing? Is the tempo fast or slow? We discovered that the song was used by Disney in the film The Lion King and that Mbube means 'lion' in Zulu. Finally we listened to both songs again and discussed the similarities and differences in ‘Hands, Feet, Heart and ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’.
Well done Year 2!
Music-Bring Him Back Home!
We listened and appraised the song ‘Bring Him Back Home’ by Hugh Masekela. First we listened to the song and moved our bodies to find the pulse the heartbeat of the song. We were told about Hugh’s life and how he was helped to study music at London’s Guildhall School of Music. We learned that the song was about 'freedom' and a very important man called ‘Nelson Mandela’. We used our previous knowledge of 'South African' music to identify the style indicators and wrote down our answers. We listened carefully and heard drums and electric guitars, recognised it was a happy song and people were celebrating freedom, it was full of energy and lots of people were singing and it had a strong dance beat. We then revisited ‘Hands, Feet, Heart’ and we are becoming more confident each time we practise it. Well done Year 2!
