Primary 2 Blog Post (Term 1 Update)

Hello and welcome to our very first blog post of the new session.  Primary 2 have been very busy settling into our new classroom and our new routines.  Children have been working hard to consolidate previous learning and are enhancing these skills through our novel study and outdoor learning.

UNCRC – Class Charter

Primary 2 have worked on creating a class charter, with agreed upon rights that we will focus on as a class. Our class rules and procedures centre around these rights, as we agree that we should all have a right to be healthy, a right to learn and a right to play. We have used our novel study and the main character Plop as a theme for our charter.

Literacy

Our class novel is ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’ and through this text, pupils will explore our outdoor area and write about why dark is fun!  Pupils will create some descriptive writing pieces, describing our main character, Plop, and using adjectives to describe the people he meets and the things he sees.

Our reading and spelling activities are getting underway, and children will be working within groups to revisit previous sounds and texts, ready to use their skills and strategies to tackle new and unfamiliar spelling sounds and reading books.  We will be using our predictive skills to think about what may happen in our book, based on information on the cover and we will begin to look at fiction and non-fiction texts and their differences.

Our focus in writing will be descriptive writing and these written pieces will come from our class novel and topic of Houses and Homes, comparing houses in the city with those of the countryside as well as looking at homes of the past. Children will compare how houses/homes have changed over the last century.

Numeracy

Our focus in numeracy will be place value, with children working on 2-digit numbers, initially to 20 and then to 99. Children will be able to partition these numbers and discuss this in terms of tens (T) and units (u), whilst building on their understanding of number and number patterns. Addition to 10 or 20 will also be a focus as well as word problems to consolidate our strategies within this operation of number.  Children will begin use their ‘Busy Bee’ jotters as the term progresses to develop problem solving skills, applying knowledge of number to new contexts and develop strategies for number problems.

Health & Wellbeing

Our Paths Pupil of the Day has now begun, and our Pupil of the Day has been receiving lots of compliments.  All children will have the opportunity to be Pupil of the Day.  We will begin exploring emotions, comfortable and uncomfortable and how we recognise these emotions within ourselves and in others.

In P.E, our sessions will happen on a Tuesday and a Thursday and our focus in term 1 will be on football and netball.  Children will have the opportunity to partake in some fun activities which support teamwork whilst focusing on developing their listening skills and awareness of space.

R.E

Our focus during R.E sessions will be on prayer, their meaning, the routines of the church and the celebration of Mass.  We will also spend some time reading and discussing bible stories relating to friendship and love, whilst considering how each of us are unique and have our own God given talents.

IDL

As the class novel is The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, we will be doing a mini topic which focuses on exciting things that happen in the dark, developing children’s imaginations and ideas in fictional texts.  We will also look at woodland animals as these are a feature in the class novel and will tie in nicely with our term 1 social studies topic about houses and homes, comparing houses in the countryside to those we find in the towns and cities.

Modern Languages (French)

In French lessons, children will begin to understand basic greetings, ask and answer simple questions about themselves and begin to look at numbers to 10. We will learn songs and rhymes to help us retain this information.

Homework

Homework was sent out this week. Please check your child’s homework bag weekly for the homework to be completed.  Reading books will be attached to pupils’ accounts through our online Bug Club reading programme. I have issued Bug Club login details with these homework tasks. Homework will consist of spelling, reading and maths, both mental and worksheet/jotter jobs too. These will be issued on a Monday and should be returned to school on a Friday.

We hope this is the start of a very successful term and that the pupils are enjoying their return to school and seeing their friends and teachers.

Take care,

Mrs Travers