Primary 2 have enjoyed a wonderful Easter break and have been looking forward to letting you know what we have been learning. This term we will be getting supported for the transition into Primary 3 — we can’t believe that time is already here!
We have been working hard again since our last blog update. Here’s all the brilliant things we’ve been up to since January:
Numeracy
We loved having you in for our Maths Open Afternoon where we demonstrated our knowledge of Time, Fractions and number. Thank you to all who were able to attend.
“I like seeing Mums and Dads when they are seeing their kids because they can see what we’re doing in school,” says Kaitlyn.
In Numeracy, we have been working to peer and self assess our work.
“Peer assessment is when friends mark your work,” says Arwyn.
We have really enjoyed swapping jotters with friends to give them feedback. This has helped us to better understand our shared learning targets and the children have been so kind and constructive to their learning partners.
We have been working on adding and subtracting within 20 mentally, and within 30 using column addition and subtraction. We have found this a good challenge and have been doing hard work in our jotters.
“Once you are done your chimney sums you have to miss 3 spaces and you have to miss boxes – not anyhere you like – but with the lower number, the plus or takeaway has to go there. The big number goes on top and the big number goes on the bottom,” says Jessie.
“I’m just too smart for chimney sums!” says Leah.
“Chimney sums are really challenging but it makes adding sums easier and faster for adding,” says Harley.
In March, we have started doing Maths rotations, with a jotter station, a board game station and a Sumdog station. We have been using our in class iPads to play Sumdog regularly in class and have all enjoyed weekly tests on our number bond knowledge. We have noticed patterns between number bonds to 10 and number bonds to 20. Ask your child to tell you about what they know about their number bonds!
“When I go to Sumdog it makes me feel happy because it’s nice to do. I enjoy winning and when I lose I am still happy,” says Logan.
“It is so nice to play on the tablets because we get to play the football game,” says Olivar.
After the Easter Break your child will be issued with their Sumdog log in to take home. If you would like to use this at home to complement Maths homework, you are able to download the Sumdog app from most App Stores on mobile devices and from the Sumdog website on laptops/computers. Ms Craig will set weekly challenges which can be accessed at home and in school.
“At the weekend I remembered my Sumdog log in and I could play it. It was good because I got to do challenges at home,” says Caled.
As of April, we will begin looking at Data Handling. We will learn how to read tally marks, tables and bar charts. This will be a great, active way for us to show off our abilities to count in 5s and use Maths in context.
“I love tally marks because they are so fun and I have to concentrate,” says Kali.
“Tally marks make Maths so much easier and I like it,” says Max.
“I liked it when we got to tell our friends our questions and we could tally marks their answer,” says Elliot.
Literacy
We have been focusing on our presentation in our Literacy jotters and have started learning 2 and 3 letter joins to make our handwriting neat and presentable.
“When we do handwriting it really helps us to be better at writing,” says Harley.
We love doing finger warm ups for our handwriting lessons and noticing the patterns between the joins we have learned. We have made such amazing progress in our presentation since the beginning of the year and Ms Craig is so proud!
In Reading, we will begin challenging ourselves with more than one book per week to help our reading fluency and enable us to use our word attack strategies more frequently.
“It is quicker to read the book when we have more than 1 each week,” says Halle.
“When I read I really like it because I get better each time,” says Lily.
“Reading helps me with sounding out my letters,” says Shea.
We have continued to do a great job with our Read to Write strategies and have started to make good connections and patterns between different books we have read this year. We are noticing what makes a good story!
In Phonics and Spelling, we have been linking the joined phonemes we have learned this year, and we are noticing which phonemes sound the same but look different. We are getting really accurate with picking which phonemes to use when word building. For example, we know ‘ay’ is usually at the end of a word and ‘ai’ is usually in the middle of a word. This helps us picks which one to use when we are writing!
“I really like the phonics work because we can read words we didn’t know before,” says Caled.
“I like trying to figure out which letters we are looking at. It’s a challenge,” says Kaitlyn.
Ask your child about the trains on our classroom wall to learn more about how we group our sounds.
In our taught Writing lessons, we have been exploring Talk for Writing and have completed some amazing first drafts of stories inspired by The Little Red Hen. We imitated, innovated and finally imagined our own stories.
“When we made our own story map it just went straight to my imagination. I could make up my own characters and I really liked that. It was good,” says Sophie.
“I really liked the writing because when we started, I thought of ideas and I could pick the best one,” says Daniel.
“I really liked it because it was a challenge and we did lots of writing in our jotters. It taught me lots of new words which I didn’t know how to spell before,” says Max.
Ask your child about Story Maps and how to use them.
After the Easter break, we will redraft and publish our stories into a whole-class book. Have a look for this book in our class library on your next school visit!
We will soon move on to Narrative writing this term, and we will use what we have learned from writing our own stories to write even more pieces of Narrative prose.
PE
We have been splitting our PE timetable between using the gym hall and the MUGA:
In indoor PE we finished playing netball and basketball and will be moving on to gymnastics for our final term. We are excited to use the mats and develop our skills in movement.
In outdoor PE we will continue to play atheltics games to increase our stamina and will begin playing fielding games, such as rounders, as the nice weather continues.
STEM
We have continued with our Forces topic. We have moved ping pong balls through a straw, used Newton Balances to measure force and more recently investigated magnetism. The whole school also took part in a STEM Day where the children participated in many exciting activities!
“I really, really liked the finger printing because I got to put my finger in ink!” says Leah.
“I liked building the bridges with paper and I want to make one with my sister,” says Ozy.
Other Areas
Thank you to all the parents and carers who were able to attend our Reading & Relax Afternoon. We loved having you in and reading with us.
We also had a wonderful time on World Book Day where we took part in fun, active experiences to develop our understanding of reading and books.
We had an amazing time on our Easter Fun Day organised by P7 on the last day of last term. Thank you to everyone who organised this activity, we had so much fun!
We enjoyed our Expressive Arts rotations on Friday afternoons. We swapped classes and learned so much! We had 3 weeks learning about rhythm, tempo and instruments in Music with Ms Craig, then 3 weeks exploring colour and line in Art with Mrs Gilroy (P4), and finished by learning about emotions and acting within Drama with Miss May (P3). This helped us enter the weekend with a smile!
Since the Easter Break, we will be going back to our regular schedule of Homework Club after assembly on a Friday afternoon to help us all be successful in reaching our homework targets.
Ms Craig is currently organising our class trip — it will be linked to our topic of Habitats and Climates. We will be hoping to go some time in June, please stay tuned!
Thank you for reading our class blog! Send us a message on Google Classroom if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you in school for any future Open Sessions and activities we may have. Your support is so important to us.
