This week, Year 2 enjoyed writing their own set of instructions to stop the pesky seagulls stealing Mr Grinling's lunch.  They choose some disgusting ingredients for their seagull potion and used expanded noun phrases to describe these.  They ordered their instructions and choose exciting imperative verbs to tell anyone following their instructions what to do, such as, sprinkle, chop, mash, grate and drizzle.  They then added adverbs such as, carefully, slowly, thinly and brutally to add detail.  We were very impressed with their writing!

In Science, we thought about where animals get the food from in their habitats.  We found out that some animals eat plants to get their energy and that some eat other animals.  We also found out that plants are very clever and produce their own food from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide and learnt that this process is called photosynthesis.  We created our own food chains for animals in different habitats and identified producers, consumers, predators, prey, herbivores, carnivores and omnivores!

In Topic, we learnt about how life saving has changed from the days of Grace Darling and how the RNLI developed.  We used our observational skills to order a variety of lifeboats chronologically using clues such as whether they had sails or engines and by looking at the life saving equipment they used.  

In art, we enjoyed using charcoal and pastels to create a stormy, seascape in which to place a lighthouse.  We used our shading, cross hatching and hatching skills to add dark and light to our pictures and to add texture so that the sea looked choppy and stormy.  Next week we will add our lighthouse!

Year 2 have really enjoyed Science day this week.  They participated in a variety of activities such as: Building a tall structure with spaghetti and marshmallows, completing a circuit to light a bulb, investigating their fingerprints and colour changing.  They worked really well with groups of Year 1 and Reception and showed fantastic teamwork and resilience while tackling some of these challenges!

In Maths, we have been learning about multiplication and division and have used equal groups and arrays to work out multiplication and division problems.  We have been practising our times tables!

In English we have been finding out about the features of instruction texts.  We have been using imperative verbs to give our partner a set of clear instructions and we gave the teachers instructions to make a jam sandwich.  We have planned our own set of instructions to make our own favourite sandwich.  We have looked at the purpose of different types of sentence - commands, questions, exclamations and statements and sorted them into groups.  We know when we need to use a full stop, question mark and exclamation mark.

In Topic, we thought about why Grace Darling became famous and couldn't believe that people travelled to paint her portrait and write about her in the newspaper. Some people even bought mementos, chocolate bars with her portrait on and thimbles.  We thought she was very brave and wrote her a letter to tell her why and to ask her questions about the rescue.

Year 2 really our poetry workshop on Wednesday with Kev Payne.  We loved performing his action poems and played with words to create our own poem based on his poem 'Cucumbers!'.  He showed us how to create new words by changing the start of the word using a rhyme.  We then had great fun as he taught us to illustrate our fruit and vegetable ideas - we had grumpkins, lumpkins, roarberries and sockoli!

We loved seeing all of the World Book Day costumes, hearing about the children's favourite books and sharing some of our favourite stories.

In Maths, we have been using arrays to learn about multiplication and have found out that multiplication is commutative.  We used some arrays to show repeated addition, a multiplication fact and to solve worded problems.

It has been lovely to welcome the children back after half term and we hope you all had a lovely week off!  This week we have started our new story 'The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch' by Ronda and David Armitage.  We have enjoyed learning the story and finding out how Mr and Mrs Grinling stopped the pesky seagulls from stealing his scrumptious packed lunch.

In Topic we have started to find out about the life of Grace Darling and why she is so important to our history. 

In Science we thought about how we knew that we were alive! We created a list of life processes that proved that we were alive - we can all breathe, move, eat, excrete waste, reproduce and are sensitive to our environment.  We used this to decide if objects around us were living, not living anymore or had never lived. 

In Art, we began to look at the landscapes of William Turner and tried to copy part of one of his paintings using pastels.