Holly Class
13/09/2023
Year Two Wisbech Castle Trip
As part of our topic ‘Where are castles found and do dragons live there?’ we visited Wisbech Castle. On the way we talked about the physical and human features of our town, which we had previously looked at on a map as part of our Geography work on learning about what our town is like.
When we arrived at the castle we got to see what it looked like in the past and learnt that many years ago you were able to see the sea from Wisbech castle.
Throughout the morning we saw many old artefacts as we visited rooms within the castle, learning a little about the history of our town. We also visited the dungeons! It was very dark down there! We all really enjoyed learning more about the history of the place in which we live.
This is what Wisbech castle looked like in 1087.
We saw some old toys and furniture and some of us volunteered to try on some clothing!
We sketched the outside of the castle. It has lots of windows!
12/09/2022
Year 2 went for a walk in the locality to explore human and physical features in the town around us. We walked to the park and noticed what we could see. Take a look at the pictures with your child and see if they can explain a human and physical feature to you. Perhaps you could go on a hunt either where we walked or near where you lived. Well done Year 2- we were very proud of you on your first trip out of school.
04/03/2022
World Book Day
11/02/2022
Hunstanton!
Today we were so excited that we finally got to go on our first school trip!
We boarded the coach with much anticipation and could not wait to arrive in Hunstanton. Armed with our hi-vis jackets and a spotting sheet, we entered the sealife centre, only to be greeted with a huge repertoire of animals waiting to see our beaming smiles through the glass. We were fortunate enough to listen to a great talk about rockpools, learning about the animals which have them as their habitat and even being allowed to touch a starfish and see a crab up close! We were very ready to eat our lunch and then we began on our next adventure. We walked from Hunstanton, along the promenade to Old Hunstanton, stopping to notice the physical and natural features and take in the views. We were excited to notice the cliffs we had been discussing and sketching and loved seeing them up close: noticing the erosion by the sea, the clear colours of the rocks and the change in feature as we progressed along the beach. The lighthouse appeared and we knew the coach was nearby which made our tired legs keep going a little longer!
Some giggles and fun on the coach made the journey pass quickly and we were back to school. We missed some of our friends who couldn't make today but couldn't wait to share the pictures... Enjoy
04/02/2022
Spirit of the Wild
On Friday 4th of February, we were fortunate enough to have a visit from Spirit of the Wild. They brought in a repertoire of animals and discussed their habitats and the food chains they were part of. We learned lots of new facts and were very lucky to have the chance to hold and touch lots of the animals too! The children were so excited and left the classroom buzzing with new knowledge. This was a wonderful way to end our topic!
08/11/2021
This week, children in year 2 were fortunate enough to be visited by a member of Peterborough United Football Club and the club mascot: Peter Burrow. The children were unsurprisingly excited and loved to see videos of the atmosphere at the local football ground and hearing success stories of the players in the team. The children were challenged to our dance off with Peter Burrow and enjoyed practising their cheers to match the goals as they were scored whilst watching clips from various matches. All children in school were presented with free tickets to watch a match which of course, added even more to the excitement and engagement in the session! Following this, some children volunteered themselves to partake in a subsequent coaching session. The children persevered through attempting various football training activities and negotiated learning new skills, alongside trying to beat Peter Burrow in a selection of challenges. Year 2 would like to send their huge thanks to Peterborough Football Club and we look forward to hearing all about the match when they return!
On Thursday 11th of November, Year 2 had the chance to listen to ‘The Last Post’ played live by a student at our neighbouring school St. Peter’s. Following this, Year 2 took part in the two minutes silence in our outdoor area, showing real respect and taking part in a very poignant moment.
01/11/2021
Autumn 2
Welcome back to the second half of our Autumn term in Year 2. It has been wonderful to see you all settle in and rise to the new challenges of this year group. We know you’re going to absolutely LOVE this topic!
This half term’s topic for Year 2 is ‘The Great Fire of London’! The excitement will begin when you enter your classroom on the first day back to find some clues to help you to learn more about The Great Fire and some important people to consider. From here, we will become historians and do our own research using books and iPads to find out more about the event.
The children will be learning to use different sources of information such as diaries and pictures to learn about what happened as well as develop their understanding of cause and effect by learning how the events of the fire changed life in the future. We hope to spend time looking at how the fire service has changed through the years with a possible visit from the fire service, where we will also learn about fire safety.
After a very successful Design and Technology unit last half term, we plan to focus on developing our skills in Art in the coming weeks. Our big question will be ‘How do artists make structures look real?’ and as a starting point, we will look at the life and work of the artist Stephen Wiltshire, who creates detailed sketches of London landscapes. The children will learn different sketching techniques and apply the skills they have practised to create a sketch of a house from the times of The Great Fire of London. We will then move on to explore clay and build on the work undertaken in Year One by practising flattening, shaping, marking and joining clay. The children will create a final beautiful piece of work using their own sketch as a starting point, of a clay tile of a house from the time of The Great Fire of London.
We learned about materials in Science last half term considering the suitability of materials for specific uses. This half term we will use this to carry out our own investigation into the best material to make a hose for a firefighter. We will explore how hoses work and then complete our own fair tests to collect and analyse our own data. We will keep you updated with how we get on!
The children will continue to enjoy their daily Read, Write Inc lessons to develop their reading and writing skills. We will be writing at various points across the topic, writing about our science investigations, a diary entry as if we were present during the Great Fire of London and a recount of our visit from the Fire Service, plus lots more!
In our daily Maths lessons we are learning about addition and subtraction, learning how to add and subtract two 2 digit numbers. We will be continuing to apply this knowledge in a variety of contexts and will build upon our fluency and recall of facts too. Please don’t forget to log into Doodle Maths and complete your 10 minutes a day to support you with this.
We will press pause on our new topic during this half term to learn about the Hindu festival of Diwali. We will learn that it is the festival of light and the celebration of good triumphing over evil. The children will listen to and act out the story of Rama and Sita and will have a special visitor in school to teach the children a dance that retells the main parts of the story.
21/10/2021
Year 2 End of Topic Celebration
21/09/2021
Autumn 1
Welcome to all, to Year 2 – you are now the oldest children in Clarkson Infant School! This is the start of a very exciting year, to aim high and be the best you can be. We can’t wait to come along on this journey with you.
The Autumn Term begins for Year 2 with the topic, ‘Are castles and dragons real?’ The children will begin by exploring our local area and finding out about where we live. This will lead us to look at our own, local ‘Wisbech Castle.’ We will continue to compare where we live to a city in the UK which also has it’s very own castle – Edinburgh! By noticing the specific human and physical features of each of the places, we will be able to compare and contrast these places carefully. This focused learning on the UK will help us to learn the names of the countries which make up the UK and recap our learning on continents which we began in Year 1. We will then use this knowledge to decide where we would like to build our own castle, focusing on using what we know about human and physical features of particular places and creating a map to show its location. We will read a lovely story called the Castle the King Built to base our learning on and to help us understand the jobs of the people involved in building a castle.
This will then lead us onto our learning in Science in which we are going to explore the properties of various different materials. We will become Ada Twist the Scientist, after reading her story and will describe materials, compare them and even explore how they can be changed by squashing, bending, heating and cooling! Using this knowledge, we will then design our own castle, thinking about the suitability of the materials we choose for each part (for example: we wouldn’t use cardboard for our windows otherwise they wouldn’t let any light in and would get rather soggy when it rained!)
Going forward, our DT project is to create a moving picture of a dragon! We will explore different mechanisms, exploring a pivot, slider and flap. The process of designing will then begin where we will carefully consider the materials, joining techniques and strategies to make our moving dragon. We will experiment and evaluate at each stage and work conscientiously, following our design brief, to make our dragons come to life!
21/06/2021
Summer 2
And so begins the final year at Clarkson Infant School for you Holly… I hope you have the best half term and we will make sure we do lots of learning but have lots of fun too!
This term, we are continuing our expeditions about Explorers, however we are fine tuning our skills and looking at comparing two places: one hot and one cold. Along our journey we will be learning about the animals and plants which inhabit these places, whilst focusing on the adaptations they need to make to survive in the conditions by creating our own hybrid animal to survive the freezing cold or the stifling heat! We will also focus on food chains, noticing which animals would be classed as prey, predators and producers alongside learning about carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. We will learn about where these specific places are exactly, their climate and the make-up of the country in relation to physical and human features. A big question we will aim to answer will be linked to the population of these places: we will compare it and study why they are so different, using what we know about the climate and features to help us. We will also complete map work, go on a journey to these places and look into their relation to other continents on the planet. Our Art will encompass these countries with a focus on traditional Art but also using the watercolour skills we have practised to complete accurate observational paintings of animals. As we explore these places, we will learn about two intrepid explorers who first reached the depths of these countries and shared their knowledge with others! We will look at their lives, their successes (and things that went wrong!) and the journeys they took along the way. We will work as a team to discuss what were the most important reasons these explorers my not have been as successful as they could have been and will look at a very exciting race that took place! This learning will lead us on to use our musical skills to create some very specific songs related to one of the explorers in particular – we think a popular song that was released recently will give you lots of inspiration for this one! In ICT we will focus on using pictograms and binary trees to help us to organise information and understand facts from it. In PSHE we are focusing on keeping healthy: healthy eating and exercise and their importance.
In our daily Maths lessons, we will focus on measurement of mass, length and capacity. We will ensure we are using the correct units of measurement and will be doing this accurately by reading scales carefully. We will be able to solve problems using practical exploration and will be able to work out problems using the four operations linked to number. Linked to our topic, we will be learning about temperature and how to read the temperature of places. The skills we will focus on are estimation and comparison of amounts. We will progress to recapping our learning on shapes: describing positions, movement and turns with which we will make patterns and understand that a shape is not defined by its orientation. This will lead us to recap our learning about fractions and understanding that they involve the relationship between parts of a whole (linked to shape). We will touch on lines of symmetry too – looking for them, creating them and using them practically. The end of the half term will focus on number and place value to ensure those skills you have learned this year are embedded in preparation for your transition to year 3. Please do look at our class page regularly for updated language lists linked to what we are learning about in the classroom.
As previous terms, we will be focusing on our reading skills. We will be reading daily, focusing on accurate reading with good fluency but also developing our comprehension and inference skills. Please make sure you read your book bag book regularly with an adult at home – we would love to hear how you are getting on.
Let’s have the best final term together and have lots of fun!
16/06/2021
Dear Families,
Please find attached vocabulary lists to help you to support your child with their learning in Maths for the rest of the half term. If you are consistent with the language used in school, it will help your children with their understanding.
In Year 2, children will learn about temperature and using thermometers and reading scales carefully. They will progress to focus on position and direction, looking at describing turns and movements, and lines of symmetry. The final part of this half term will be focusing on consolidating the children’s skills in number and place value.
Thank you for your continued support.
Dear Families,
Please find below, a link to some key vocabulary that we will be using in our Maths lessons this half term. These will be updated regularly in line with the learning we are completing in the classroom. Please look at the language and definitions to support your child with their Maths at home. The children will be using this language in school and therefore, it will support their knowledge of what each word means if we use them both at home and at school. If you need any further support with these lists and using the language at home, please do contact Miss Archibald via the Office.
Thank you!
W/C 1st March - Multiplication and Division
W/C 12th April - Fractions
13/04/2021
Summer Term 1
Welcome back Holly!
I hope you have had a wonderful rest and enjoyed the lovely Easter sunshine.
This term, we are going to be turning ourselves into Explorers! We are going to be learning about what explorers are and what they do whilst learning about one famous explorer in particular.
We will use the explorer skills we develop to explore our own school – plotting it on a map, creating our own explorer sketchbook, and thinking about the human and physical features around our school in comparison to other places locally and further afield.
As we progress through this half term, we are going to focus on the journeys that explorers make. We will look closely at what they use to make their journeys and especially the mode of transport, flight. We will be learning about flight over time and will test different materials to design and make our own aeroplane!
The learning we complete in ICT will support our effective researching and will allow us to look at data that we compile and data from other sources, asking and answering questions using it.
Our focus in Art will be on recording our memories and our explorations. We will use texts to inspire our use of previously learned skills to record what we find out and know.
In our daily Maths lessons, we will initially focus on division progressing to learning about fractions. Number is going to be a main focus for us for the Summer term to ensure that all children are ready to progress in their learning and understanding after lots of time home learning over the past year. This will be to ensure children have a secure understanding of place value, all four operations and their ability to reason and have fluency with number facts. Please do look at our class page regularly for updated language lists linked to what we are learning about in the classroom. We will be learning about measurement and statistics which will be embedded in our Maths learning but also our provision in the classroom.
We will have lots of exciting activities and ideas to keep you busy and make your learning fun – we can’t wait to learn more about explorers and what you already know!
05/03/2021
I am beyond excited to welcome back all of the class this half term. I am so proud of how you have dealt with a tricky time during our lives and have completed some wonderful home learning too.
This term our topic is: How does your garden grow? We have completed a ‘Plant-a-long’ with some wonderful singing of a song to help us to remember what to do – remind yourself of this by looking on Tapestry.
We will be focusing on how plants grow and what they need to survive and stay healthy in Science. We are considering the function of each part of a plant and how seed dispersal plays a major role in the life cycle of a seed. We will also have the opportunity to design and create our own seed to test how far it will travel to germinate – we might think about if it could have magical powers or grows into something wonderful as well! Plants can be used to grow food as well as beautiful flowers, so we will be looking at that journey of farm to fork.
We are exploring seasons in both Science and Geography discussing and finding out how the tilt and rotation of the Earth creates not only night and day but the four seasons we understand as Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Putting on our meteorologist hats, we will be creating different ways to measure aspects of the weather such as rain and wind, and looking at the different weather not only locally but nationally and internationally.
Our big question in Design and Technology is ‘Can you grow a paper garden?’ We will begin by looking at some paper sculptures created by artists and think about how they have been created. We will then learn and practise some paper sculpting techniques such as folding, fringing, rolling and curling to create a scene from the book ‘Christopher Nibbles’, which is about Christopher’s quest to save his favourite food of dandelions from ding out. Once we have learnt some techniques we will set a design brief to create a paper plant incorporating what we have learnt. Finally we will bring together our final pieces of beautiful work to create our own paper garden and reflect and evaluate our work.
In our daily Maths lessons, we are focusing on multiplication and division. We are focusing on recognising, making and adding equal groups and progressing to using arrays and repeated addition to support us in our thinking. We will divide by sharing, grouping and using our knowledge of counting in 2s, 5s and 10s to support us further. We will need to: recognise odd and even numbers and multiples of 2, 5 and 10, practice positioning numbers on a number line and counting forwards and backwards to help us. Following on from that, we will be learning about statistics. Our learning will be concentrated on: tally charts, interpreting and drawing pictograms with units of 2, 5 and 10 and looking carefully at tables of information and block graphs. This unit requires lots of application of learning we have completed previously in Maths so it will be great to see what we can do!
We are excited for our wonderful World Book day plans and generally getting back in our usual routine as Holly Class.
We can’t wait to see you!
13/01/2021
Spring Term 1
I have loved welcoming our class back to school in 2021, whether this be virtually or in person. The children and our families have settled so well into our new routine of learning and it has been great to see such a creative approach to home learning and using resources you already have to support you.
This term our topic is: What is it like at the coast? We have already discussed what we know and would like to learn more about, prompting some great questions and discussions. Children have started to complete their own research using iPads and books in school.
We will be focusing on habitats in Science, looking at the different conditions required by certain animals, plants and other living things to survive; using the 7 life processes of MRS NERG to help us to understand whether something is living, non-living, dead, alive or never alive.
In Geography, we are exploring features of the coast using specific vocabulary to describe physical and human features. We will also be naming, locating and identifying characteristics of the four countries and capital cities of the UK and its surrounding seas; considering our local coastal area to help us. We have already loved talking about our experiences around visiting these places – it seems to be a firm favourite for all of us, including me with my own kids and the dog! Using our map skills we developed at the beginning of the Autumn Term, we will construct a map, thinking about the correct symbols in a key and the landmarks we may include.
When we thought about the coast, we found some beautiful Art work by Southey and J. M W Turner. These are the artists we are going to study this half term, focusing on the techniques they use and expressing our opinions on their creations. We are going to explore different shades of colour and mixing our own shades with purpose. We are going to look at using black and white to add tone, and develop our sketching skills to create our own landscape Art using watercolours.
The children will continue to partake in their daily Read, Write Inc. lessons to develop their reading and writing skills (although these will look a little different this term!) We are excited to explore different texts in our Guided Reading sessions focusing on our comprehension and inference with texts related to our topic, for example the beautiful text : ‘Leaf’ which comprises of information about habitats. Our reading and writing will be linked to our topic context to support our understanding and allow us to apply our skills in varying contexts.
In our daily Maths lessons, we are focusing on adding and subtracting crossing 10 initially. We will then use this knowledge, plus our knowledge of counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s to work with money to find out totals of coins. Following on from this, we will touch on our understanding of shape again, focusing on patterns and applying what we already know about their features. We will then move onto multiplication and division, using repeated addition, counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s, using arrays and sharing to support us.
We are excited to have a virtual visit from an author and other experiences to keep us engaged during a tricky time.
Thank you to all of you for your continued support.
13/11/2020
Autumn Term 2
This half term our topic is The Great Fire of London. We kick started our learning by finding some mystery clues in our classroom on the first day back after half term. Many of the children became historians and did their own research using books and iPads to find out more about the event.
The children will be learning to use different sources of information such as diaries and pictures to learn about what happened as well as develop their understanding of cause and effect by learning how the events of the fire changed life in the future. We hope to spend time looking at how the fire service has changed through the years with a possible visit from the fire service, where we will also learn about fire safety.
The children will develop their drawing skills by exploring tools such as charcoal and shading pencils to create drawings of Tudor houses and then make a representation of their drawing using clay.
We will link our work on materials in Science to our topic by considering how the materials used to build houses in Tudor times helped the fire to spread. We will also be carrying out hands on investigations and developing our skills of observation to consider how different materials are used for different purposes based on their suitability.
The children continue to enjoy their daily Read, Write Inc lessons to develop their reading and writing skills. In our Guided Reading sessions we will look closely at the features of different diaries and then the children are going to write their own diary entry pretending they are present at the Great Fire, using everything they have learnt across the areas of the curriculum to inform their writing.
In our daily maths lessons we are learning about addition and subtraction and developing our fluency at recalling number facts so that we can use these to work out related facts with larger numbers. We are working up to learning how to add and subtract two 2 didigt numbers. We will also be using our knowledge of counting in 2's, 5's and 10's when we work with money later on in the term to find totals of coins.
This week (09.11.20) we pressed pause on their new topic of 'The Great Fire of London' to learn about the Hindu festival of Diwali. We learnt that it is the festival of light and the celebration of good triumphing over evil. The children enjoyed listening to and acting out the story of Rama and Sita and on Wednesday we had a special visitor into school to teach the children a dance that retold the main parts of the story. Sycamore and Holly class absolutely loved this experience and we were very proud of how well they all listened, joined in and performed all the dance moves. It was so much fun!
The children also made clay diva lamps and paper lanterns and have used pastels to create Mendhi patterns on an outline of a hand.