Welcome to the Year 2 page - 2023-24
In Year 2 this year, the team in Fox Class is Mrs Ruddick, Mrs Smith and Mrs Ling. The Hedgehog team is Mrs Haynes and Miss Holland. In addition, Miss Jury, Miss Francis, Mrs Hill and Mrs Cawsey provide SEND support.
By the end of year 2, we want the children to become independent enquirers with the confidence to have a go, make mistakes, reflect and learn in a meaningful way. We enjoy lots of questioning and discussion between children, their peers and the adults in school. See below for details of the things we're learning in Year 2.
If you have any queries about how your child is getting on, please contact the school and we will arrange a time to phone or meet with you.
The Year 2 team
Here is our topic plan for the Autumn term:
We can all be Bobby Bounce Back!
We started the Autumn term by thinking about Bobby Bounce Back, and how to develop resilience and independence. We used our Problem Solving Triangle to help children see how they might solve problems by themselves. The children had to sort examples of problems into those which were emergencies which needed immediate action from a grown up, down to glitches: issues they could sort themselves.
Year 2 2022 to 2023
Sponsoring the Rainforest
We were thrilled to be able to sponsor and protect part of the Amazonian Rainforest. We did this by celebrating rainforest day everyone wore green to school. We did lots of fun activities including making badges and learning the Green Anaconda song. You can see our certificate below!
Rainforests
We have started our new topic linked to the Continents and Oceans of the world and the famous rainforest campaigner, Marina Silva. She began life as a rubber tapper in the Amazon rainforest and ended up being a senator and setting up the first reserve.
We enjoyed a rainforest day where the children learned why rainforests are so important to us and about the animals that live there. We learned about the early life of Marina Silva and discussed the following questions:
What were the problems with cattle ranchers coming into the rainforest areas?
How did deforestation affect Marina and her family?
Would you rather live in the rainforest or the favelas? Why?
Then we spent a drama lesson in the school garden. The children put themselves in the place of the cattle ranchers (who wanted to make money for their families) and the rubber tappers (who lived off the land). Thet freeze framed scenes from the campaign (see below).
Local History Project
The culmination of our local history project was to make some fact sheets about Pilton history. The children worked collaboratively to make leaflets about a particular aspect they'd learned about. We have shared these on our local community Facebook page and the feedback has been very positive (see further down the page). It's also been great to hear that some of our children have taken their parents on the walking tour and taught them all about our local history!
Hedgehogs Class Assembly
We enjoyed learning about Barnstaple so much that we shared all of our knowledge with the rest of the school. We created a presentation using the old photos of Barnstaple. We then drew pictures of what Barnstaple would look like in 50 years time. We had lots of ideas such as more electricity to run more houses, spaceships and even some strange weather.
History Walk
We had a lovely walk around Barnstaple learning all about the history of our town. We learnt about the bridges, why they were built and why we only have two of the three left. We learnt all about the old railway track that ran through Barnstaple and why people stopped using the railway. We were able to ask lots of questions and listen well as to why Barnstaple has changed over time.
Geography
As part of our Geography project, we've been learning about Human features (things built by humans such as houses, roads and supermarkets). The children worked collaboratively to construct their own from a variety of materials. We then used photos of them to make a town map for Fox and Hedgehog towns. Finally, we turned these into proper tourist maps with a key to help people find their way around. You can see the final maps below.
English
We've been learning the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Some of the children make Granny's house and then acted out the story before writing part of the story. They had lots of fun and they found that acting it out helped them learn the story better.
Arts week
We have started the week with creating our own art work based on the book, 'Leaf' by Sandra Dieckmann. We initially created our own seascape using oil pastels. We learnt how to blend, blur and smudge. We practised a lot before we had a go at our own seascapes. We will put these on display in the hallway - we think they look really good. We also started working on our very own collage. We needed to be mindful of textures, shades and size to create our collages.
TEAM Cross-country event at High Bickington School
All of our Year 2 children took part in the cross-country event at High Bickington with the other schools from TEAM. There were over 210 runners in total from Year 2 to Year 6. It was a proper cross-country course with grass, mud, woods and hills. The children had a fantastic time. Faster finishers were Sammy (2nd place, Year 2 boys race) and Elsie (3rd place, Year 2 girls race). We were really proud of everyone's efforts as they all completed the course.
Author experience
Year 2 visited the library to meet author and illustrator, Chloe Inkpen. She shared some of her stories and lots of tips on how to come up with story ideas. Here are some of our children helping her with illustrations.
Performance poetry and raps
Our amazing Year 2's learnt a set of dinosaur poems and a rap about geographical features. They learnt a lot about the features of our coast line and hills.
At the start of term, we enjoyed Dinosaur Day. We had a whole day of art activities to launch our new topic. The children made salt dough fossils to use in their history lessons, they drew and painted ammonite pictures and created their very own dinosaur skeletons (see below). They also started learning about the life of Mary Anning.
Year 2 2021-2022
Local history
We've been learning about our local area and why it's changed over time. We went on a history walk around Pilton and then the children worked in small groups to create a page for a leaflet about Pilton. The focus was on what was different in the past and the reasons for these differences. You can see their leaflet below:
Art with a geography link!
This term in Art, we have been focusing on landscape artists, which links in nicely with the Geography we've been learning about over the past term.
Hedgehog class learned about the artist Hundertwasser and created mixed media pictures of physical features. Fox class learned about the artist Lowry who painted urban landscapes filled with human features. They made their own landscapes using watercolour oaints and oil pastels. You can see the finished pieces below:
Science - Materials
This term the children have been learning about materials. They've learned the difference between objects and their materials, how to identify different materials and to evaluate the suitability of materials for different purposes.
Here you can see the children carrying out an investigation to design some trousers to get the gingerbread man through the river without him getting wet. (Pictures coming soon).
Year 2 Library Trip
We recently braved the rain and headed out for a morning at Barnstaple Library. We met the librarians who explained how to use the library and showed us round. The children enjoyed exploring the range of picture books, chapter books and non-fiction as well as new genres such as graphic books and puzzle stories.
We were able to get nearly 50% of the year group signed up as members and the children who are already members brought their cards along too. They borrowed books and found out about some of the other fun activities in the library.
"We can borrow them for free!"
Year 2 Cross Country at High Bickington
Hedgehog Class took part in a cross-country competition with the other TEAM Academy schools at High Bickington. They did fantastically well on a tough course through the woods and with a steep hill to finish. For lots of the children this was their first experience of an event like this and they did brilliantly - trying their best and cheering everyone on. Well done Hedgehogs!
Barnstaple Museum Visit
Today, the Year 2s went on their first ever school trip! We visited the Barnstaple Museum and enjoyed exploring all the different rooms. The children were especially excited to find some fossils and a picture of Mary Anning!
Remembrance
A group of our Year 2 children attended the Children's Remembrance Service at Rock Park on Friday 12th November 2022. They joined other schools from around Barnstaple to mark the occassion. The children laid a wreath and joined everyone in a two minute silence to remember.
When we got back after the Summer holiday, we received a signed photo from Marcus Rashford in response to the children's letters of support!
Year 2 2020-21
The Euros
The Year 2s avidly followed the progress of England through the Euros tournament. We had a draw for teams and each followed their own as well as supporting England.
Lots of the children stayed up to watch the final and were very disappointed with the result. We had a PSHE lesson all about being a good winner and a good loser. We looked to Gareth Southgate as an example and then talked about times in our life where we had won, lost or been disappointed.
Then we presented the winner of the draw with their prize and it was lovely to see the class demonstrate super winning and losing behaviours.
We talked about some of the online abuse that the players had suffered overnight and decided to write letters to the 5 players who took the penalties. We are posting the letters today and will let you know if we hear back. See below for some examples:
Replies to our Christmas cards
We were thrilled to receive replies from the residents of Portmill Court. They loved the children's Christmas cards so much that they wanted to write back and let them know what a fantastic job they'd done and how cheered they were on receiving them. The children were really excited to see the cards and letters from them.
