Year Two's Weekly Blog

Welcome to Year Two’s first weekly blog. We are hoping you will find this useful to find out what your child has been doing at school this week and what they will be learning next week.  

Our brilliant Year Two children are into their final half term of Upton Infant School and now only have six weeks left until the summer holiday and on to their new schools. Although we are still unable to do many of the things we would normally do, we have some exciting things coming up over the coming six weeks. More details to follow!

What we have been doing this week

We have been reading the story 'Into the Forest' by Anthony Brown in literacy this week. The children have been performing drama  to help them explore the feelings of characters in the story (you can see some children taking part in the drama below) and thinking about writing diaries.

In Maths, we have been revisiting multiplication. We have been practicing the 2s, 5s and 10s times tables and using these to solve multiplication calculations,

In our Adventure Afternoons we are being 'Brilliant Scientists' at the moment. This week we have been learning about the characteristics of living things, what animals and plants need to survive and beginning to look at different habitat types. 

What we are learning next week

In writing next week we will be imagining ourselves as the character from 'In the Forest' and writing a diary.

In maths next week we will be revisiting division, grouping and sharing. We will be using our knowledge of the 2,5 and 10 times tables to solve division calculations and problems.

In our adventure afternoons will be continuing to be 'Brilliant Scientist'. We will be investigating the animals and plants in our local environment and planning and carrying out our our fair test investigations to find out what the favourite habitat of a woodlouse is.

The week after, the children will be designing their own vehicles for the 'Wacky Races'. Please click here to find out more about this!

Next week’s spellings:

Wow Work

Take a look at the photos at the bottom of the page to see some of the super work that children have been doing this week. Also, please seen below to see which class has topped the Year Two Doodle chart this week and which class are the top readers - they have earned extra playtime!

Congratulations to this week's top Doodlers.

Topping the chart this week is Alexander in the Ladybirds class. Well done!

The top Doodle Maths class this week are the Otters, earning 429 stars. At the top of the Doodle English chart is the Foxes with 135 stars. 

Well done to all those super Doodlers - research shows that using Doodle Maths little and often really improves maths fluency.

The Wacky Races are coming to town. In a couple of weeks, the Year Two children will be taking part in the Wacky Races. The children will be designing and making their own Wacky Race vehicle. For this, we would welcome any clean milk bottle lids. If you have any, please send them into school with your child. Each Year Two pupil will also need to bring in to school a small cardboard box to create their vehicle - please see the poster for some ideas!

You may remember that last year we had a fundraising drive to raise money to buy new computers for the children. Our previous laptops were outdated and no longer fit for use.

We were amazed by the support and generosity of the whole school community, and our fundraising raised a large portion of the money needed to replace the computers.  Some of the most generous donors included:

MDG sports £50

Wyatt Homes £250

Greys Estate Agents £100

The PSA and Year Two parents (class of 2020) £255

Two anonymous parents who contributes £100 and £150

Thanks to this generosity, we have now purchases a set of new laptops which the children have started to enjoying using in school.

Thank you!

...the children in Reception were there!

To mark the end of their 'Amazing Animals' topic the children in Reception took part in an animal parade sporting the masks they'd made over the last few weeks. Don't they look fantastic!

Here are this week's top Doodlers.

Well done to Hettie, who is the school's top Doodler this week.

The Otters are the top Doodle Maths class this week, And the Foxes are top of the English charts this week. Well done!

Over the last two weeks, the children in Year Two have been looking at the work of the sculptors Anthony Gormley, Elizabeth Frink and Henry Moore.

They have been practising their own clay modelling and skills and planned and created their own sculptures. Take a look at some of their work here...

We have some visitors in Reception for the children's Amazing Animals topic...  The Reception children are very egg-cited and will be watching them closely over the next few days to see what happens.

Day 2: We have 10 eggs in our incubator

Day 3: We came to school this morning to find three chicks had hatched out of their eggs. By home-time three more had hatched too!

Day 12: Our Reception children said goodbye to our visiting chicks today. They have really enjoyed watching them hatch and grow over the last two weeks. Thank you to Living Eggs.

You may have noticed that there is a new flag flying over Upton Infant School.

Last year we had a competition to design a new flag. The winning design included pictures of children, the school and our 'Be More Brilliant' logo and has now been made into a flag.

Last week we had a ceremony to raise the new school flag for the first time.

As the children are settling back into school, we are focussing on key learning skills over these two weeks. Your child will be regularly coming home wearing a sticker which says ‘Ask me about…’

Please look at their stickers and ask them to tell you about what they have learned – not just the activities they have done, but what they understand about each of the learning skills. You can find out about them here or read their stories here.

Today, our Reception children have been focussing on communication, Year One have been learning about independence and Year Two have been considering how best to work as a team. Over the coming weeks they will also be learning about resilience, responsibility and enquiry skills.

‘The Learning Critters’ are our little friends who help us to learn these key skills.