Week 4  – Feeling a bit like autumn now…

I’m never quite sure what to wear in this weather and I’m even more confused after seeing the weatherman on the TV tonight, apparently later next week it’s going to be sun, sun, sun! How fabulous it that, I hope he’s right!

We’ve had a great week in Year 2, in English, we have started our ‘best’ versions of our non chronological report based on rats and we began with our paragraph about what rats look like. There were a lot of sharp claws and scaly tails mentioned as well as teeth that gnaw. The children worked hard to use appropriate adjectives and extend their sentences. Next week we are learning about what foods rats like to eat and we’ll carry on with our booklets. There are some quite surprising things that rats enjoy which I am sure the children will be interested in learning.

In maths we have been learning to add and subtract 10 to any 2-digit number and have completed number sequences and puzzles using this skill as well as the skill of one more, one less. The children have embraced this new learning and there has been a real sense of ‘busyness’ across the year group as children have discussed their maths with one another. They have reminded each another that when counting up or down in 10s, the unit digit must always stay the same but the tens number changes. Why not play a game with your child to practise these skills?

You could pick a starting number and take it in turns to add or subtract 10?

12, 22, 32,42, 52, 62, 72, 82, 92,          Red is player 1        Black is player 2

99, 89, 79, 69, 59, 49, 39, 29, 19, 9      Black is player 1      Red is player 2

This game can be played verbally or with a piece of paper and a couple of pens.

 Counting back in 1s is also a useful skill to practise especially from the larger 2-digit numbers and crossing through a tens barrier eg.  63, 62, 61, 60, 59, 58  etc.

We have also been practising handwriting, refreshing our knowledge about keeping safe on the internet, continuing our music and singing lessons as well as carrying on our history learning. We were so lucky as we had a wonderful drama group come in this week with a focus on The Great Fire of London. The children loved it as did the grown ups!

Thank you for your continued support with listening to your child read at home and supporting with homework and spellings. Everything you do at home really does make a difference and we really appreciate it, so thank you. New homework went out today and please remember it is the spelling test and book change day on Monday so all diaries and home readers need to be in please.

That’s it for now, have a lovely weekend everyone and look forward to seeing you on Monday.

The Year 2 Team.