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Larch (Yr 2)

Welcome to the Year 2 class page!

Teacher: Miss Cooper

Teaching Assistants: Mrs Beeton and Mrs French

Here you will find information and updates as to what we have been up to in class.
Keep checking back to find out more...!

Key Stage 1 assessment - An information evening for parents

Curriculum information

Summer Term

We loved learning to weave with Mrs French. We were super proud of the wheels we created!

It has been very special to see our tadpoles grow into frogs. We have released three frogs now!

We enjoyed going back to the moat to check on our bug hotels and we were pleased to find that a variety of mini-beasts had come to stay! We collected data to show our findings.

UPDATE: We have our first frog!

We were utterly delighted to receive a very special looking envelope recently. What was inside the envelope was pretty special too!

We had such a great time during Maths week. We particularly loved the maths trail, making shared Kandinsky inspired art and our whole school P.E. lesson where we worked in teams to create different mathematical concepts.

In Science we have been making habitats suitable for mini-beasts.

UPDATE: our tadpoles are turning into froglets!

We made clay relief tiles of Tudor houses.

One member of the class wrote a fabulous non-fiction book about Guinea Pigs at home!

Miss Cooper set us a challenge to find out the temperature and capacity of each teacher's cup of tea. We then had to explain which cup of tea we wanted and why.

In Maths we challenged our partner to finish our symmetrical patterns.

Very kindly, one child in our class brought in her violin (and her Dad!) and they played the class a tune. They decided to play London's Burning because of our topic and we all sang along in a round!

Because it was our Queen's 90th birthday, we wrote a letter as a class to congratulate her. We popped the letter in an envelope and took it to the letter box. Hopefully we will get a reply!

Larch Class

Stapleford Primary School

Bar Lane

Stapleford

Cambridge

CB22 5BJ

Friday 22^nd April 2016

Her Majesty the Queen

Buckingham Palace

London

SW1A 1AA

Dear Your Majesty the Queen,

We are writing to you to say congratulations on your 90th birthday and we hope you had a very happy day. We are the children in Year 2 at Stapleford Primary School, Cambridgeshire. Have you ever been to Cambridgeshire?

Whilst you may have been celebrating your birthday by having a grand feast, we were on a school trip at the Botanic Gardens in Cambridge. When we were at the gardens, we went in the rainforest greenhouse and we learnt about a variety of plants including monkey cups, cacti and a banana tree. Most of us liked the monkey cups the best because the name was funny! Our class went on two trains that were as fast as lightning but we did face some trouble with our journey as the trains were delayed!

Our class respect you and everything you have done for the country a lot. What a great Queen you have been! We cannot believe that you have been Queen for almost 63 years. We are interested to know what it is like to be the Queen. How exciting it must be to have a throne!

We hope you had an extremely exciting birthday and we wish you many happy returns. Our teacher, Miss Cooper, told us that when she was younger she wrote to you and she received a reply. We would be most grateful if you wrote back.

Yours sincerely,

Larch Class

We have new friends in our class! We are so excited to watch them grow.

Our trip to the Botanic Gardens was fantastic! We learnt about what is inside a seed, made our own plant pots out of newspaper, learnt about how plants survive in the rainforest and desert and we also learnt about a variety of carnivorous plants. We also loved catching the train to Cambridge (even though they were both delayed!)

Once we finished writing our non-chronological reports about nocturnal animals, we peer assessed them. We read them to a friend who gave us 2 stars and a wish about our writing.

Spring Term

Thank you to scientist Marielle Vigouroux who came into school to share with us her knowledge about plants. We learnt where you find the seeds in a wheat plant and looked at these under a fantastic microscope!

Here are the nocturnal animal masks we made. Can you spot which animals we chose?

On 17th March, we walked to Shelford Primary School where we took part in a sports event. We really enjoyed taking part and making new friends.

We all loved our visit from children's author Isabel Thomas. She helped us understand how to use comparisons when writing non-fiction texts. Thank you, Isabel!

Using magnifying glasses, we closely observed the plants in the school garden and sketched them.

We used non-fiction books to help us gather research for our own non-fiction writing.

We did yoga for the first time and it was great. We were so relaxed, we almost fell asleep!

World Book Day 2016! Can you guess which book characters we dressed up as?

Our trip to Tesco was 'the best trip ever'! We found the colours of the rainbow down the fruit and vegetable aisle, met the fishmonger and watched him fillet a mackerel, we went behind the scenes of the supermarket and we even went into the freezer! It was -14.9 ̊c in there! Luckily, we were able to try some delicious foods before we left.

Our topic of food sent us into the kitchen where we created STOMP inspired music using kitchen sounds!

We loved Shakespeare week and our visit from Olivia who worked at the Globe Theatre. We learnt about Shakepeare's 'The Tempest' and created freezeframes to tell the story.

Using a computer program called Scratch, we have been learning more about algorithms.

Our skipping workshop was fantastic. We learnt how to skip forward, backward and in pairs!

After learning about food around the world, we designed and made our own Italian food: pizza!

Year 5 read to us during library time recently. We really loved it!

We enjoyed using vegetables as an art medium during our FANTASTIC FOOD! topic.

Autumn Term

CATS: The Nativity 2015

During Science, we conducted an experiment using ice to learn about the environment and greenhouse gases.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit from Nick Baker, the TV naturalist! Well done and thank you to Francesca for winning the competition!

We used peg boards to make arrays during a multiplication lesson in Maths.

As part of anti-bullying week, we spent our PSHE lesson discussing how people can still be our friend, even if they look different to us and like different things. We then created a friend who was different to ourselves.

In Science we have been learning about materials. We had a visit from Henrietta the hen who asked us to help find the best material for her eggs. Because of this, we investigated which material would offer the best protection against a fall.

Here is some of our work:

Prediction:

I think the hessian will be the best material because it is soft and the eggs will be nowhere near breaking.
Dexter

Equipment:

Eggs
Metre stick
Person to drop the eggs
Materials
Trays

Harry S

Method:

First we laid some trays out.
Next we wrapped the eggs up.

After that we dropped them from a metre.

Then we went to check them.

Amy

How did we keep our experiment fair?

We dropped the eggs at the same height. We didn’t throw them.
Maisie

Findings:
We found out that the bubble wrap was the best material.
Aurelia

In English today, we have written poetry about our houses.

We were learning how to use noun phrases, adverbs AND commas in a list!

Here is some of our work...

I like to taste lovely macaroni cheese.
(By Peter)

I like to hear the twittering songs of an Autumn bird when I wake up.
(By Alba)

I like to touch my Mummy’s fluffy cardigan while I hug her peacefully.
(By Eliza)

I feel my soft, fluffy, pink blanket.
(By Freya)

Today in Topic we constructed our own buildings out of biscuits!

Miss Cooper was thrilled that one budding author brought the series of books she had been writing in to show the class. Her books have since inspired others to write more at home! Watch this space...!