Welcome to Year 2

Easter and Pentecost Terms 2022

Dear Parents,

                          Mrs Breen and Mrs Concannon

A few things I would like to highlight;

• PE this term will be on Thursdays, where the whole afternoon will be devoted to our games and/or gymnastics. Please can children have their full, clearly named, PE kit in school at all times, including socks for girls who normally wear tights as part of their school uniform. We would appreciate that earrings and watches are removed for PE.
• Homework will usually be given out on Fridays and expected in the following Friday.  Each week children will receive spellings to learn using the Sir Linkalot app, a times table to focus on and a piece of written work or some maths calculations.
• Children are also encouraged to read daily at home, reading aloud to an adult who can discuss the text with them. Reading is to be recorded in their reading record. Reading books will be changed weekly or more often on request.
• Reading records can also be used as contact books between home and school.  

Some Key dates:

w/c 23^rd May: various activities to celebrate the Jubilee.

Thursday 21^st July: Final day of Term 6 for children

Term 4: World Book Day 4.3.22.

To celebrate World Book Day, Year 2 brought in their favourite books to share with Year 5.  The children really enjoyed discussing their chosen books.  Year 5 children then kindly explained to their younger friends how to select reading books that would allow them to develop a love of books and reading.  Thank you Year 5.

We also brought into school some of the objects that we really enjoying playing with.  We pretended that we had pulled these objects out of a mysterious black hat (just like the story we have been studying in class) and we used our imaginations to write a mystery story about the objects. Our stories are stuck in a class book called The Black Hat Mysteries!

Term 4: Safer Internet Day 21st February

This year the theme for Safer Internet Day was centered around fostering respect and relationships in online gaming.

In Year 2, we started our discussions by thinking about what we use the internet for and came up with a massive list of uses ranging from shopping to gaming, thinking about the positive and concerning aspects of the various uses.  We looked at how online games had become a big part of many of our lives.  One difference we noticed was that we did not all use the same type of device to play our games on, so we carried out a class survey and created a pictogram to show our findings.

We all agreed that gaming was fun, whatever device you were using.  We enjoyed the challenge of beating our previous scores, the conversations we would be able to have with our friends the next day about our scores and the overall entertainment it gave us. 

We moved our discussions on to look at the hidden dangers that online gaming might pose for us. To help us understand these potential dangers, we watched two online stories:

Digiduck's Famous Friend

Digiduck and the Magic Castle

In the first story, Digiduck and his friends were using email to ask questions while trying to guess the name of a special visitor, a bit like an online 'Guess Who'.  However, there were some questions that this visitor would not answer - these were questions that were asking about his personal information such as where he lived.

In the second story, Digiduck and his friends were playing an online game together but at one point the game asked them to enter a password so that they could buy gold coins.  The friends shared their parents' passwords with each other and this allowed the game to continue with them buying gold coins. What they didn't realise is that they were actually paying money that would come out of their parents' banks.

We discussed what was safe to share online such as our sock colour, our favourite food, our favourite part of a game.  We made sure that we all understood what we should never share online such as our passwords, usernames, full names, addresses, phone numbers, where we were at that moment.  This information was personal to us.  We need to think before we share any information online.  We need to be careful and keep ourselves safe online just as we would keep ourselves when we were somewhere such as at the park.  We should always speak with an adult if we are unsure about what is OK to share or do online.

During Anti-Bullying Week, Year 2 children acted out some scenarios where one of the children in their group was being bullied by other children.  The children discussed what it felt like to hear unkind words and to be the victim of unkind behaviour.  A bystander then stepped in with kind words and behaviours to help the person who had been bullied.  We freeze-framed the children's acting.  The children added their own speech bubbles to the scenarios.

We all agreed that kind words are very important.

Exploring saris for our topic on India. 8.10.21.