Year 2 Gallery & Work 22/23

IInfantasia 2023...

Highfield have been lucky enough to host Infantasia 2023! Schools from around Sunderland joined us to perform and sing together. Year 2 sang the song ‘Build Up’ – a beautiful song about building friendships and supporting each other followed by ‘If I were a butterly’. The children sang beautifully and should be so proud of their performances!

Art

In Art, we have been using watercolours to create some amazing landscapes of Alaska. We had to think carefully about how much water to use and had to be very delicate to create the best effects!

RE

In RE, we have been learning all about Islam and how Muslims live. We have been discussing what the Qur’an is and why it is important to Muslims. We then made our own plates using Arabic patterns to symbolise 4 things we can learn from the Qur’an.

Writing Our Own Narratives...

We have loved writing our version of the story ‘Vlad and the Great Fire of London’. Mrs Parsons and Mrs Crawford were so impressed with our writing and we are very proud of our finished pieces of writing!

“My story was about a homeless dog called Charlie. I had so much fun writing it and I was very proud of myself!”  - Emmy.

“I tried really hard to make sure my handwriting was neat. I’m very happy with my finished story!” - Halle

Baking 17th Century Rock Buns...

We have been very busy of the past few weeks in Year 2!

Last week, we made 17^th Century rock buns as part of our Great Fire of London topic. We are going to be writing instructions on how to make rock buns so we had a go at making them ourselves! We measured out the ingredients, before mixing them all together and baking them in the oven.

“I liked weighing out the ingredients and thought they tasted lovely” - Leo M.

“They smelt so delicious! I enjoyed making them but the mixture was very hard to stir!” - Noah.

Great Fire of London...

We have also began our Great Fire of London topic and the children are very enthusiastic about life in the past. We are using the book Vlad and the Great Fire of London in our English lessons as a hook to write our own narrative. We have been working hard using powerful vocabulary, expanded noun phrases and conjunctions to improve our writing. We have just begun writing it so we can’t wait to share the final pieces with you.

Questioning

We have been completing our Questioning unit in computing. We have learned how to collect data from a spreadsheet and place it in a pictogram using Purple Mash, we used yes/no questions to sort data and most recently, we have used a binary tree to sort information using questions. It has been a lot of fun!

Emelia said, “I really enjoyed the game, I used my questions to figure out the avatar my partner chose”.

Charley said, “It was hard at first because I had to think about what questions to ask. Sometimes they couldn’t answer because it wasn’t a yes or no answer”.

LYFTA...

To celebrate the Christmas festivities, we were lucky enough to take part in a Lyfta Live session all about the Opera in Finland We got to see backstage and learn all about the costumes, set design, singers and instruments.

“I got to stand up in front of everyone and speak about what we have learnt this year!” – Kreay

“My favourite instrument was the harp because it sounded so lovely and delicate” – Evelyn

Snow at Highfield...

This week Year 2 have also been enjoying the snow! We went outside for break and lunch time and had so much fun making snowballs and building snowmen!

“I am going to roll my snowball to make a snowman!” – Emeli

“The snow looks like glitter on the ground.” – Zach

Christmas...

We are definitely feeling the Christmas spirit in Year 2! The staff and children had a delicious Christmas dinner and loved wearing our Christmas jumpers all day. We have also been extremely busy making all of our Christmas Cards and the Christmas crafts that we sold during our Christmas performance on Wednesday.

“I loved using the chalk and glitter to create my picture” – Mason C

“I am so happy with how my bauble turned out!” – Evie

Useful and Kind...

We have been getting into the festive spirit! We have spent time making Christmas cards for the residents at Dovecote Meadow. We used our cutting and sticking skills to try to get our baubles perfect. We are so pleased with the finished result!

 “I liked using the pots to draw my circles.” – Zian

“I was happy because it was very nice making cards for the people at Dovecote” - Charley

“I loved that the baubles looked like Santa’s belly!” - Millie

Addition

In Mrs Parsons’ Maths class, we have been learning all about addition. We have learnt how to add on a number line before looking at adding using the partitioning method. Mrs Parsons was very impressed with our neat presentation and quick mental maths!

Woodlice Experiment...

In Science we have conducted a woodlice experiment! We went into the garden to carefully collect some woodlice before seeing what living conditions they would prefer. We used black and white card and created four different areas. We were amazed with what we found out!

“I liked it when we were hunting for the woodlice. We had to be very careful not to hurt them and used a soft brush to carefully place them into the containers” – Jayden

“I found out that woodlice prefer somewhere dark and damp!” - Zachary

Washington Wetlands Centre...

As part of our ‘Animals and their Habitats’ topic, Year 2 went on a fantastic trip to Washington Wetland Centre! We had so much fun and saw lots of animals including cranes, otters and flamingos! We spent time hunting mini-beasts in the woods and pond dipping – we even found 2 huge diving beetles!

“It was lots of fun! My favourite thing was the flamingos. Did you know a group of flamingos is called a flamboyance?” – Brynley

“I loved the otters! They looked so cute and it was very funny when they tried to bite the man’s shoes!” – Evie

“I caught a diving beetle when we went pond dipping!” – Halle

Coding

In Computing, we have been learning all about algorithms as part of our coding topic! We first explored what an algorithm is before using the laptops to create our own piece of coding and make fish move!

Alternative endings...

Before half term, we wrote some amazing alternative endings to our fairy tale ‘The Three Little Spider Monkeys’ which was written by our very own Mrs Williams! We learnt lots of amazing vocabulary and used this to create some imaginative endings!

Desert habitats…

During our science lessons, we are learning all about different habitats around the world. We have already looked at the rainforest and what animals and plants live there and began investigating what lives and grows in the desert. We looked at different animals and plants and what special characteristics they have to help them live in such hot, dry conditions.

Melina said, “I enjoyed learning about the desert snakes and how they can blend into the sand to camouflage!”

Emelia said, “I loved learning about the camels because I didn’t know they stored fat in their humps but now I know!”

Our rainforest animal descriptions!

We have enjoyed reading ‘The Great Kapok Tree’ a lot recently and have been working extremely hard during our writing lessons using the text.  We used our knowledge of noun phrases and conjunctions and we produced some amazing animal descriptions, we hope you enjoy them as much as we did writing them!

Emmy said, “I liked using noun phrases to describe a parrot.”

Pheobe said, “I enjoyed learning all the facts about the sloth so I could write about it.”

Continents of the World!

We have been keen geographers learning all about the continents of the world and we can even list them from largest to smallest using a song to help us, ask us to sing it for you! We also looked at where the continents belong on the Earth and we made our own world globes using balloons. It was a lot of fun!

Farrah said, “I love singing the song and even stood up in front of the whole class to sing it on my own!”

Into the rainforest…

During our Autumn term our topic is ‘Animals and their Habitats’. We have been using the book ‘The Great Kapok Tree’ written by Lynne Cherry as our inspiration to help us write animal descriptions we may find in the rainforest.  We have been practising sentences using adjectives and noun phrases to describe how they look, feel and move as well as using the conjunction and to add more information. We can’t wait to show you the finished descriptions!

Christian said, “I’m going to describe a snake because it hunts for its prey in the rainforest!”

Charlie said, “I have learned that the sloth moves very slowly.”

Starting Year 2...

We have had such a wonderful start to Year 2! We have been very busy focussing on our topic ‘Good to be Me’ and discovering all the reasons to celebrate us! We have been reading the book ‘Oh Dear, My Deer’ by Vicky Cowie and thinking about how our problems can become our greatest achievements. In English, we have been replying to a letter that Mrs Parsons and Mrs Crawford have sent us.