English

During the spring term, the children in year 2 have explored many areas of writing and have been inspired by many types of stimulus.

The first text children enjoyed reading was the story ‘The Storm Whale’ by Benji Davies. During this area of their learning, the children enjoyed researching about Whales and wrote a non-fiction factfile using their own research. They also wrote diary entries from the perspective of the whale and made predictions about what might happen as a sequel story!

Our next stimulus was the Disney clip ‘Lava’, about two volcanoes who fall in love as they emerge from the Pacific Ocean. This inspired the children to learn about volcanoes and write a non-chronological report about them. They also researched the volcanic islands of Hawaii using various resources. The children then created their own holiday brochures trying to persuade people to visit there.

This half term the children in year 2 completed activities using the book ‘The Flood’ as a stimulus. They learnt about what to do in a flood and used their notes to make a fact file about how to stay safe.

We watched the short film ‘Man on the Moon’ and used The Usborne Mini Astronaut’s Handbook’ for our next unit of work. The children wrote captions to go with parts of the story told in the film. They used it as a starting point to write a newspaper report about the sighting of a man on the moon.

The children then learnt about the astronaut Tim Peake and took notes before using these as a basis for a fact file and then a diary entry from the astronaut.

Our next learning focused on the story ‘How to Catch a Star’ By Oliver Jeffers. The children designed a rocket and wrote instructions about how to catch a star. They then wrote a recount of when we found a magical glittery star outside our classroom door.

We then listened to Michael Morpurgo reading his story ‘Coming Home’ about the migration journey of a Scandinavian Robin. We learnt about the migration journeys of Spider Crabs, Arctic Terns and Basking Sharks. The children made notes about the animals and why they migrate. They turned their notes into a story map which they then used to write their own migration story.

Finally, we made Speculaas biscuits and look at instructional writing. We talked about the key features of instruction, in particular recipes, and wrote our own recipes for making these Belgium treats.

This half term the children have become weather reporters and have really enjoyed this writing unit! They had a visit from Mr Bell, a meteorologist to start their Weather Experts topic. He spoke to the children about extreme weather but also gave some great advice for writing their own weather reports. Mr Bell provided the children with key words and phrases for their own reports.

Each day the children used the enquiry skill for Science, to observe over time, and recorded the weather patterns as a class. We then watched the weather report for East Anglia and made a word bank of more key words and phrases.

Before writing their weather report the children placed weather symbols on a map of the UK and used a script template to write their weather reports. Once finished, the children recorded their own weather report using Canva which made it look like they were really on the television!

They absolutely loved being weather reporters and look forward to seeing some of them being meteorologists when they are older.

This half term, the children have read the book ‘Dear Dinosaur’ in our English lessons. The children received videos and emails from adults that work behind the scenes in school, explaining what their job entails. The book which focuses on giving and receiving letters, inspired the children to write letters to their chosen member of staff. The children thought of questions that they would like to ask as well as introducing themselves. Here at Toftwood, we have amazing staff members who were kind enough to then write back to the children and responded to their questions.

The children then applied their letter writing skills to write a letter to Father Christmas explaining how they have worked hard this year and asking for a gift that they would like to receive. The children’s letters to Father Christmas were then delivered to the North Pole. The day after the letters were sent we received two presents under our class Christmas trees which included two books linked to Dear Dinosaur! They were Dear Spookysaur and Dear Chocosaur. The children thoroughly enjoyed reading these and making links to the other texts.

The children have worked very hard in English this half term. We have focused on different texts including Meerkat Mail by Emily Gravett.

When we read the Meerkat Mail book as a class, the children were very excited to discover that Sunny the meerkat had visited our classrooms! The children wrote some independent postcards in role as Sunny. They wrote about where they had visited, as Sunny, and what they enjoyed about their trip. The children also wrote missing posters and letters to help find Sunny when he went missing!

We learnt about meerkats using information videos, and then the children used this information to create a two-page spread poster. We included scientific facts and vocabulary as well as a labelled diagram of a meerkat.

The children have really worked hard this half term. We have focused on writing sentences by remembering to include capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. They have enjoyed reading texts like Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers and The disgusting sandwich by Gareth Edwards. The children read the story of The Disgusting Sandwich and we linked this to our DT learning this half term. By the end of the writing unit the children had designed, made and evaluated their own sandwich with two fillings, written the instructions to make their delicious sandwich and created a one-page spread advertisement to entice a customer to want to buy their product! The children thought carefully about the description, a slogan and an appealing picture of their product.

The children also wrote a recount based on their visit from Wycomb Pastures Petting Farm which was linked to their topic of Animal Life. They learnt about using time adverbials and writing in the past tense.