Year 2

This term in Year 2 we have wrote a recount of our visit from ‘Mini Monsters’. We focused on the features of a recount, making sure we wrote in the past tense, used time adverbials, wrote in the first person and in chronological order.

We also looked at the Little People Big Dreams book about Sir David Attenborough and talked about what a biography and an autobiography is. We did lots of research about Sir David Attenborough, making notes about his childhood, family, education, work at the BBC, David as a naturalist and his expeditions. We then put our notes into full sentences and wrote up our biographies. We also decided to make two-page spreads about Sir David and present our facts in an eye catching way.

This half term the children in year 2 were surprised with instructions from the FLI (Federal literacy inspectors!) asking for help to create their own stories! Each day the children received challenges to support writing their own fiction book, including creating their own characters, settings and plot. The children loved making their very own books!

The children also watched a film called ‘Embarked’ and answered questions about what they watched using their Vipers skills. They used this film as inspiration to describe the city and countryside. They then designed their own treehouses and wrote instructions about how to build them.

Finally, year 2 looked at the Lifesize and Actual Size books. They were fascinated to see the different sizes of the animals as well as parts of the animals! They linked their English and Maths learning, by measuring the different parts of the animal using non-standard and standard measurements.

This term we have continued to explore poetry, particularly those about Winter. They have worked together to create word banks to help them write poetry using new vocabulary. We then looked at writing an acrostic poem with the word ‘frosty’.

We have also looked at the traditional tale of Little Red Riding Hood and described the characters in the story by using expanded noun phrases. The children then listened to the story from the Wolf’s point of view and wrote questions they would like to ask the wolf which they did through some ‘hot seating’ drama. They then wrote a letter from the Wolf to Granny and a sequel to the Wolf’s story.

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.

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.