Hill Top Primary Academy

Year 2

Welcome to our class page!

The adults working in Year Two this year are - Miss Monaghan, Miss Mattinson and Mrs Towler (Thurs AM)

It was lovely to welcome back some children at the beginning of this week even if it just was for a few days! They adapted incredibly well to the new routines and spent the days with smiles on their faces. Well done!

HOME LEARNING 

We are so proud of how all of you have adapted to working at home and we have been really pleased with the work you have sent back. Year 2 you are SUPERSTARS!

I will update the page so you can see what your friends have been up to. 

As we started working from home on Monday and everything felt very strange! Our task was to read the poem about how our world was changing and perform it. We had some excellent performances sent in!

Art - You have all created some wonderful pieces of art work based on an artist from the past of your choice. They are brilliant!

English - You all read the story of 'Peter Rabbit' as we were going to be learning about Beatrix Potter this week. You created story maps showing the sequence of the story and then spent time writing detailed stories. Fabulous work!

Home Learning Week Two!

Again we have all been so impressed with the work carried out at home and the wonderful photos that we have been sent. 

Maths task  - This week we moved onto looking at weight, capacity and temperature. Lots of you got involved with the practical task we set for you to do at home. You found lots of different tins, packets etc in your houses, found the weight of each and then ordered them from lightest to heaviest. Some super work!

History Task - We looked at the inventions of different types of technology throughout the past. Children then created their own timelines showing what they had learnt. This is just a selection. 

English - This week in English we looked at the life and inventions of Alexander Graham Bell. Children created their own notes from a powerpoint and then used these the next day to create a piece of writing. There was some excellent pieces sent back to us, below is just a few!

WELCOME BACK!

As we begin our third week of home learning we are starting a brand new topic. Below is the topic plan for 'Hooray - Lets go on Holiday'

Explaining the Theme

In Geography, we’ll be finding out:

• About the places people go to on holiday
• How they get to their holiday destination
• Some of the things people do on holiday
• What people wear on holiday
• How tourism can spoil holiday places

In History, we’ll be finding out:

• About the holidays that we have had in our own past
• About the holidays that our families and other people have had in the past
• What is the same and what is different between holidays in the past and today
• About some of the wonders of the world

In Art, we’ll be finding out:

• How to create a sand art sculpture
• About some of the pictures that are used to record holidays
• How we can record our holidays
• About the designs of some holiday souvenirs

In ICT & Computing, we’ll be finding out:

• How to use mapping software

In Society, we’ll be finding out:

• How to stay safe on holiday
• What a pilgrimage is

In International, we’ll be finding out:

• What is the same and what is different between the lives and home countries of the different children in our class
• How to greet people in different languages
• About future holidays in space

Entry Point Task

Our task was to create a mode of transport that would take people to a holiday destination. We encouraged you to use whatever you had available at home and it's lovely to see all the creative ways you've found to make a vehicle!

English - We have been looking at recounts this week. We have written recounts of our own favourite holidays or trips and also created a picture recount of the story 'Katie Goes to London' 

ART Task - We read the story 'Katie Goes to London' and in the story she visits lots of the famous landmarks. We now know that lots of tourists visit our country and our capital city to see features like this. We chose a landmark to draw or paint for our Art task. Have a look!

Home learning Week 5 - English

This week our topic work took us on our holidays to BRAZIL. We learnt about the things that make the country special and watched videos of the famous carnival. We then planned and wrote our own diary entries imagining what it would be like to visit the carnival. These are just some of them!

Maths - This week we were learning all about time. We looked at our daily schedules and then compared this to a little boy called Ronaldo who lives in Brazil. We then completed our own 1 minute time challenges at home and had great fun!

Topic - We used Google Expeditions to travel to South America and visit some wonders of the world digitally. We then watched a video of the Seven Wonders and chose our own to replicate at home. Can you tell what each one is?

During the last week of term we looked at Australia as this was our class IPC country too! Below you will see some of the aboriginal art work we created at home. 

In English we researched about the Great Barrier Reef. We then used our new information and facts to create a leaflet for tourists. They were fabulous! Below is a selection of some!

Summer 2 - Home learning continued!

Our new topic is 'Who Am I?'

In Society, we’ll be finding out:

• About the different groups we belong to
• About the things that make us feel happy
• How to deal with anger
• How to stay safe
• How to make an emergency phone call

In Art, we’ll be finding out:

• How to draw portraits and self-portraits
• How to take a portrait photograph
• About portraits by famous painters and sculptors
• How to design a favourite menu

In Physical Education, we’ll be finding out:

• What activities we can do well
• How we can stay fit and strong

In Science, we’ll be finding out:

• About how our hearts work
• About how we are similar to and different from other people
• About different types of foods

In Geography, we’ll be finding out:

• Which countries we or our ancestors have come from
• How to find our local area on a map
• About different countries we have lived in

In International, we’ll be finding out:

• About the way children in our host country and home countries live

As part of our new topic 'Who Am I?' we watched a video showing us how to use different techniques to create a self portrait. We then had a go at them. Can you guess who some of your friends might be?

Below is our curriculum map for the year. It outlines what we will be learning each half term.

Autumn 1 - Brainwave

Our first topic for the beginning of the year is our whole school topic on Brainwave!

Below are the objectives that we will be covering for this topic over the coming weeks.

In this unit, we’ll be finding out:

• How the brain works
• About the personal goals that help us to become better learners
• How to find out facts to prepare for a special challenge
• How to learn and practise skills for a special challenge
• How to record how well we are learning
• How to use what we have learned to create our own special challenge
• How to wake up our brain
• How to look after our brain
• How to design a classroom for learning 

ENTRY POINT

For our entry point we made our own play dough so that we could create sculptures of our brains. We watched a video that told us about the section of our brain which holds our memories. Once we had made our play dough brains we added some of our favourite memories to them. 

We have been learning about how important it is to have a 'Growth Mindset' - we have read a few different stories about never giving up and always having another go. We have also learnt this song in class to help remind us of all these things if we feel like giving up!

We read the story 'Our Fantastic Elastic Brain' which taught us about how important it is to stretch our brains so that we can get better at different things. We all used our own elastic bands to help us think about things we find hard and understand how important it is to stretch our brains. We then wrote about what we had thought about.

The next story we listened to was called 'The Dot'. The little girl thought that she couldn't draw as well as her friends could, she could only make a dot. Throughout the story she began to change her dots into other things and finally learnt that she was able to draw just as good as everyone else. The motto of the story was 'Make a mark and see where it takes you!'

We all made our own mark and then let it take us wherever it wanted to - we created some wonderful pictures!

Autumn 1 - The Earth Our Home

In Science, we’ll be finding out:

• About the plants and animals living in forests
• About different types of trees
• About plants and animals that live in other habitats
• How to sort living things into different groups
• What a micro-habitat is and what creatures live there
• How animals are adapted to their environment
• How living things depend on each other

In Technology, we’ll be finding out:

• How to make a habitat and nesting box for bees

In International, we’ll be finding out:

• About the loss of the world’s forest habitats
• About Earth Day and how we can help our planet

Entry Point

Our Entry Point was to transform our classroom into a rainforest! We used google expeditions to take a virtual tour around a real rain forest in Borneo to help us with our planning and ideas. We then selected our own materials and got to work!

We read the story 'Dear Green Peace' which helped us to learn about the habitats that animals need to survive and also helped us to understand what charities are doing work to help stop the destruction of some habitats. We used our new knowledge from a SPAG lesson to write questions to the whale with the correct punctuation. 

In Science, we carried out an investigation to help us see the effects that climate change is having on the world. We made our own Lego cities and then placed these on top of ice. In our groups we then decided what type of environment we would place our cities in some chose warm and some chose freezing! Over time periods of 30 minutes we observed what was happening to the ice. The next day we discussed as a class the results of our investigation and what this helped us to know about Climate Change. 

International Task - We designed our own climate change posters! We looked at examples used in marches around the world and talked about the type of pictures and slogans that we thought were good. We then made our own!

In Science we have also learnt about the different groups that animals can be sorted into. We looked at the various ways in which we classify different animals and then worked as a group to sort them into our own groups. We thought of some interesting criteria!

Autumn 2 - The Stories People Tell 

In History, we’ll be finding out:

• About myths and legends from different times in the past
• How to create our own legend about someone we know
• About the gods that people used to worship in the past

In Art, we’ll be finding out:

• How people in the past have represented stories and characters
• How we can use art to tell a creation story
• How to create our own Greek masks
• How to design and make our own dream catcher

In Physical Education, we’ll be finding out:

• About fables and the lessons that they teach us
• How we can use dance and movement to tell a story

In Music, we’ll be finding out:

• About songs and music that tell a story
• How we can make our own music to tell a story

In Geography, we’ll be finding out:

• About stories from different countries and cultures
• How we can remember an important journey
• How we can make a map of our own imaginary land

In Society, we’ll be finding out:

• About fairytales and the lessons that they teach us
• How we can make a modern version of a fairytale
• About who we think of as ‘heroes’ today

In International, we’ll be finding out:

• About legendary and mythological characters from our different home countries

We brought our favourite books from home to share with our friends. We talked about different features such as characters and plots and gave our own opinions as to why we think people should read them. 

Spring 1 - How Are You?

In Science, we’ll be finding out:

• About eating the right foods
• About getting enough exercise
• Why our bodies need sleep
• What happens when we are ill
• How germs get inside our bodies
• How to protect our bodies
• About our senses

In History, we’ll be finding out:

• About the doctors who discovered medicines
• About diseases from the past

In Physical Education, we’ll be finding out:

• How exercise keeps our body healthy
• What activities we can do to stay fit

In International, we’ll be finding out:

• Why some people don’t have drinking water
• What hospitals are like

Entry Point - Fitness Session!

On Monday 6th January we completed our Entry Point for our new topic How Are You?

We all warmed our bodies up by following an energetic warm up video which involved doing repetitions of exercises such as the frog squat and heel taps. We then moved onto our fitness circuit. We had to complete six different exercises during the circuit and took part in each one for one minute. By the end of it all of our faces were quite red and we could feel that our hearts were beating much faster than they were at the beginning. We each thought of 3 adjectives to describe how our bodies felt at the end of the sessions - some of these included; tired, weak, hot, exhausted and PROUD!

ART TASK - We used natural materials to create our own skeleton bodies outside. We used different materials for various parts and used our mathematical knowledge of sixe and shape to to select appropriate bits for different parts. 

ART TASK - We looked at the work of Guiseppe Archimboldo who lived over 500 years ago! He used fruits and vegetables to create portraits of people. We then created our own!

Science Task - We designed our own series of 1 minute exercises in class and then tested them out in the hall. We recorded what happened to our bodies after each exercise and we were able to see how different exercises affected different parts of our bodies. 

EXIT POINT - We had such a fun day at Eureka! for our exit point. We spent the morning exploring the sound gallery and then had lunch on the train. In the afternoon we visited the All About Me gallery which taught us lots of things about our bodies. We then took part in our gross lab workshop which linked to our work on germs in class. We had a super time and learnt lots of interesting facts!

SCRAP SHED WORKSHOP - We had great fun using the new materials inside the Scrap Shed in KS2's playground. We were able to use our imaginations to create whatever we wanted with our friends and there was some brilliant inventions! 

Spring 2 - People of the Past

In History, we’ll be finding out:

• About the different decisions that rulers had to make in the past
• How to use a living graph to explore how a person from history might have been feeling
• About the life of a famous explorer using maps and role play
• How to compare the lives of two different explorer
• About the achievements of important scientists and inventors
• About what life was like at different times in the past

In Music, we’ll be finding out:

• About the life and music of a famous composer
• How to use music to tell the story of our famous composer

In Art, we’ll be finding out:

• What we can learn about a person from their portrait
• How to create a portrait of a friend
• About the work of famous artists
• How to paint a scene in the style of a famous artist

In International, we’ll be finding out:

• About the idea of ‘fairness’ and what it means
• Why some people in the past wanted to make change