Welcome Back

Time flies when you're having fun! Our first week back has flown by. We have done lots of P.E., met some Bristol City footballers, worked hard at some maths assessments and finished the week writing and performing our own silly rhyme poems - you can see some photos of the writing process followed by the performance in front of the class here.

Looking ahead to next week we are very much looking forward to working with Bristol City on Monday morning for a special training hour, hopefully everyone will have their P.E. kit in school. On Thursday it is World Book Day - Y2 are invited to bring a favourite book into school to share. I will remind the children about this on Monday (and Wednesday!)

Finally ... as stated in the note on the classroom door we are no longer bringing Bakugans and cards into school. I hope everyone is in agreement with this.

It was lovely to speak to you all on parents' evenings - just to reiterate please remember that myself or Ms Gower are always happy to see you to answer queries.
Have a lovely weekend.

Happy Half Term

There is a double dose of blog this week following last week's snow which kept us off school - most unexpectedly - on Friday! Talking of snow take a look at these pictures. We had been cooped up in the classrooms during so many playtimes that we decided to take everyone out to build snowmen and actually enjoy some of the weather that the children had not seen in this country to such an extent before!

As promised, on Wednesday the children made the pizzas that they had been writing instructions for. Many many thanks to Miss Sainsbury and Miss Marsh for spending the morning helping Y2 do this in the caretaker's house. We were very impressed by the amount of children who agreed to try mushrooms instead of having cheese overload, and when it came to eating time almost every child in the class ate every last morsel!

Today was our dance trip to Ashton Park. Many thanks to Brooke's mum and to Ciara-Leigh's mum who helped Ms Gower and Mrs Hillberg. Thanks also for all the parents who came to watch. A thoroughly enjoyable time was had by all and Ms Gower and Mrs Hillberg were so impressed by the children's performance and teamwork that EVERYONE went on the happy board today!

Have a lovely half term - there are lots of letters etc in the children's book bags including maths badge homework and time homework. We have been doing lots of work on time in school - please support them with this as this is an area of maths, as I have said before, that parents can really put lots of input into!
Have a lovely break - see you on Tuesday 24th.

The photos

Apologies for the lack of photos - we are having a big technical hitch so sorry they can't be added as promised! We'll make up for it next time.

Shape, Pizza and Gingerbread Man Dancing!

We have had a big focus on shape in Y2 this week with lots of work on 2D and 3D shapes and symmetry. We made lots of symmetrical shape patterns then turned them into symmetrical minibeasts to put on our wall - do come in and have a look!
In English we have been writing instructions. We spent lots of time thinking about how to make a pizza. We wrote them up into a clear set of instructions, some groups linked their ideas with connectives which really showed that they understood the order the instructions came in. It was really important that we got it right because in the last week of term Y2 will be making pizza with Miss Sainsbury and Miss Marsh and everyone needs to know exactly what they are doing!!!
On Friday we celebrated Storytelling Week by looking at the Storybee website (you can find links to it on the Luckwell website) at having a crazy dance to a musical interpretation of The Gingerbread Man. Unfortunately I can't put any photos up at the moment as I have left the camera's lead at school. I will, however, do this when I am in again on Tuesday.
As they say - watch this space!

School Past and Present

We started our history focus this week by looking at all the wonderful information children had brought in about people who used to attend Luckwell in the distant and not so distant past. We had lots of fun, especially, looking at Grace's mum's photographs of Luckwell in the seventies - do come into the classroom and take a look! We would love some more to put up - thank you Ashley for bringing pictures of her dad in who was at Luckwell in the nineties (and was taught by Mrs Christmas!) We found out a lot of interesting information about how Luckwell has changed (and in some cases stayed the same) and laughed over stories like Jess M-R's neighbour being made to eat spam fritters for school lunch! Yuk!
Today we brought things right into the present by interviewing Miss Fricker from the Y1 classroom. Miss Fricker is training to be a teacher and Y2 generated lots of very sensible questions for her about what her training is like. Take a look at the picture that shows her being interrogated by the Y2 detectives!

Movement, Maths and Mr Magnolia

As you can see in one of these pictures, this week we have started dancing! We worked with Primary Partnership P.E. teacher Debbie Scroggs to create a dance based on the theme of Hawaii. We will take it to a dance festival at Ashton Park School on 12th February to which parents are invited! More details will follow in a letter nearer the time.
We have also been working very hard at maths strategies to add and subtract 9 and 11 - another of the pictures here shows some very enthusiastic people who dashed up after their lunch to carry on working!
Also this week we finished our unit of poetry and had lots of fun changing the Quentin Blake story poem which goes ... Mr Magnolia has only one boot ... into Mr Magnolia has only one SOCK! Here's a picture of one group's work - the rest are on the classroom wall so please come and take a look!

Starting 2009!

Happy New Year to everyone! While it was freezing outside Y2 have been creating lots of warm with the energy coming from their brains because they have worked so hard!

On Thursday Amandine returned from France with Wellington and Antoine who apparantly had a lovely French Christmas. Amandine told us that she got some very strange looks taking photographs of the bears occupying a double seat on the Paris Metro! Here is a picture of Amandine and the bears telling Y2 about Christmas en francais.

We started our slightly different way of afternoon planning this week. This means that instead of fitting a bit of everything in over the week we concentrate on really 'getting our teeth into' a particular subject each week. This week we have been doing P.S.H.E. (Personal, Social and Health Education). We have looked at issues surrounding fairness and have also talked about the emergency services and the circumstances in which they should be phoned. Mrs Hillberg and I were really impressed by the sensible conversations Y2 had with each other while doing role play!

Next week we are concentrating on geography - that's why the children have been asked to draw their journey between home and school on the piece of A3 paper they were sent home with. We will also be looking at plans of the school and the classroom and - at the end of the week - we will be designing our own classroom. That should be fun, watch this space!