In all the work you are doing, work the best you can. Work like you are working for the Lord, not for people.

Colossians 3:23

General Information

The school day begins with registration at 8.55 a.m and we really appreciate prompt time-keeping to get the children off to a good start.

Reading books should be brought in daily as we hear pupils read on different days of the week. Please read a little each night with your child and ask them questions about each page as this really helps to develop their understanding of what they have read. It also helps to prepare them for SATS in May. Please also sign the diary as a record of how they got on.

Homework for English, Mathematics and Spellings are given every Friday to be handed in on Monday. We really appreciate you sitting with your child as the homework reinforces what they have been learning in class, handwriting and spelling are also very important to think about. 

Children keep their spellings for a week and are tested on Fridays.  Some of the spellings will be given in a sentence to check that the children can apply the spellings to their own work.

Dinners are free for all children in year 2. Could you please inform us if your child is changing their choice of dinner on a Monday to help us with ordering lunches.

We have enjoyed an action packed term already and we will be posting pictures and information about school trips and activities very soon- so watch this space and enjoy finding out what your children have been up to so far!

Important Dates For Your Diary

Tuesday 20th September: Mass for Feast Day of St Robert Bellarmine

(children in school for 8:45)

Wednesday 5th October: Play in a Day - Liverpool the pool of life

Monday 17th October: Pupil progress Meetings (1pm - 5:30pm)

Friday 21st October: Harvest Festival (Presented by Yr3)

Friday 21st October : Finish for half term

Monday 31st October: Return to School

Friday 11th November: Friendship/Anti-Bullying Assembly (Presented by Yr1, Yr3 & Yr4)

Friday 2nd December: Non-Uniform Day (chocolates)

Friday 16th December: Christmas Fayre

Tuesday 20th December: Advent Service (7:00pm Church)

Wednesday 21st December: Term Finishes at 1:30pm

What have we been up to during the Autumn term?

School Council 

At the beginning of the year we thought about how we are a democratic society and how our school shows democracy through the school council. We were all given the opportunity to submit an application to become the year 2 representatives for our school council. We submitted an application form and made a speech to our class setting out our aims and goals. Then we went to the polls where we were all given the opportunity to vote for who we thought would do a great job for our class and school.

Place Value

We started the year learning about numbers and the value of the digits that make them. Our first activity was to create a museum using a variety of resources as a prior learning task to show what we already knew and understood.

Canonical Partitioning

We learnt that two digit number can be partitioned into tens and ones. We used base 10 equipment and place value charts to make numbers and identify the value of the digits in them. 

Spanish Dancing

We really enjoyed learning some movements and steps from traditional Spanish dances with Mercedes, she also taught us the names for these moves. We worked with partners to learn and improve. We've got rhythm in year 2!

Problem Solving - Finding all possibilities

How many was can you make 10? We used Numicon as our concrete apparatus. When we had found all of the different ways to make 10 we decided how we could work systematically to ensure we find all possibilities. 

Nature Art

We used mother nature to help us in our art work. First we used flowers to help us with our shading technique. Then we had great fun looking at the different types of leaves and their shapes and lines. Next we produced leaf rubbings using autumn colours and put them on the tree in our reading corner.

Jigsaw Club

One of our kind parents ran a jigsaw club this half term. We loved the sense of achievement and pride we felt when we completed a jigsaw. It also helped our concentration and team work skills improve.

Las manzanas de otono

September and October are the months of the year when the North of Spain celebrates the apple crop. There are plenty of festivals and everybody samples different ways of eating apples the most popular with children is 'manzanas de caramelo' or candied apples.  We caramelised and decorated our own apples and learnt the recipe in Spanish.

Raising money for Macmillan

We showed our support for Macmillan by holding a coffee morning. We all enjoyed the delicious cakes including our parents!

The Liverpool Skyline

During our art lessons we looked extremely carefully at the Liverpool skyline. We looked at the buildings and the shapes that make it. We drew our own skyline by breaking the buildings into shapes. Can you name any of the buildings?

Life 100 years ago

In our history topic we have been thinking about what life was like 100 years ago and important events that happened at that time. We began by working with Ed from Altru drama who taught us the history of Liverpool and helped us to produce a play.

Remembrance Day

Year Two carried out a beautiful collective worship for Remembrance Day. We showed great respect and love.

Liverpool Projects

Thank you all for producing imaginative projects about Liverpool. This supported our history work about Liverpool 100 years ago. It was interesting to see what you think is important to Liverpool and what you are proud of.

Chester Zoo

Year two visited Chester Zoo to find out about different types of animals, this will help us when we write animal information texts. We saw animals from all around the world and looked carefully at African animals because our next geography topic is about Africa. When we returned to school we looked carefully at the different colours, shapes and patterns on each animal and reproduced these in art lessons.

Friendship Week

We have learnt a lot this week about how to be a good friend and the qualities a good friend has. We thought about this through the friendship themes in our English books, we read How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers and Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper. We thought about the friendships in these books and wrote instructions based on them.

Altru Drama

Altru drama performed a play all about friendship and bullying and the different forms of bullying. It really hit home that we all need to be respectful and care for our friends.

African Masks

We worked with an artist called Mrs Thompson to make masks based on traditional ones from Africa. We started by looking closely at a range of examples and making a list of features including colours, symmetry and shape.  Then we designed our own masks and recreated them using clay. Our final step was to paint our creations and varnish them.

Show racism the red card!

Our school supported the show racism the red card initiative. We thought about what racism meant and what we should do to stop it. We wore red or blue clothes to show our support.

Judaism

We have been learning all about the Jewish faith in RE lessons.  Our learning was enhanced through visits and visitors who taught us all about the faith and different traditions. Ivan visited school and told us about Shabbat and the special meal that Jewish people have on this day.

King David's Synagogue

We visited a synagogue to find out information about Judaism. Avril and Jenny told us all about Torah scrolls, Mezuzahs and Shabbat. It was very interesting to look around.

Rounding to the nearest 10

We have been investigating rounding numbers to 100 to the nearest 10 following our steps to success. We used a variety of resources to support this including 100 beads, number tracks and numberlines. We were able to read the number, identify the multiple of 10 before and after, round the number up or down and calculate how many to each multiple of 10 to prove it! Some of us were able to apply this knowledge and play reasoned rounding.

Children In Need

The school council voted to support Children in Need by holding a pyjama day! We all made a donation to do this. Miss Wignall from Year five led a beautiful collective worship to start the day.

Design Technology in Science - Making Cars

We worked with a DT expert who helped us to design and make cars to carry our toys. This fitted in with our science work on materials because we discussed the properties of cardboard to decide if it was the right material for the job! We cut, folded and glued to make the car and put together dowel and discs to make a chassis. We learnt that we need to be precise when cutting and measuring or our designs did not work.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

The festive season is well underway in Year two we have been rehearsing and performing our play, 'Lights, Camel, Action!', making Christmas cards, wreaths and stockings in art and selling them at our Christmas Fair! We also loved taking part in our Santa dash - all four Smith brother's ran with us it was amazing!

Lights, Camel, Action!

We worked very hard learning our lines and rehearsing our Christmas play this year, thank you very much parents for your help! Our performances went brilliantly, everybody loved our Christmas story that was told in a similar way to Strictly Come Dancing! Year two is full of very talented actors and dancers!

Festive Art

Christmas crafts have taken over! We have linked art to our RE topic which is Preparations. We have thought about how we prepare for Christmas and made an advent wreath, card and Christmas stocking. We sold our stockings at the Christmas Fair with a calendar to raise money for school funds.

Santa Dash

Our class took part in a Santa dash that was supported by our local secondary school children. We were all very lucky because all four Smith brother's ran with us and cheered us on! The two quickest children received medals - well done!

What have we been up to in the Spring Term?

Learning about other religions

We have been finding out all about Islam and what it is like to be a Muslim. We visited the Al Rahma Mosque in Liverpool and had a visit from Sharlia who came from the Al Ghazah Multicultural Centre. We concentrated on learning about prayer and how important it is in Islam.

Share a book for World Book Day 2017!

We know that reading books is good for our imagination and it helps us all develop our listening and language skills. By reading together we want to share the message that reading is worthwhile! So, for World Book Day we decided to share books that we love in school and at home. It was so enjoyable to just read for pleasure.

Speak out, Stay safe

The NSPCC's Speak Out, Stay Safe programme visited our school to help make sure that we all have the knowledge and understanding to stay safe. We met their mascot Buddy who gave us information on how to speak up to keep us all safe.

Supporting Comic Relief

Red Nose day is upon us and we are aware that there are a lot of people who need our help both in this country and those around the world. As a school we decided that we would like to support Comic Relief in some way so our council came up with the idea of having a movie night! We all stayed back after school to watch a film and enjoyed hot dogs! To take part we donated £2 each to Comic Relief we hope this helps a person in need.

Mother's Day Collective Worship

Today our worship team led a collective worship with the theme of Mother's and in particular Mary, Jesus' mother. They worked together as a team to collect resources to decorate our worship table, write prayers, find readings and images that could be used in the different sections. Our children thought about their mum and how important she is today and we gave thanks. We each came up with something that we wanted to thank our Mum for because we realised that being a mother can be difficult and hard work at times. We all want to say a huge THANK YOU!

Easter Service

We were very lucky to visit St Robert Bellarmine Church to watch our Key Stage 2 children perform their Easter service. It beautifully told the story of Holy Week and made us realise the important message given at this time of year that Jesus loves us very much. All of the children acted, sang and danced exquisitely. Year two were moved to tears at times!

Smile Challenge Obstacle Course

As part of their smile challenge year six created an obstacle course to make us all smile! We all loved it especially the space hoppers at the end, they definitely made us all smile.

Healthy and Active Weeks

We have a focused time in school to think about how we can make our lives both healthy and active. Each day we work with a variety of coaches, children from our local secondary school and expert teachers to try a new activity. I'm sure we will all find a new favourite sport by the end! We also work with our school nurse learning about eating healthily. The fortnight is rounded off with a fancy dress family fun run to raise money for our year 6 trip to Colomendy. 

Children's University

Well done to all of the children from year two who graduated from Children's University. It was a lovely celebration of all of the hard work and commitment that they have shown by attending lots of after school clubs.

Take a bow Year Two!

Year two performed a lovely assembly today. The explained the importance of friends and how if you work together you can achieve anything! Year two have worked so hard this year and we are amazed at how hardworking and confident they have become. Well done each and every one of you have made Mrs Connell, Mrs Bonner and your families very proud!