Week ending 7/10/11

Measuring fun!!!

We measured a huge rectangle in the playground. The length was 6m and the width was 3.5m.

No they were not making a hat they were measuring heads!

We measured lots of different books.

This week the children have been busy learning and rehearsing their harvest poems. Their homework is to learn more words as they will be taking part in a year group poem and then a group/paired or individual poem also.

In numeracy we have had lots of fun learning about measurement. There were lots of practical opportunities to practise measuring so we should all be experts now!

In literacy we were very excited to begin a new block of work on dinosaurs. We will be creating non-fiction posters which answer our own questions about dinosaurs. Thank you to those people who sent in books for us to use. We will be continuing with this project until after half term so would be glad to keep them for a little while.

In ICT we are busy typing up our modern versions of traditional stories. We will get some on the website soon. They are definitely worth a read!!

In French we have been working hard at learning greetings and have moved on to 'Ca va?' and responding to say how we are feeling.

We enoyed exploring ice in science this week. We looked at a number of different sized lumps of ice and watched what happened over the day. We will be carrying out investigations with ice soon.

Well done to Oliver Hunt for being pupil of the week last week and this week to Sydney.

For your information, if you go to www.feedmyinbox.com you can enter our blog details and receive an automatic message when we update it. We do try and do so every week but this isn't always possible so it may save you some time?

Week ending 23/9/11

One of the highlights of our week has to have been the police visit on Wednesday. They came to talk to us about keeping safe and in particular 'stranger danger'. PC Forrester showed us some of his equipment and we got to try on his jacket which was great fun, even Mrs Marks and Mrs Sibley had a go! They told us what to do if ever we needed to call the police and said how important it is for us to know our own addresses and phone numbers.

Also this week we ventured down to the green to look at trees. We were hoping to go further but it was miserable weather. We are going to be focusing on trees for our harvest celebration so look out for some tree poems soon!

In French this week we have been working on greetings and are getting far more confident at counting to 10. We have been playing lots of games to help us learn.

In dance we have been making warm up dances to some lively music. We will be teaching our dances to eachother over the term.

In science this week we have been finding out about how materials change and we had a practical lesson on Wednesday where we got to test lots of materials. A favourite was definitely the play dough!

There is a good programme on the internet which the children were shown which they will get chance to go on in school but lots were keen to have the address, so if you google bbc science clips characteristics of materials that should take you to it. It is quite a tricky programme but as we progress through our topic we will understand it better!

Well done to Otto this week for being worker of the week. He is a good listener and good at getting on with his work.

Also well done to Josh Morgan for getting the spelling trophy for September for making good progress with his spellings.

Sunday 18th September 2011

Class 2's focus this week has been on making a start with our Victorian topic work. The children have worked hard on creating Victorian timelines and finding out more about Queen Victoria. Did you know that she has been the longest reigning British monarch and was on the throne for 63 years!! Ask your children what else they know about her!!

This weeks homework was to linked to our topic by finding out more about your Victorian ancestors! Thankyou to those who have brought in photos of their ancestors, we would welcome any more to copy and add to our display.

Congratulations to Kim who is our Pupil of the Week. She has been particularly helpful around the class and assisted the year 2 children feel very welcome to Class 2. Thank you Kim!



A quick reminder that swimming begins this Thursday. The children will end the day at the usual time providing that we don't get too held up at the Cowcombe Hill roadworks.

First week back

We have only been back a week but I am sure everyone would agree it seems like much longer already! We started the week with no tears - well done everyone!!! Welcome to our eight new year twos who have settled in very well.
On Monday we had a busy but relaxed day. We wrote about our holidays, decorated hot air balloons for our porch with things we like and bright colours and we set up our class rules which are;
* We are nice to each other.
* We look after school property and each others.
* We don't talk when someone else is.
* We work hard and we don't waste time.
* We move around safely.
These are displayed in our classroom and will be reviewed regularly. Everyone signed them to say they agree to follow them.
Also this week we have started some French. Our aim is that everyone will be able to count to ten fluently soon! Some children can do this already and will be going further and helping others as well as having a go at some French maths. Speaking of maths, we had lots of fun on Friday doing maths with sweets. We discovered it was very hard to estimate the number of sweets in a pack and explored lots of ways of counting.
We ended the week with some well earned golden time, see pictures below.
Next week (on Tuesday) we will be having class elections to elect two class reps from each year group to be on the school council. On Monday the children will have chance to speak to the class about why they would make a good class rep (if they want to)...
Thanks to everyone who attended the parent's meeting on Wednesday. Hopefully you found it useful. The majority of information was on our newsletter for those who couldn't make it. One thing to note was that the lucky child who gets Patch (our class dog) will also be bringing our class hand towels home on a Friday to be washed! We hope this is acceptable to everyone.
Well done to Joshua Wilson for being awarded our first star pupil of the week! Although, everyone has been working very hard and has made a positive start to the year which is brilliant.


Sweet maths...




Golden time

The girls enjoy our new 'writing table'.

Last few weeks of term!

Apologies for not writing a blog for a while. There was a technical problem and also things have been manic! This blog will hopefully provide an update on our last few weeks of term.
We said goodbye to Miss Redfearn on the 28th of June. She has now completed her training and will be starting work at a school in Bristol in September. We celebrated her leaving with a party. Thank you to everyone for your contributions of party food after a last minute request. We ended up having quite a feast! We really enjoyed having Miss Redfearn work with us and she planned lots of exciting things for us to do. We made cress heads on the last day which were amazing and another highlight was our maths trail around the village. We also made a French fruit salad (with instructions being given in French) and had a poetry cafe where we got to read out some star poems which we had written.
On the 4th of July we had a visit from a dog warden as part of a campaign called 'Check B4 U pet' aimed at preventing incidents of biting from dogs. We designed posters with a key message from this which was to stand like a tree if approached by an unfamiliar dog. 5 of the best entries were sent to Ebley Mill. Joshua R, Finn, Sophie, Alfie and Emily were the ones chosen, well done to them! Another key message was to ask the owner of a dog before going to stroke it.
We have been really busy working on our school production. Our cow and Ishmaelite dances were fantastic and a very entertaining part of the production. Some of us weren't terribly happy about being cows, especially fat ones but there is no doubt that we all did a brilliant job!!!
We finished our R.E work on Judaism by tasting some of the ingredients from the Seder meal eaten by the Jews at the festival of Passover. The matzvah bread was the most popular and Oliver and Joshie made some 'charoset' which was interesting (nuts, cooking apples, fruit juice and cinnamon).
So much has happened it is impossible to write about it all. I think it is safe to say we have all had an enjoyable end of term! The Y3/4 will change classes next year and we hope they have lots of happy memories of class two. We wish them well. Have a very happy holiday everyone!
P.S The Y2 have been set a homework - diary challenge. This is meant to be a bit of fun and there will be prizes in September for effort, presentation and punctuation. A special book was issued for this task so please look out for it if you haven't seen it already!

Maths Trail

There were two highlights this week with Dads in school on Thursday morning and our maths trail around the village on Tuesday afternoon. Luckily the sun shone for us on Tuesday and we went off in small groups measuring, code cracking, adding and multiplying (and lots more) to find our way around the village and back to school.
Huge thanks to Miss Redfearn for organising this. Fun was had by all and it was a brilliant opportunity to work on our maths skills. Thanks also to all the parents who came with us. We couldn't have done it without your support.
Also this week we had a go at making our own Torah scrolls in R.E. Although we had a good try at writing in Hebrew we concluded it was very tricky! We also had a go using a quill which was interesting...
Next week we are going to be starting our D.T topic on vehicles and packaging so we need to remember lots of boxes and tights for our science!!!

Our Synagogue and PYO Farm Trip

We had an amazing time picking strawberries and the sun came out for us too! Thank you very much to the ESA for paying for the yummy strawberries, luckily they were a favourite with everyone.
Farmer Max...


Read some extracts from our recounts about the Synagogue below.

On Tuesday we went to Cheltenham Synagogue. First we had to separate into boys and girls and we went in through different doors to different sides of the room! Next a man called Michael talked to us about the Torahs, then he opened the Ark (pictured above) and showed us the Torahs, they were very beautiful. By Rosie

First we went on the coach. When we were there we saw a man who showed us the Ark, it was fun. He told us about the Synagogue and we saw a very small scroll. He told us lots of information and the seats were a bit uncomfortable. By Thomas

There were prayers on the wall. I also found the Ark where they keep the scrolls. Boys and girls went in separate doors. By Joshua W

At the Synagogue there was a man and a lady. The man was called Michael and the lady was called Miriam. At a service if there was not enough room the men would sit on both sides and the ladies would sit upstairs. Michael showed us the ark and he had to pull the curtain. Miriam said all about what Jews do at home. She told us about Jewish festivals. Michael had a kippah and a prayer shawl. We all looked at and touched some Jewish artefacts. In the Ark there were Torah scrolls and they were handwritten! By Joshua R