Transitions 2023-2024

Mrs Harper is the Year 2 teacher at Harlaxton CE Primary School. Below is a transition booklet informing you of a little bit about Year 2 before you begin. We are very friendly and hope to see you soon. 

School Year 2023-2024

Summer 2024

Dates and House Keeping

Monday 

Reading books will be checked, four or more reads in a week will earn a house point. Every 10 reading house points earns a small prize which can be collected from Mrs Edwards! The prizes are popular and the children are very keen to receive their next one!

Tuesday 

After School Clubs - Choir and Athletics. There are spaces available to book. Both clubs run from 3.30-4.30pm.

Wednesday 

Homework books to be handed in for marking. 

PE - please make sure children have suitable clothing for indoor and outdoor PE. Earrings must be removed and hair tied up. 

Spelling Tests - see above for the termly spelling overview. Check your phonics group for the correct spellings. The children will have their termly overview but not a weekly spelling grid this term.

Thursday

Homework to be sent home. 

Friday

Opportunity to change library books - These are for families to enjoy and read for pleasure.

Wednesday 22nd May 

Holi Day! More information to follow. 

English 

We are looking at a version of Jack and the Beanstalk. We are picking out the grammar and so far, we have found lots of words with the prefix -un and suffix -er and -est. 

Science

We are learning life cycles of plants. We have planted some runner bean seeds hoping to see them grow. 

Spring 2024

Our learning this term will be towards the essential question 'Where will an adventure take you?' We will explore famous adventurers including Matthew Henson, Robert Falcon Scott and the very famous husky Balto. 

Once we have secured our knowledge of adventuring and explorers, we will plan and undertake our own adventure. Which of our house teams will arrive at the summit first - Vikings, Saxons or Romans? 

Friday 22nd March 2024 - historical event - KS1 made it to the summit!

Today we set off from Denton CE School for a hike around the village. House teams Romans, Saxons and Vikings went together, we enjoyed mixing with Denton and Year 1 for our expedition. We went through fields, along farm tracks and carefully on paths. It was tough but we all survived. Team Roman were the first back and successfully put their flag at the summit first. well done Romans! We celebrated with a campfire, supper cooked on the fire and s’mores for pudding. Further pictures of our adventure can be found on the link above. 

World Book Day 2024

We started off World Book day by reciting our class poem, The Ning Nang Nong. We found it tricky but great fun! Follow the link below to watch us perform it. 

One of our class texts is Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. For World Book Day, we did lots of Harry Potter themed activities including making a Harry Potter house tie as a bookmark. Look at our creations!

Caryl Hart

In preparation for World Book Day next week, we got to have the chance to meet Caryl Hart, the author of the book ‘Together We Can’. We were able to ask her questions, listen to her reading some of her other stories and find out a bit more about her. 

Children's Mental Health

Week 2024

This week we have explored a range of activities to explore how to look after your mental health - mind and body. We explored meditation and breathing activities from Go Noodle. 

The theme this year is:  Your Voice Matters!

We have been sharing books including 'Speak Out' where people are inspiring others by sharing their opinion/thoughts. Finally, we are using our voices to be kind and showering our friends with compliments and kind comments.

Science

The unit we are covering this term is Animals including humans. We have explored what the body is made up of including body parts, bones and organs. Can you see this in our play-doh models?  

Maths - Money

We have explored coins, notes and calculating totals. We have enjoyed playing shops where we bought a range of items and even calculated change.

Maths - Multiplication and Division 

Using arrays help us when calculating groups. 

Christmas 2023

We went along with Year 1 and 2 from Denton to Apple Trees Care Home in Grantham to sing festive songs to the residents. We enjoyed the refreshments too!

Christmas Party

We enjoyed a party with Year 1. We enjoyed dancing, playing games and eating lots of delicious food!

Christmas Cup

The House Captains arranged a great Christmas Cup this year. We enjoyed passing presents, dribbling around candy canes, jumping like reindeers and many more festive activities!

Autumn Term 2023

Welcome to the new school year. We have some fantastic adventures planned, beginning with our Autumn Project of 'What wonders lie in the enchanted woods?' See the termly  overview below for further details. 

Our school trip was on Wednesday 1st November where we investigated and explore the plants and trees growing in the local area at Wyville Woods. We had to tread carefully as we wanted to see the fairies. Sneezy the dragon had left for the day so we were safe to go and look. Can you see his lair? 

Our Woodland Exhibition

We enjoyed having parents and Governors to our exhibition where we showed all our learning towards our essential question, What Wonders Lie in the Enchanted Woods. We certainly found information about many amazing and wonderful creatures to write riddles and spotters guides about. We also found some truly wonderful materials to help us create art in the style of Andy Goldsworthy. But, the enchanted maps stole the show - with our pixie schools, enchanted playgrounds and dragons lairs. 

Dates for Term 1:

Monday 

Reading books will be checked, four or more reads in a week will earn a house point. Every 10 reading house points earns a small prize!

Tuesday 

Wednesday 

Homework books to be handed in for marking. 

PE - please make sure children have suitable clothing for indoor and outdoor PE. Earrings must be removed.

Spelling Tests

Thursday

Homework to be sent home. 

Friday

Opportunity to change library books - These are for families to enjoy and read for pleasure.

Friendship Workshop

Year 2’s explored friendship with Tom from Stay Safe Partnership. We explored what makes a good friend, what qualities should we look for and discussed who are our friends inside and outside school? We also looked at emotions focusing on joy, anger and sadness and what makes us feel these emotions and that it is OK. Tom shared some tools and tips on how we can manage our emotions to feel calmer and happier but most importantly, signposting us to where we can get help.

Harvest Festival

We enjoyed taking part in our EYFS and KS1 Harvest Festival in church. Each class performed, we sang some hymns and  Rev. Sarah shared prayers too. We shared our thanks for the food, love and family. 

Virtual Mile

As a school, we joined in with the Virtual Mile challenge by Schools Sport Partnership. We enjoyed running around our field 6 times which totalled 1 mile. 

English 

The last few weeks we have been exploring riddle poems. We needed:

- Learn how to describe a character

- Use descriptive language (noun phrases and expanded noun phrases) and

- Learn different sentence types (statements and questions). 

We started with a well known character, the Gruffalo. Now we have moved onto Woodland animals. Can you guess what we are describing? We will be showcasing these at our Woodland Exhibition. 

We have planned, written and edited our second version of a riddle. We used word mats and dictionaries to check word choices and spellings before writing on 'posh polishing paper' so we can display them. 

Click the link below to see our final draft riddle poems - can you guess the woodland animal we are describing?

What can we see?

We saw lots clues and information about squirrels. We are going to create spotters guides to inform others of the facts we know about woodland animals. 

Maths - Addition and Subtraction

We are looking at a range of methods to add and subtract. We can recall many number bonds to 10. 

PSHE 

We are learning about friendships in PSHE and what qualities make a good friend. Our recipe shows a "pinch of kindness", a "packet of fun" and a "dash of help". What do you think qualities of a good friend needs?

Anti-bullying Week

Here is our song for Odd Socks Day and Anti-Bullying Week 2023. Anti-Bullying Week starts with Odd Socks Day on Monday 13th November. This year's theme is 'Make A Noise' and we hope you enjoy sharing this song for the Anti-Bullying Alliance.

'Make A Noise' is the official song for Odd Socks Day and Anti-Bullying Week 2023.

Science

We are learning about plants and trees in our local area. We have taken a walk around our school grounds to investigate trees. We found deciduous trees (trees that have branches that spread out and leaves that fall off in the colder weather) and evergreen trees (trees that have long rolled up leaves that remain all year round).  From our findings, we made collages of our photographs using the App PicCollage. 

Geography

We are looking at what a map needs to be useful. So far, we have explored symbols and our journey to school through the village. Road names are very important for delivery drivers and the postman/lady. We have learn about street names, house names and even some houses have names as part of their address. We went for a walk around the village naming the streets and located these within our map. 

We have used our skills of map reading to create our own enchanted maps. We have created symbols for our key. We had to check we could use footpaths and roads to get to the different locations. 

Computing 

We are coding this term. Learning to follow instructions and create steps to form algarythms.  

DT

We have completed market research to support in our making sandwich challenge. We asked the teachers what their favourite sandwich was as well as tasting many different types of bread from around the world. 

Music

We are exploring pitch in music. We have been singing and using body percussion to make low and high pitched sounds. Can you hear the difference?

Phonics

Here are our Read Write Inc. Set 2 and Set 3 sounds you can practise to secure fluency. We call these special friends. 

British Values

Useful Websites for additional homework ideas.