Welcome to Willow Class
Willow class is made up of 26 children in year 2 and year 3. Miss Smith is our Teacher and Miss Kirkbride is our TA. Miss Prowse and Miss Gibbons work as 1:1 TAs.
We love and have a positive attitude to our learning and always try our best and work hard.
Our big question this term is, How did Brunel make a difference? The mini enquiry questions we will be answering this term are: What is a historian? What is an engineer? Who was Brunel? How did Brunel make Bristol beautiful? Who else made a difference to us? We will be learning all about Brunel's life and work and how this has impacted on our lives now. Our key concepts are Impact, Purpose and Inheritance. Later this term we will also be visiting the Clifton suspension bridge, which will bring to life and add to what we have been learning in the classroom.
Our Science this term is uses of everyday materials. We will be learning how to identify materials, compare the suitability of materials for different purposes (Wood, metal, plastic, glass, brick, rock, paper, cardboard) and investigating how solid materials can change shape – bending, squashing, twisting, stretching
(Find out more on our How has Brunel made a difference? curriculum overview at the bottom of the page)
English
Writing
For Writing, we use The Write Stuff scheme, I know many of you are already familiar with this. For those who are not, the lessons are split into experience days, which provide children with a stimulus for their writing followed by sentence stacking lessons where we use lens to create a vocabulary vault, which children use for their writing. The lens come from the writing rainbow which has a Fantastic tier (feeling, asking, noticing, touch, action, smell, taste, imagining and checking for sounds), a Grammeristic tier (grammar devices such as punctuation, adjectives, nouns, tense etc) and a Boomtastic tier which includes other devices we can use in our writing i.e. onomatopoeia, repetition etc. We do not use all lens every lesson (6 at the most). Once we have done all the sentence stacking lessons children do an independent piece of writing.
Our first unit in Term 2 is a non-fiction explanation text 'How to build a robot dog?' The next unit we will be writing postcards. This unit is based on the book 'Meerkat Christmas'
Reading
In Reading, children who have not completed the Read, Write Inc (RWI) programme will continue to have daily lessons, which will consist of speed sounds, reading, spelling words using Fred fingers and hold a sentence. Children will then read a RWI story which will involve learning story green words from the book and red words (these are tricky words that cannot be sounded out) and speedy green words. Children will work with partners to take it in turns to read the story and on the final day will have questions to answer about what they have read. This year we will be teaching RWI in sole colour groups across KS1 (Ash and Willow) i.e. a pink group, a blue group etc.
All children will be doing whole class reading for a whole hour twice a week. Each lesson we will all have the same text and will be focusing on one of the six comprehension skills - making sense of what has been read, activating prior knowledge (what we already know that may help us to understand the text), word consciousness (understanding new vocabulary and meanings), predicting (what might happen based on what we already know or have read so far), summarising (main ideas from a paragraph/sequencing the story) and visualising (using pictures with new vocab or using illustrations from the story to gain meaning about the text). We will also focus on our reading fluency by listening to modelled reading by me (Miss Smith), choral reading (reading together as a class), echo reading and paired reading. We are continuing to read The Iron man, which will then be followed by Poems to perform by Julia Donaldson.
Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation (SPAG)
We are following the Spelling Shed scheme. Children who have finished RWI scheme will have daily SPAG lessons with 20 mins focusing on spelling and handwriting and 20 mins focusing on grammar and punctuation.
Maths
In Maths our units this term are Place Value, Addition and Subtraction and Shape we will be learning:
Year 2- Number and place value
- count in steps of 2, 3, and 5 from 0, and in 10s from any number, forward and backward
- recognise the place value of each digit in a two-digit number (10s, 1s)
- identify, represent and estimate numbers using different representations, including the number line
- compare and order numbers from 0 up to 100; use <, > and = signs
Number: addition and subtraction
- solve problems with addition and subtraction:
- using concrete objects and pictorial representations, including those involving numbers, quantities and measures
- applying their increasing knowledge of mental and written methods
- recall and use addition and subtraction facts to 20 fluently, and derive and use related facts up to 100
- add and subtract numbers using concrete objects, pictorial representations, and mentally, including:
- a two-digit number and 1s
- a two-digit number and 10s
- 2 two-digit numbers
- adding 3 one-digit numbers
- show that addition of 2 numbers can be done in any order (commutative) and subtraction of 1 number from another cannot
- recognise and use the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction and use this to check calculations and solve missing number problems
Geometry: properties of shapes
- identify and describe the properties of 2-D shapes, including the number of sides, and line symmetry in a vertical line
- identify and describe the properties of 3-D shapes, including the number of edges, vertices and faces
- identify 2-D shapes on the surface of 3-D shapes, [for example, a circle on a cylinder and a triangle on a pyramid]
- compare and sort common 2-D and 3-D shapes and everyday objects
Year 3-
Number and place value
- count from 0 in multiples of 4, 8, 50 and 100; find 10 or 100 more or less than a given number
- recognise the place value of each digit in a 3-digit number (100s, 10s, 1s)
- compare and order numbers up to 1,000
- identify, represent and estimate numbers using different representations
- read and write numbers up to 1,000 in numerals and in words
- solve number problems and practical problems involving these ideas
Number: addition and subtraction
- add and subtract numbers mentally, including:
- a three-digit number and 1s
- a three-digit number and 10s
- a three-digit number and 100s
- add and subtract numbers with up to 3 digits, using formal written methods of columnar addition and subtraction
- estimate the answer to a calculation and use inverse operations to check answers
- solve problems, including missing number problems, using number facts, place value, and more complex addition and subtraction
Geometry: properties of shapes
- draw 2-D shapes and make
- recognise angles as a property of shape or a description of a turn
- identify right angles, recognise that 2 right angles make a half-turn, 3 make three-quarters of a turn and 4 a complete turn; identify whether angles are greater than or less than a right angle
- identify horizontal and vertical lines and pairs of perpendicular and parallel lines.
On Wednesday mornings this term will have Somerset Music coming in to teach Samba.
Our PE days are on Wednesday& Friday each week. On Wednesdays I will teach REAL PE and on Friday we have Inspire coming in to work with us.
Our Classroom
Our Learning
Look what we have been learning!
In DT, we have been learning about mechanisms and have been designing, planning, building and decorating ferris wheels. In the first few lessons we learnt about ferris wheels and how they work (mechanism). From what we had looked at we then designed and planned how we were going to build ours and materials we could use. We then began building using a cereal box as a base and a paper plate and straw for the wheel. In the the next lessons we created the pods and decorated the wheels, before finally evaluating them. We were very pleased with the finished products.
Home Learning
If you are currently learning at home please use the links below. Make sure you do TTrockstars or topmarks everyday and also make sure you read.
Maths
Use TTrockstars to practise times tables. Also practise number bonds and fact families using Topmarks. You can also practise your spelling using Spelling Shed.
Science
English
Art
DT
RE
History
Geography