Category: Year 2

Dear Parents and Carers of Year 2 and Year 6 pupils, 

I would like to invite you along to an exciting new project launch that BRW will be hosting. We are delighted to have been selected to work with the independent charity National Numeracy on an exciting project that encourages children and families to do maths together at home.

This project will be initially rolled out to only Year 2 and Year 6 families. In order to explain more and demonstrate how this project will work, we would like as many parents/carers of Year 2 and Year 6 pupils to attend a launch presentation and workshop on the following dates:

Year 2 Parents à Wednesday 29th November 2023, 9.00-10.00

Year 6 Parents – Wednesday 4th December 2023, 9.00-10.00

During each launch session, a presentation will take place in which the aims and actions of the National Numeracy Parental Engagement Project will be explained. After this, parents will be invited into their child’s class to sit alongside them and have a go at some maths home-learning together. And, of course, a warm drink and mid-morning biscuits will be on hand!

Please note that these two year-group-specific launch events are different to our National Numeracy Workshop event, which we will be hosting on Wednesday 22nd with our Coffee Morning. This is open to all parents.

We hope to engage and welcome as many Year 2 and Year 6 parents as possible to the above two events. At BRW, we share your goal as a parent of supporting your child to achieve a confident level of numeracy that will lead to success. This project aims to achieve exactly this!

Please sign up to attend your event by emailing/phoning/going into the school office in person.

As a pre-cursor to the launches, National Numeracy is keen to hear from parents about their feelings and thoughts around maths. As such, we would like to you spend ten minutes completing the survey found on the link/QR code below. Thank you to those parents who were able to complete the survey at their parent consultations. If you were unable to, as a parent/carer of a child in Year 2/Year 6, we greatly encourage and appreciate your participation to make sure your views are heard and to better support our pupils’ attitudes to maths!

Please access the initial survey via this link or QR code: https://nn.typeform.com/to/cUijAfNv

Best wishes,

Mrs C Hautenne

In Year 2, we’ve been celebrating Black History Month. We have been busy reading books that celebrate Black History and finding out about the achievements of significant black people. The children have had lots of discussions about why this is important and the struggles that many black people have faced because of the colour of their skin.

Year 2 were especially interested in the life and achievements of Maya Angelou. They were saddened to discover that she was treated differently because of the colour of her skin. This led to some important discussions about racism and equality for all.

They children identified that Maya  Angelou used her struggles and obstacles to make her more determined to achieve her dreams. The children were very inspired by her words and this is what they had to say about her:

“Maya was a champion because she did so many good things. She even got medals for them.”

“Maya changed jobs so many times. She was helpful and wanted to make the world fair.”

“Maya was brilliant. She helped people by being good and never giving up.”

“Maya had a bad life when she was young. She became a superstar though. She was a very good mother and a brave person. She never gave up.”

“Maya was a very beautiful lady, inside and out. People were wrong to not like her because of her skin colour.”

Year 2 created their own portraits of Maya Angelou which they are keen to share with others. Take a look at our fabulous pieces.

Year 2 are thoroughly enjoying PE lessons this half term. We have been learning all about the importance of building teams which work together and support each other. The children have been set a number of tasks which require the children to solve problems and work together in order to compete with their peers.

The children have loved being challenged, explored the importance of good sportsmanship and why teamwork really does make the dream work!

Look how much fun we are having!

The KS1 Liturgy Team planned a beautiful liturgy for us to enjoy and reflect upon. The scripture was from Matthew and the key message was: God loves everyone equally.

Liturgy 1 For Blog

The Year 2 children and adults have had a lovely week settling into our new classroom. We are getting used to a new routine and have moved all of our things into the cupboards and drawers!

To celebrate our first week back together, we had a beautiful liturgy in our new garden. The whole class was involved in preparing it and they all participated through prayer, listening to the Bible and sharing kind words with each other.

Our mission was to treat everyday as a new beginning and embrace the opportunities that come our way.

Year 2 are learning about courage and bravery this term. They were set a summer holiday homework task to build their own lighthouse.

Our lighthouses are inspired by someone who showed real courage and bravery. Grace Darling lived in a lighthouse in Northumberland a very long time ago and she did something very special. We will be finding out all about her later this term.

There have been lots of visitors to Year 2 this week as news has got out that our lighthouses are very impressive. They have got everyone talking about the attention to detail, shining lights and light switches to turn them on. It certainly looks like our families had fun being creative together. Thank you to everyone who brought in a lighthouse for our display.

Stop Motion Animation & Data Handling (International Space Station)

Year 2 have been learning all about animation. They have a good understanding that an animation is made up of a sequence of photographs. The pupils have been creating short stop motion animations using iPads and image cut outs. To do this – they took photographs of their cut-out images in front of their chosen backgrounds, while making small changes each time. Once they played all the photographs back in order, they could see that they created a short animation.

In the second half of the term we have been learning all about the International Space Station and how astronauts’ survival needs are met aboard the ISS. The year 2 were able to show a brilliant understanding on how space exploration can benefit life on Earth and while reading data to identify whether a planet might be habitable. Maybe we can live on Mars one day! We also discussed how sensors are used in the ISS to help make decisions and how they use ‘Conditional statements’ to output results. Year 2 then created their own If-Statements that could be used in their everyday lives!

This week, Year 2 have been using their bodies and getting physical, learning cricket skills on our Cricket Enrichment Day and dong yoga outside with Miss Bathgate.

See what we’ve been up to below!

Year 2 have had an exciting start to their final half term of this year. This week, they have started their swimming lessons and all children enjoyed their first lesson at the leisure centre. Parents, please provide written permission for your child to wear goggles for swimming, if they require them; permission can be emailed too.

To kickstart our topic of India, children have located India in the continent of Asia and labelled the main cities of India on a map. Children used their geographical skills to identify mountains and jungles and are very excited to be visiting India within our future geography lessons.

In History, children time travelled to the seaside in Victorian times. They questioned, compared and found similarities between seaside holidays 100 years ago and now. We made some shocking discoveries when the majority of the class thought ‘ipod’ was a typo in our spot the mistake activity! Children then transformed themselves into Victorian children, to write descriptive postcards to family members about their trip to the beach.

In D.T, children became chefs as they chopped, peeled and sliced vegetables before tasting them in preparation for their new project to cook a healthy curry. Children wrote down their likes and dislikes, (mostly dislikes!), but all was well when the day was ended with some cake from Mrs Cross!

The first half of the summer term is over already! We have enjoyed so much already: a Resurrection Liturgy, a Music Evening, Sports Days, Ascension Mass and our First Holy Communion Liturgy!

What’s more, our Year 2s and Year 6s have worked extremely hard preparing for and sitting their National Assessments!

Thank to the hard work of our pupils, staff and parent support in keeping our BRW Spirit Strong this half-term! We’re excited for the next half-term of the summer!