Year 1 & 2 News from Mrs Devonald and Mrs Durnan 

We loved Remote Learning and our class TEAMS meetings online, but we are SO excited to be back learning with our friends in Year One and Two.. We have dived straight into our learning and we are looking forward to sharing our learning with one another in person again!

English

In English we have started our spelling investigations with gusto. We love practicing our spelling words with shaving cream and tricky words bingo, sharing reading books with one another and writing imaginary texts. We are loving developing some spooky stories with sizzling starts to hook the reader. This week we have been using a picture prompt with our ‘I wonder’ questions to share our ideas with our friends.

Have a look at Tommy’s sizzling start to his story he is currently writing:

It is pretty amazing, don’t you think? 

Maths

In Maths we continue to start our sessions with Maths warm up games just like we did when we were Remote Learning for automaticity of number recall. We are learning about the duration of time. We are investigating how many seconds are within a minute, an hour, a day and a year. We are learning about the calendar, months of the year and the seasons. We are linking with our knowledge learnt in Science, and learning how the seasons are opposite in the Northern hemisphere to the Southern hemisphere on our calendar. We are also learning about how some shapes tessellate and how they can transform by flipping, sliding or turning their direction. We played barrier games to help develop the children’s language of position and transformation.  

Conceptual Inquiry (Religion, Creative Arts & History)

In our Conceptual Inquiry Unit this term we are investigating the past, present and future. We are developing an understanding of how the past can shape our present and how we are in control of shaping our future. We are linking this in with our Science and Maths units and how the year is made up of different seasons, and seasons of the Church. We are also looking at the liturgical year cycle and special celebrations of the year. 

During Remote Learning we have investigated the Rosary as we enter October the month of Mary. We investigated the different prayers and their importance. We also looked at the courage that Mary showed as a young woman and as a mum to Jesus. We have also investigated ways we too can show courage to help others in our family and in our community every day. With Mission Week fast approaching, we are looking at ways we extend our courage and capacity to share with others, both in our own community and overseas. We are designing sock puppets as a way to ‘sock it to poverty’ next week and will vote with our coins on the ones we think are the best sock puppets with all donations going to the Missions. 

STEM Stacking Challenge

For a bit of fun and engagement over this term, we are having STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) challenges with our classes. Last week, Year 1 kicked off the Stem Stacking Challenge and we invited Year 2 to be part of our extreme stacking this week. As you can see from the photos, the children were totally engaged and trying all sorts of ways to create a tower of objects that could balance without being held. The record was 224cm (2.24 metres) tall, set by Tommy and Nicholas. Watch out for disappearing items around your house this week as we are sure the ‘don’t try this at home’ rule will NOT apply! 

Science

This term we have delved into living and non living objects. During our Seesaw Remote Learning, the children were asked to take photos of living/non living items around their home. Back at school, we are learning how to classify different types of animals by their external and internal features such as mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects. We have something very exciting happening in our classroom over the next few weeks that will demonstrate life cycles and how we all grow and change. We are trying to work out what it might be, just have to wait and see!