Week ending June 7th

Dear Beech class,
What a lovely week we've had!
We wrote up our animal stories with Mrs Ahmad, and now all have a book which we are really proud of.

We had a lovely trip to Rosemoor which started with a bit of a blip when the coach was 10 minutes late. It was very exciting travelling on the coach, and the children enjoyed spotting windmills, herds of cows and fresh hay bales. Our morning at Rosemoor was spent in the classroom, learning all about how plants grow and potting our own nasturtium seeds. We hunted for interesting leaves and petals through the rose and cool garden. There were many members of the general public who asked us what we were up to and who were impressed with how curious the children were. In the afternoon, we had free time and decided to head through the tunnel to the stumpery and the play area. The giant see-saw was a big hit and the children soon learnt how to work as a group to move it back and forth. It was very special watching the children enjoy themselves and we are very thankful for such super day out!

We have continued learning about time in maths, moving onto telling the time to the nearest 5 minutes. We looked at number bonds to 60 today and realised that they help us when telling the time 'to' the hour. For example, when the minute hand is pointing towards 35 on the starter clock, the time is 25 to the hour. We also found out that the 5 times table is very helpful when telling the time. Time is very confusing to learn and as grown ups we make a lot of assumptions about what is obvious. When we start looking at misconceptions, a lot of the rules of reading analogue clocks are not obvious at all. Take away the minute markings and adults can still read a clock, but for a child 10 minutes to 2 and 10 past 10 look very similar. (see the example below)

In English today, we wrote recounts about our day out. We focused on using time adverbials, adjectives and technical words to structure our writing. I was very impressed that children could explain germination really clearly. Finlay was chosen to be a seed at Rosemoor and other children poured water, soil and provided heat in order to help him grow - this made the learning really memorable for the children!
In Science today, we consolidated our Rosemoor trip by recapping the main parts of a plant, germination and pollination. We really enjoyed using cheese puffs to mimic pollen.
We finished off the week by having some golden time in the nature area.
Have a lovely weekend!
Year 2 team