Base 2 News

We have had a very busy week in Base 2! The children have come back after the Christmas break refreshed and ready for their learning and I have been so impressed with some of the work they have produced.

In literacy we have been working on character descriptions. After reading the book Poles Apart and working in pairs to generate some vocabulary to describe the characters we split into a Y1 and Y2 group to write a shared character description for Mr Pilchard-Brown. As we did this we discussed the structure of a character description and created a 'toolbox' of things to include, as well as discussing different grammatical aspects to include to make our writing more interesting. The Y1 children have been focussing on extending their sentences using 'and' to join words and ideas whilst the Y2 children practised writing exclamation sentences. Once we had retold the Mr Pilchard-Brown character description we were ready to plan and write our own, using the same structure, for cheeky little Pog, the smallest penguin in the Pilchard-Brown family. The children worked really hard on their writing and used some wonderful vocabulary in their descriptions.

In maths we have been learning about money. We started the week making sure that we could all recognise coins and notes before moving onto really understanding their value. The Y1 children have done a lot of work ordering coins and notes in relation to their value whilst the Y2 children have been adding coins together to make different amounts. We have done a lot of practical work and on Friday turned the classroom into 4 shops so that we could practise our new skills in a real life context!

We have been talking a lot about having a positive mindset when approaching our work since the children came back. We read a story called 'The Dot' and it helped us see that it's okay to make mistakes in our learning and that actually this is how we can learn the most. We also saw how it is important not to give up when something is a little tricky but instead we should stick at it and support each other. We all 'made our own mark' in the form of a dot like the girl in the story and they are now on display in our classroom to remind us to keep positive and have a go at anything that comes our way this term!

We have also done lots of geography this week. On Monday we travelled the world in an afternoon and visited every continent!! We are getting really good at naming all 7 continents of the world and can even now identify them on a map. On Wednesday we came back to our maps and we all plotted the journey that the Pilchard-Browns (the penguins in our book) take to get home after finding themselves at the North Pole.

On Friday I sent home a newsletter and an overview of what we will be covering in each subject this term, please do look out for this in school bags and let me know if you have any questions.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Miss Pitchford