Hedgehogs - Year 2

Welcome to Hedgehog class! On Monday and Tuesday, we are taught by Mr Lester, who has been teaching at Bedwell for 8 years and is brilliant at drama and computing. On Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays our teacher is Mrs Rose, who has been teaching at Bedwell for 11 years. She really likes science and storytelling, and is determined to make our lessons as much fun as possible!

Home learning ideas:

  • Constant practice of reading and phonics is just about the most valuable thing you can do at home. Try to read with your child as often as possible and talk to them about what they’ve read. We've put together some advice and guidance on using the books your child will bring home, here.
  • Our history topic this term is the Great Fire of London, which provides lots of opportunities for learning beyond the classroom - try investigating the history, building models, drawing, painting pictures or reading about the lives of people who lived through it. There are loads of resources available through the Museum of London site at www.londonmuseum.org.uk/.
  • Do a little bit of exercise together and talk about the effect it has on your body - can you feel your heart beating a little faster? Can you feel which parts of your body are getting tired or sweaty? Help your child to understand that these are good things (so long as you don’t overdo it) and are a sign that your body is working hard.
  • In RE, we will be learning about the Christmas story, so as you start getting the decorations out and thinking about presents, talk together about the stories behind our traditions.  

Our latest news:

  • In Year 1 and 2, we have been learning all about plants and animals this term, and to support our topic we spent a lovely day out at Whipsnade Zoo. While we were there, we got to meet lots of the animals that we have been investigating in class - everything from bears to penguins to ostriches! Whipsnade is huge, so to help us to see as much as possible, we took a trip on the zoo train to try to spot some of the animals that were hiding at the back of their enclosures! We also talked to some of the zoo keepers, who told us about the ways in which they look after their animals and try to protect endangered species. 
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  • In Year 1 and 2, we were given a challenging home-learning task this term: to make something linked to a topic that was important to us. There were no fixed rules, so some of us made posters and displays, while others built vehicles and 3d scenes. When all of our projects started to appear in class, we were all blown away by the quality of our finished pieces, and the time that had been invested in them. We had tanks that fired, penguin fact-files, mini ballet theatres, home-country posters and planes with working propellors to name but a few! Even more impressive than the things we made, however, was the way we were able to share them and talk about what we had done - it was a great chance to show-off how much we know about our hobbies, home countries and favourite things, and we were able to answer questions from the rest of our class with confidence.
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  • We’ve continued to pack in lots of parent and carer workshops throughout the term, sharing our learning, celebrating successes and giving ideas for supporting children at home. In Year 1/2, we ran a Stay and Make afternoon, which was attended by an amazing 72 families (sending staff off to round up every available table in the school!) It was great to see whole families working together to create pieces of art and sharing what they had made. Thank you to everyone who attended.
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  • We loved getting involved in this year's Sports Week - you can find out more about everything we got up to here.  
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  • Y1/2 went to Shuttleworth Museum to round-off our First Flight topic. We saw many airplanes about which he had learned, including an SE5a and an Avro once flown by Neil Armstrong! We reinforced our learning about how aircraft had developed and heard stories of famous flights. We tried on the different hats and goggles worn by pilots. We had a ride in a 100 year old vintage bus (which made a turkey sound to warn people!) One of the highlights of the day (apart from lunch, of course!) was sitting on the field and watching the real vintage planes take off and practise their manoeuvres for an air show. It was amazing to be so close and hear the roar of the engines. A Gyspy Moth like Amy Johnson’s was a particular treat. We applauded the pilots’ landings as they got out of their cockpits and many of them waved back. 
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  • We loved throwing ourselves into this year’s Science Week, building egg-drop contraptions, taking part in our sensory trail and learning about space in a giant planetarium!
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"Pupils are confident and have well-developed social skills… The school is a calm and orderly place in which to learn."

Ofsted report, 2022
We have been learning about... 

History - This term we have been learning about the history of ‘heavier than air’ flights, from the man-lifting kites of Ancient China and the balloon flights of the Montgolfier brothers, through to the first aeroplanes of the Wright brothers, and the supersonic flights of Concorde. Along the way, we also learnt about many famous pilots including Louis Bleriot and Amy Johnson.

 

Maths - We have learned to tell the time (using TOothPASTe!), multiply using arrays, use formal addition (arranging numbers vertically and carrying tens where necessary), and formal subtraction by breaking up a ten when we needed into ten ones. We have also developed methods to help us add and take away in our heads.

This term's topics

English - We will begin the half-term by returning to story writing, using Milo imagines the World, by Matt de la Peña as our starting point. We will use this text to explore the way that characters and settings are described, and will also be working on the use of conjunctions to link ideas together. After that, we will move on to letter writing, this time using Meerkat Mail by Emily Gravett as our core text. We will learn about the way letters are organised and then write some of our own, asking for help and describing our discoveries! Throughout the term, we will continue to work on sentence construction, ensuring that we use full stops and capital letters correctly.

Maths - We will begin by focussing on mental addition and subtraction, becoming quicker and more confident in our use of numbers to 100 by building on our knowledge of place value and number bonds. We will then apply these skills to measure and missing number problems. Later in the term we will move on to working with money, making totals using a variety of different coins and working out change when we are shopping. We will then investigate the language of comparison, using phrases like difference, more, less and fewer, before finishing the term by beginning to estimate and measure using different scales.

Science - We will be looking at how we can keep ourselves healthy. We will be looking at different food groups we should include in a balanced diet, and investigating how exercise can keep us strong. We will also be looking at the human body and discovering how different parts of the body work and why they are important to us.

Humanities - We will continue to learn about the Great Fire of London over the next few weeks. We will explore eye-witness accounts of the Great Fire by reading diary entries, so that we can understand what it would have been like to live in London at the time. We will also discover how the City of London fought the fire and the way that the London Fire Brigade has changed over the last 300 years - which should help us to think of lots of questions to ask when we (hopefully) get to interview real-life firefighters later in the term.

Take a look at our curriculum map for more information on our topics.

Early Years Admissions  

If you're looking for a place in Nursery or Reception, you can find out lots more about our school in our Early Years Prospectus.

We're always keen to show potential new applicants around - just get in touch with the school office to arrange a tour. 

Once you're ready to apply, head to the admissions page to find out more about the process - we run Nursery admissions ourselves, but from Reception upwards, these need to be made via Herts County Council.