Welcome to Hedgehog class! Our teacher is Mrs Jackson, who lots of us know really well, as she taught us in Nursery. She has been teaching for 14 years, and has worked at Bedwell for the last 4. Her favourite things are Lindt chocolate and reading her Kindle. She doesn’t like running very much, and is scared of spiders!

• All about Year 2 - our class presentation
• Our curriculum map - find out about our current topics
• Our latest class newsletter
• Meet our school councilors, Poppy and Max 

Home learning ideas:

• We have started using Google Classroom in class, and we should now all be familiar with it as a platform for learning beyond school.
• We are regularly set maths tasks and challenges via Mathletics, and should all know how to log in - let your teacher know if you can't get on.
• Try to spot where we use maths skills in everyday life – whenever something needs sharing between family members (sweets, biscuits, grapes etc), practice sharing them out one at a time, making sure each person has an equal amount - is there a remainder, or does the number share perfectly? 
• Practice counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. When you reach a number (eg. 20) ask how many 2s there are in that number? How many 5s? Encourage your child to use drawings, fingers or number lines to work it out. 
• 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. There’s guidance on supporting phonics availabe on the Ruth Miskin site, here.    
  
• In geography and history we are learnng about the seaside, so share stories, pictures, postcards and mementos from seaside trips in the past. What things did you do at the seaside? Why did you go to that particular place? If you’ve been to the seaside in different countries, think about what is similar and different about all these places. It would be great if older members of the family could share their memories of the seaside from when they were younger - how is it similar or different today to how it was fifty years ago? And, if the chance comes up, a family day out at the seaside would definitely help us to learn more about this topic - we’d love to see any photos or goodies that you bring back!  
• Understanding the difference between living, dead and never alive is a key part of our next science topic, so go on a search around the garden or park to see what you can find that fits in each group, and talk about how you know which category they go in. There are loads of useful resources to support you on the Oak Academy site, too.

Our latest news:

• During Lockdown, as part of our remote learning we chose a book to look at each week, which enabled us to read new stories we hadn’t read before. One of our favourites was The Day the Crayons Quit. We imagined being a crayon and why we wouldn’t want to colour anymore, we wrote letters to the main character Duncan and explored the use of these colours in our art work, producing some lovely pieces in the style of Mondrian. We were als  asked by 1Decision (the people behind our PSHE lessons) to join in with a ‘Smile’ initiative they have been running, which aimed to encourage people to be happy in this challenging time. They asked us to submit videos, pictures or drawings of anything that had made us smile. Lots of us sent our ideas in - and this picture was one of our favourites!
 

 
• In science , we have been learning about materials. We have investigated what floats and what sinks (playdoh doesn't float - we were surprised), tested the strength of different materials by building bridges (uncooked spaghetti is surprisingly strong) and this week we explored different ways to change the shape of materials. We tried stretching, squeezing, twisting and bending - and, as you can see here, we tried very hard to find out what you can (and cannot) cut through!  
 

 
• School Council elections - One of our first tasks this term was to elect our new School Councillors. We thought carefully about the skills we thought a good class representative should have, what we liked about our school and how it could be improved further. Building on this, we then drew on all our understanding to write speeches (with a bit of help from our mums and dads), ’selling’ ourselves to the rest of our class and showing why we’d be the perfect Councillor. It was a tough choice, with loads of us making fantastic speeches, but once voting was complete and all the ballots had been counted, we elected Poppy and Max. You can read their speeches here.

We have been learning about... 

Science & DT - We investigated the work of famous inventors. We read and wrote biographies of Thomas Edison, Charles Macintosh, the Wright Brothers and Henry Ford, and then designed our own amazing inventions to help solve everyday problems (like cleaning our rooms and doing our homework!) We had great fun junk-modelling our designs, and then wrote descriptions of how they worked.

English - In the first half of the term we read and learnt the story of Where the Wild Things Are. We arrived at school to find a boat had appeared and after some in depth discussions we established it belonged to Max from Where the Wild Things Are. We learnt the actions to retell the story and thought in depth about the settings. We have developed our understanding of adjectives and verbs and now know what a noun is.

Maths - We have been exploring number in depth over the last few weeks, building our understanding of place value with two digit numbers using a variety of counting manipulatives. We have been able to count on in ones and tens and thought about how the digits change when we do this. Our chanting of 2s, 5s and 10s is taking place daily, and we are also spending lots of time rehearsing our counting to 100 so we can recognise the numbers confidently.

This term's topics

English - Our next English unit will see us focussing on explanation texts, based around animal life cycles. We will learn a model text to help us explore the features and structure of this tricky genre, and will then use this to support our own writing. We will be focussing on sentence structures, using causal conjunctions such as so and because to show the reason why things happen, as well as ensuring that we use key punctuation correctly. We will round-off our work by writing our own, independent explanations, explaining life cycles of other creatures. We will also continue to develop our phonics and spelling skills in daily Read Write Inc. sessions, and will practice our joined handwriting across all curriculum areas.

Maths - We will be returning to place value this term, thinking about different ways in which we can represent numbers, both on paper and in our heads. We will continue to focus on numbers to 100, making sure that we have embedded our understanding of tens and ones, ready for the step up to Year 3. We will then use all of this to help us to solve problems, using bar and cherry models to support our working.

Science - We will be learning about seeds, bulbs and plants this half-term. We will explore the features that plants share and learn to describe the basic structure. We will describe the way that seeds grow and develop into mature plants, and will conduct our own experiments to test how plants are affected by their environment. Finally we will explore what plants need in order to stay healthy.

Humanities - In our geography lessons, we will be learning about seaside environments. We will discuss what people do when they go on seaside holidays and learn about natural and man-made features that we find in these places. We will then choose a specific seaside resort to investigate further (selected based on our own experiences) and compare this town with life in Stevenage. In history, meanwhile, we will explore seaside holidays from the past and discover how they have changed over the years. We will use photos, video clips and first-hand accounts to support our learning, and will use all of this to discuss how seaside environments have changed.

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