Harley's Weekend with Niko

Fifty faces

In class we have been using Cuisenaire rods to help us with maths. This week 2A had a challenge to make a face using the rods and choosing rods that gave a total of 50. Here is Telmo's face. We checked using a number line and a Cuisenaire track and the total is indeed 50! Well done, Telmo. Next week 2V will have a go at this activity. 2A enjoyed it so much that we might have a go at making 100 faces. Meanwhile, if you want to have a go at home either with the faces or the carpets activity you can click here to use the Nrich Cuisenaire Environment.

Hour of Code

Use the link below to access the activities we tried in class and more! You do not need to sign in! Happy coding. 
Click here to code. 

Dress as an animal day! Raising money for UNICEF

When the Y2s came dressed as animals....

Primary raised a fabulous 310 euros for UNICEF!  

Weekends with Monty

2A have been blogging at home about their weekends with Monty the Mole! Don't forget to visit our Monty blog to find out about his fun-filled weekends.

Well done to Telmo for this lovely photo of Monty cheering him on at his first basketball match!

Maths at home

In class we have been measuring using centimetres and metres and some of the children have been following this up at home.
Here is Alfie measuring with his dad:

Friendship day assembly presentation

Today all the pupils from Y1 to Y6 had an assembly where each class shared what they did during the cooperation day and linking with the friendship theme. Here is the shared presentation:

Letter to Bob

Yesterday we looked at this picture. It was a puzzle. Who is this man? We use the clues in the picture to make up some questions. We think this is Bob and so we have written him a letter.
Here it is:

Dear Bob,

We are Year 2A children and our teachers are called Miss Ash and Mrs Dawson. We would like to find out more about you. We have seen your picture ad have thought of lots of questions. Where do you live? We live in Toulouse, France.

We liked the look of your house and we noticed you have lots of photographs of the moon and models. Do you like your house and living room? Have you been to the moon? Can you tell us about your trip or trips to the moon?

In the picture we saw you are holding a big stripy mug. We’re wondering what is your favourite hot drink?

We are all 6 or 7 years old (yesterday Elise in our class turned 7! Sorry we didn’t save you any birthday cake). How old are you?

One day we would like to invite you to our school which is called The International School of Toulouse. Would you like to come?

When we were studying your picture we noticed an alien in the window of your neighbour’s house. Have you met these aliens that live next door? Are they friendly?

Our last questions are: Do you have a family? Do you like playing football? When is your birthday? What is your favourite film? Who are you waving to in the picture?

Thank you for reading our long letter. We hope you write back soon.

Love from, Year 2A

 

Patterns

 

These are the patterns we created in maths. We took out one part of our pattern and challenged a friend to work out what was missing and complete it.

The recipe

The Year 2s have been very reliable at passing on the message that their families would like the recipe for banana bread. It was delicious! Click the picture below to find the recipe online.

Inventing patterns for our necklaces

When we were thinking about Grace's colourful African dress we had the idea that she would look nice with a bring necklace too! Using our skills from maths and the pattern and sequence work we've done we invented a pattern with beads. We threaded our bead pattern onto a length of ribbon and repeated it many times. Some of our patterns were complicated and we had to work with lots of concentration to repeat them carefully. Do you like our bright necklaces?

 

Following instructions to make banana bread

On Thursday we worked in small groups with Mrs Dawson to make Gambian banana bread. We each had our own small bowl where we mashed the bananas and mixed the ingredients. Each ingredient needed to be weighted on the scales to make sure we used the right amount. We added raisins and golden sugar. We added oil and flour. We added baking powder to make it rise. The mixture cooked in small paper cases and then we ate the delicious cakes!

Instructions - some activities to try at home

In class we followed a set of instructions in the form of a recipe to make banana bread. Here are some activities to practise ordering instructions.
http://www.iboard.co.uk/activities/path/non-fiction-texts_instructional-procedural-texts

Numbers

Today some of us had a go at this maths task. It was good fun so some of the children asked it they could try at home.
http://nrich.maths.org/content/id/6343/2Dtargets.swf

Transport trip - The Entry Point to our topic!

On Friday we travelled around Toulouse on several different types of transport. How many different ones can you spot in our photos?

Programming Beebots

We have been writing algorithms to control the Beebots. We worked in pairs and used the instruction cards: forward, backward, right turn and left turn. The cards helped us think through our ideas and plan carefully. The fakebots (paper Beebots) helped us work-through our algorithm before testing with the actual Beebots. 

It was good to work with a partner to share ideas

Working out the turns was tricky

Some of us laid the cards on the digit to help our thinking

What a good idea! Copying on the digit card with the fakebot as the Beebot moved along...

Lots of turns to think through in the digit 5

Good ideas spread!

Using water colour paints

The illustrator of our Power of Reading book is called Caroline Binch. We looked at some of her paintings and then we made our own self-portraits inspired by her style.

Here is our work:

Cuisenaire Rods - so you can have a go at home

This week we have been enjoying using the cuisenaire rods to help with our maths thinking. Click here to have a go with them via the Nrich site!

Freeze frames from our Power of Reading book

We have been trying to get a better understanding of the book 'Grace and Family' through drama. We role-played some scenes from the story and then held the position as a 'freeze frame'. When Miss Ash tapped our shoulder we imagined a thought our character might have and said it aloud. It was difficult at first to talk as if we were someone else and say their thoughts but we soon got the hang of it!

Tessellating pattern blocks

In our 'Power of Reading' book - Grace and Family, Grace goes to visit her Papa in The Gambia. The illustrations show wonderful patterns and colours in the African cloth at the market and in the fabric shop. Grace and her Nana have African dresses especially made for them. In class we will be designing our own African prints. To warm-up for this, and to link with our work on 2D shapes, we created tessellations using the pattern blocks.  Do you like our patterns?

Crazy Characters

We learnt about algorithms today. Miss Ash tried out an algorithm on us. It was an algorithm for drawing a crazy character. This is how they turned out. Next lesson we will be writing our own algorithms, testing them on a friend and then thinking how we can improve them.

Here is the algorithm song if you want to listen to it again at home!

Pattern blocks

One of our tasks this week on the theme of shape has been to use the pattern blocks. We have found different ways to fit pattern blocks together to fill in pictures. Some of us made a graph showing how many of each shape we used. We learnt the names of some new shapes.
Trapezium

Diamond 

Hexagon

Here are two pictures of us working:

Giving instructions

We have been practising giving clear instructions. Firstly, Miss Ash and Mrs Dawson showed us the task. Miss Ash had made a small 3D model using the multilink cubes. The teachers sat back to back and Miss Ash had to explain to Mrs Dawson how to build the model. We noticed that it was helpful to say how many cubes to use.

With enthusiasm, we started to independently build our own models. We kept each model fairly simple by limiting ourselves to a maximum of 20 cubes. Once our model was complete we found a partner to test out our instructions on. 

We noticed that it is easier if both people use a loud, clear voice. It was helpful when the person building asked questions or simply said they were ready to hear the next stage of instructions. Saying things like 'it looks like...' seemed to make it easier for our partners to have a picture in their mind. 

Talking to each other to complete a student search

It was great to get talking to lots of different people in the whole of Year 2 as we did the student search. It was easy to find someone who likes pizza but much harder to find someone who has a family name beginning with S!

Welcome to a new group of Year 2!

Look at this enthusiasm. What great learning lies ahead!