Welcome to Giraffe Class.

 Welcome to our class page!

On this page you will be able to see some of the exciting things we are learning about at school. 

This term we are learning about Titanic.

Key days

Monday afternoon - library 

Tuesday afternoon - Forest School

Friday afternoon - PE

Please bring your named PE kit to school every Monday, it will stay in school for the week and be returned to you on Friday.

If you have any questions, Mrs Shaw is available at the class door, on Seesaw, or leave a note in your child's reading diary. 

Peer Marking 

In class this week, we are learning how to support our peers through peer marking. The children have the opportunity to sit with a peer and read through their work together, making sure to check for important things like capital letters, full stood and spellings. 

Basing Woods

This week we returned to Basing Woods to explore the wonderful area. In our English lessons this week, we explored the book, The Night Gardener where a talented figure changes the tree into sculptures of different animals. Therefore, during our trip to the woods, we decided to find different trees around the area and think about the different shapes we could see. 

Sports Day

We had an exciting day at school today; it was Sports Day! We had the opportunity to play a range of games, including wellie wangling, relay and throw the bean bag. We all had an enjoyable day and thankful to share the day with our grown ups. 

Easter Day 

We brought the term to an end today but experiencing an Easter day at school. We completed some Maths challenges where we had to solve the clues to find out who was the culprit for stealing the Easter eggs. We listened to a story where the Easter Bunny needed help from other animals to save Easter and we wrote a thank you letter from the Easter Bunny to the animals. In the afternoon, we helped the Easter Bunny find eggs hidden around our playground and we ended up in the community room where we were given a chocolate treat. 

St Lucia Day 

Today it was St Lucia Day for us at school and we came to school wearing colours from the St Lucia flag. What an exciting day we had! Our favourite part of the day was getting the chance to play the steel drums and learn more about the music in St Lucia. We used our creative skills throughout the day to make masks, rainmakers and carnival streamers. 

Red Nose Day 2022

For Red Nose Day this year, we can to school wearing something red and do our part to raise money for people in need. We completed maths challenges, went on a red nose trail, pinned a red nose on a picture of Deefur and learnt about who the money from Red Nose Day helps. 

The Living Rainforest 

We had an exciting experience this week, our first school trip! We visited The Living Rainforest to see some animals and learn more about the rainforest. We were very excited to go on a coach as many of us had not been on a coach before. While we were there, we had a tour around the Living Rainforest and learnt about the different animals there. What a wonderful day we had!

Book Week 

What a fantastic week we had for book week. This week, we focused on the Winnie the Witch books and completed a range of writing, speaking and listening and Art/DT tasks around the book. 

On Thursday, it was World Book Day and we all enjoyed coming to school in a wide range of characters. On this day, we entered school to see the most unusual sight..... the classroom in chaos! However, there was a letter on Mrs Shaw's chair which told us that it was a baby dragon who caused the mayhem in our classroom. We worked in groups to write and record a news report sharing key facts about this strange event. We spent the rest of the day making a fire-breathing dragon, completing a Winnie the Witch quiz and even rolled our own stories. 

Shape 

This week in maths, we have revisited our work on shape and applied our knowledge to solve a range of problems. We recapped key vocabulary when describing the properties of 2D and 3D shapes and thought about 2D shapes you would find in a 3D shape. 

As Friday was a windy day, we carried on our shape learning at home. We completed a shape hunt, so we had to see which 3D shapes we had around our house and their properties. 

The Last Tiger

In our Literacy lessons over the past few weeks, we have been focusing on the book ‘The Last Tiger’ by Petr Horacek.

In our final lesson on the book, we thought about the emotions of the tiger at different points of the story. We used an emotions graph to plot different emotions at key moments. From this, we had a big discussion about how the tiger’s feelings changed and how we all experience a range of emotions in a day. 

NSPCC Number Day 

What a fantastic day we had in Giraffe class, developing our understanding of number. We started the day off by completing a range of number question to find a clue for a hidden jigsaw piece in the classroom. We then developed our understanding of shape by writing our own 'which shape am I?' riddle. We thought about particular numbers and the different ways we could make a number, using any of the four number operations. A favourite in Giraffe class, was number bingo. We rolled dice and could either subtract or add the numbers together to get a particular number to cross off on our bingo card. 

RE Week 

It was RE week in Giraffe class this week and we focused on the beliefs of Hindus. Our concept was 'remembering' which we developed by looking at one of the main Hindu gods, Vishnu. We listened to the story of Prahlad and explored why Vishnu is so important to Hindus. In one of our lessons, we looked at some different statements and ordered them from most important to least important. 

In our final lesson, we thought about things we have at home that help us remember a person, a fun day we had, or even something we were proud of. 

Basing Woods 

On our visit to Basing Woods, we decided to use sticks to make dens. We had to work together as a team and think about how we could help each other to achieve the end result. 

Panto

We were very lucky to receive another visit from our pantomime visitors. We had a lot of fun watching the show and laughed throughout their performance. 

Last day before Christmas

We had an exciting end to our first term in Year 2, full of some wonderful treats. In our playground, we met some of the animals from Miller's Ark farm in Hook. We enjoyed learning about how to look after the different animals and we were lucky enough to stroke them. 

We went on a tinsel trail around school and found a special surprise waiting for us in the hall, Santa! He met us virtually and checked whether we (including Mrs Shaw and Mrs Fuller!) were on the nice list, luckily we all were! 

We had a very happy end to our first term in Year 2. 

Diva Lamps 

In our RE lessons, we have focused on the concept of 'light', exploring why it is important to Christians and Hindu. When exploring the Christian faith, we learnt about an Advent Wreath and the meaning of the different candles. When learning about Hindus, we listened to the story of Diwali and why this is an important celebration for Hindus. We used our creative skills to make our own Diva lamps. 

Children in Need 

We had a fun day in our pyjamas today, learning about the importance of Children in Need. We listened to stories from people this charity helps and reflected on why it is kind to help other people. 

Arts Week

This week, we had an exciting week focusing on the arts (PE, music and art). The focus of our week was fireworks and we enjoyed exploring this through different ares. We used paint and oil pastels, sung in rounds and danced to different music. At the end of the week, we all created outstanding firework pictures; what a fantastic week it was!

Science Investigation 

We completed an investigation in Science to find out which materials would be best for RINT to keep himself waterproof. We made predictions, completed the investigation and then evaluated what we found out. 

English 

We retold the story of Billy and the Dragon outside to get us ready for writing the story next week. We had to think about how Billy and Fatcat were feeling at different points of the story. Can you tell which emotions we are showing in the pictures?

PE

This week for PE week we become dancers. We thought about different ways we could use ribbons and movements to represent the fire at the Great Fire of London. 

Forest School

In our forest school session this week, we completed a range of activities in our woodlands area at school. We climbed trees, built dens using different items from nature and completed an obstacle course.

Special Visitor 

Samuel Pepys visited us this week to help introduce our topic 'The Great Fire of London'. 

Maths 

This week, we deepened our understanding of partitioning. We partitioned numbers into tens/ones and then thought about different ways we could partition the same number. 

First week in Year 2

What a wonderful first week we have had in Giraffe class! The children were very reflective during our 'Belonging Week' and thought carefully about the role of School Council at Marnel.