Mr Wraight and Mrs Olson

would like to welcome you to 

RED CLASS

Hello and thank you for visiting the Red Class page. We hope you enjoying learning about all the wonderful things we have been up to.

A little bit about us....

Mr Wraight: I am excited to be the Red Class teacher for this year and I cannot wait to share my love of reading with you all. My all time favourite picture book is Owl Babies and I love reading stories out loud. We will read lots of stories together and I look forward to finding out which stories you all enjoy.

Mrs Olson: I also love reading stories and my favourite story to read in class is A Monster is Born. I cannot wait to learn together with you all this year.

Welcome to Year 2

The children have all made a super start to Year 2 and are now very familiar with the morning routine at Westmeads. They continue to adapt to the additional requirements at this time and are remembering to look out for each other and keep safe.   If you have a query, please catch me on the gate in the morning or at the end of the day if appropriate; or alternatively email me at:

jwraight@westmeads.kent.sch.uk 

Reading                                                    

Thank you for understanding our new way of selecting reading books this year. We continue to ask that you send your child into school with their reading books and reading record in their book bag on a Monday and Friday only. We will then support your child to select two reading books within their colour band to take home on Monday to be kept until Friday, when we will ask you to return them. We will then repeat this process again from Monday. Within each book band there is a range and variety of text types to encourage children to make choices according to their own preferences in reading.  Throughout the week, please can you read with your child every day; it is really good practise to read the same books more than once as this will support fluency and understanding. Thank you for your support with this. We are conscious that this means you have no school reading books at home over the weekend but encourage you to please read books from home at this time.

To support them with reading in school, we will be reading with the children both independently and in group guided reading sessions.  Guided reading is a relaxed and enjoyable time providing an opportunity to develop particular reading skills and allows the children to discuss what they have read and share their ideas and opinions with an adult and with their peers.

Please sign the Reading Record if you have read with your child indicating where they got to and whether the book has been finished.  Feel free to add any comments about your child’s reading you feel appropriate, as these are always helpful to us. These will be checked on a Friday only.

We will continue to promote a love of reading with our reading rockstars so please record each day you read, even though you are not sending the reading record in each day. We will then check the record on a Friday and award the children with the stars for each day (Mon-Fri) that they have read.

The reading rockstar trophy will still be awarded to the class who have read the most each week.

Please speak to Mr Wraight if you require any clarification.

P.E.

The children have 2 sessions of P.E. every week.  This term it is Throwing and Catching on a Monday and TriGolf on a Thursday.  Please ensure that your child comes to school in their PE Kit on these days.  Please remember to write your child’s name in their plimsolls as well as in the rest of their P.E. kit. For health and safety reasons, children wearing earrings will not be able to participate in P.E. lessons.  

Teacher of the Week

This activity provides each child with the opportunity to teach their classmates about something that interests them.  This will take place during a 10 minute slot, on a subject of their choice – a hobby, e.g. gardening; a particular interest, e.g. space, dinosaurs, birds; a club they belong to, e.g. Rainbows/Beavers; or a sport – and their classmates will have the chance to ask them questions at the end of their session.  This is intended to be a fun, independent activity which will develop the children’s speaking and listening skills as well as their confidence.  It is also a lovely opportunity for the teachers and children to get to know each other better.  Teacher of the Week will commence soon and every child will have the chance to participate over the course of the year.

Term 6

The Olympics

'Where in the World?'

Term 5

'Growing!'

How does your garden grow?

Term 4

'British Woodland Animals'

This term we will be thinking about the question:

'What lives in the woods?'

Term 3

Tell me a Secret

How many ways can we use water?

What a challenging start to the year for everyone. Thank you to all families for all your support during the partial school closures. We appreciate how difficult it has been for everyone and thank you for your kind words. We hope to be back together soon but in the meantime hope that the children enjoy the online learning activities.

Here are some useful links to support home learning:

Reading websites:

www.oxfordowl.co.uk

www.getepic.com 

www.phonicsplay.co.uk

Physical activity:

www.imoves.com (check MS Teams for our class log-in)

www.thebodycoach.com - Online Joe Wicks Fitness videos

Quick link to MS Teams:

www.office.com

Term 2

World War II

'What was it like to be a child in WWII?'

Term 1

'Here We Are'

What makes the World a special place?

This term our topic this term is Here We Are and we will be using the beautiful book ‘Here We Are’ by Oliver Jeffers. As a CLPE Associate School we are using the CLPE Power of Reading teaching sequence for this text to explore how the children have coped with current circumstances and to discuss the return to school. We will be exploring our planet and looking at ways we can be kind, supportive and caring to others. There are lots of opportunities for children to discuss their experiences of the last few months and we will be teaching the children ways to express how they may or may not be feeling.

English

We are using our term text 'Here We Are' by Oliver Jeffers to explore basic sentence structure and the us of adjectives to add description.

We are remembering to include capital letters at the start of our sentences and for nouns, finger spaces between words and full stops at the end of our sentence. We have written a range of labels, phrases and sentences about our wonderful world.

We have also learned the song 'Wonderful World' by Louis Armstrong and then created our own lyrics which we then performed to our friends as a poem. We now have these displayed on our class 'Poet Tree'. 

Maths

We have been consolidating our work from year 1, including place value and greater than and less than. We can count up and back up to 50 and some of us can do this up to 100.

We have also learned how to measure length using a ruler, capacity in ml and l and can distinguish if things are heavier or lighter than one another.

We are now experimenting with different coins and how to recognise and count different combinations of coins.

Art & Design

This term we have been exploring the work of American artist Chuck Close. Chuck's favourite style to work with is photo-realism and we have had a go at drawing a section of our face and the school logo, adding detail and colour in the style of Chuck Close. We learned about grid work and the use of shapes and bright colours to make the pieces vivid and 'eye catching'.

Take a look at what we have done, below...

PE - Tri Golf and Throwing & Catching

We are reminding ourselves of the basic rules of throwing and catching balls and holding a racket. We have remembered how to keep focus, watching the ball and standing ready to throw or receive. We are throwing under arm and catching with both one and two hands to learn the difference.

We are loving playing Tri-Golf! We have learned how to hold the different clubs and can now putt the ball at different speeds and directions. We are exploring chipping the ball using a tee to raise it off the ground. This is great fun but we must remember how to swing carefully and at different angles depending on the direction or the distance.