WELCOME TO YEAR 2 CORMORANTS

Cormorants are medium sized coastal birds who thrive in their environment by working in teams, just like one of our school values, teamwork. Cormorants can often be found diving in to the water simultaneously. Just like the bird, in Cormorants class we can be found diving into our learning together and using our skills in teamwork to thrive successfully together.

THIS TERMS THEME

'Around the world in 80 days' 

This term our learning is focused around Geography and History. We will be exploring the countries that make up the United Kingdom and learning about key landmarks. In History, we will be learning about the history of flight.

P.E AND DANCE DAYS

PE days are Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Please ensure that your child has the correct PE kit in school all week. We will ensure that they are sent home at the end of each half term.

HOME LEARNING DAYS

Home Learning will be set on a Friday and due in on a Wednesday. 

UPCOMING EVENTS

18.04 - First day back

21.04 - National Gardening day

27.04 - Teachers STRIKE day 

1.05 - Bank holiday

02.05 - Teachers STRIKE day 

08.05 - Bank Holiday Kings coronation 

15.05 - KS1 assessments 

26.05 - Last day of term

June - Pride Month

12.06 - Phonics Screening Retakes 

20.06 - Sports day

26.06 - RSHE week

29.06 - Y1 trip to Paignton zoo 

06.07 - Transition day 

07.07 - Summer Fayre 2pm

13.07 - Annual Reports out to parents

25.07 - Last day of term 

MEET THE TEAM 

If there are any issues or concerns, please feel free to come in and see your teacher (Miss Durnford) or our team leader (Mr Wingrove). 

sdurnford@white-rock-primary.torbay.sch.uk

swingrove@white-rock-primary.torbay.sch.uk

Around the world in 80 days - Curriculum Map

Thursday 13th July 2023 - Water safety

This week, Cormorants visited Goodrington Beach to learn about water safety with Reach Outdoors. We learned about the different flags you might see at the beach and what they mean. We finished off the session with some races in the water to practise moving safely. Some of us even braved the bellyflop challenge!

Thursday 29th June - Dance

Year 3 have been looking at the artwork Naruto Whirlpool, Awa Province by Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige. We have spent four weeks building on to our duet dances. We started with choosing four parts of the picture and adding an action to represent that part, for example a turn for the whirlpool. The following week we added different levels to each picture, then the next week we added different speeds to our four actions on different levels and finally this week we showed our dances to another pair and tried to improve them ready for performance. Take a look at the photos of us sharing with another pair and then the videos of our finished dances. See if you can spot if we have remembered to include a start and end position for our dance.

Monday 26th June 2023 - Music

This week in Music, we talked about lots of new vocabulary including rhythm, pitch, tempo, and unison. We listened carefully to a song and used our hands and feet to find the rhythm. Then we created our own rhythms using dots and dashes. After that, we used instruments to create rhythms with different pitches and tempo. We then put all our newly learned skills together to play and sing in unison.

Friday 23rd June 2023 - Dartmouth Round Robin

Today we combined Geography, History, Art, Writing and many more subjects as we completed our round robin trip to Dartmouth. We travelled over Brunel's viaduct on the steam train, then took the ferry across to Dartmouth. After a quick snack break, we then had a fantastic boat trip along the river - we even saw some seals! After our boat trip, we headed to the park to find some real life Hiroshige inspiration for our Art learning next week. Our drawings were incredible! Finally, we travelled back to Paignton on the steam train. What an amazing day!

Tuesday 20th June 2023 - Sports Day

What an amazing morning! Cormorants took part in a lots of different activities including hurdles, parachute games, egg and spoon races and many more. We really enjoyed showing our adults all the skills we have been learning in PE this year. 

Monday 12th June 2023 - Geography 

Today Cormorants took part in a geography day. They have been learning about map skills including making their own key. To help their learning, Cormorants used an old map of White Rock and walked around the school grounds to find out what has changed and add this to their map. When they got back to the classroom they had a go at making their own map of their local area including creating their own key. 

Monday 5th June 2023 - History 

This week Cormorants took part in a history day where we learnt all about Isambard Kingdom Brunel. We learnt about Brunel's life as well as some of his biggest achievements that he designed and built. We even got to have a go at designing and making our own bridges. We put our bridge to the test to see if it was stable enough for a train to travel over it!

Monday 15th May 2023 - Art 

Today in Art we started learning about the artist Utagawa Hiroshige. We have begun planning ideas for our own print in the style of Hiroshige. We went outside to the field and chose three flowers to sketch in our art book. Eventually, we will have a go at printing these flowers using a technique called woodblock printing.

Friday 12th May 2023 - Religious Education

This week, Cormorants have been learning about symbols. We discussed what a symbol was and where we might see them. We talked about why we have symbols and then used IPads to take photos of symbols that we see everyday in our classroom.

Tuesday 9th May 2023

Year 2 have been enjoying the Dance Club this half term and this week created dances to Katy Perry's Firework. They were trying to use different formations within their dances. Take a look at the photos below.

Wednesday 19th April - Physical Education

Wet weather kept Cormorants inside for their first athletics lesson of summer term, but this didn't stop their enthusiasm! Children had lots of practise on their egg and spoon techniques and learning how to hurdle safely. We then combined all these skills together to see who could hurdle without dropping the egg!

Wednesday 19th April 2023 - Writing 

This week Cormorants have started their new writing journey based on the key text 'No-Bot the Robot' by Paul Linnet and Sue Hendra. In their first lesson today, we read the story and talked about the reader and purpose of the story. We discussed how it is a comedy story and it has been written to make the reader laugh. The children then had a go at ordering the key parts of the story with their learning partner. Finally, they had the chance to act out the story pretending to be No-Bot the Robot and do all of the things he does!

Friday 17th March 2023 - Red Nose Day

Thank you for all the donations for Red Nose Day! Cormorants enjoyed taking part in different activities such as: a red nose and spoon race, pin the red nose on the celebrity, guessing how many sweets are in the jar and colouring their own red nose.

Wednesday 8th March 2023 - Science

Today in Science, Cormorants took part in an investigation! They were looking at birds with different size and shape beaks and thinking about how this adaptation impacted the food they eat. We used smarties to represent seeds, jelly tots to represent bugs and spaghetti to represent worms. The children used tweezers and straws as the bird beaks and had to try and fill up a cup with food which represented a birds stomach. After the investigation the children discussed what they found. They talked about which food was easier/harder to pick up and how beaks have adapted to help birds eat their food.

Tuesday 7th March 2023 - World Book Day 

Cormorants had so much fun celebrating World Book Day this week! Thank you for getting all of the amazing outfits for the children! We took part in a learn to draw session where we had a go at drawing Dave Pigeon from the books by the author Swapna Haddow and illustrator Sheena Dempsey. We also did a role on the wall focusing on adjectives used to describe these characters. Later in the day the children used clay to make their favourite book character as well as acting out our favourite stories in less than 2 minutes. What an incredible day! 

Tuesday 28th February 2023 - PSHE 

This week Cormorants have been learning about what fair trade means. We have been looking at this in house assemblies as well as in our PSHE learning. We explored different food and had a look on a map to see which country it came from. We discussed what fair trade means for the farmers and workers who produce this food. 

Thursday 23rd February 2023 - Guided Reading 

Each week Cormorants take part in Guided Reading. Two groups of children will read with an adult where they read a variety of texts including fiction and non-fiction. They will be involved in a group discussion and answer questions led by the adult. The focus of this discussion varies and may include a focus of comprehension, inference, prediction, summarising, language etc. The other children will take part in independent activities when not reading with an adult. Activities may be based around phonics, spelling or comprehension. We also ensure children have an opportunity to choose a book from the book shelf to promote reading for pleasure.

Thursday 9th February 2023 - Maths

In Maths this week, Cormorants have continued learning about shape. We have been focusing on identifying and counting faces, edges and vertices for different 3D shapes. Then, we had a go at making our own 3D shape. The paper straws represented the edges and the blu tack represented the vertices. We had so much fun!

Tuesday 7th February - Computing

This week Cormorants have been using the algorithm action and singing the algorithm song. They have then been designing their own Strange Characters (Barefoot Computing). Once complete, they have written an algorithm for others to follow when they want to draw the same picture. Here are some of their pictures and algorithms.

Friday 3rd January 2023 - Writing

We started a new Writing journey this week. Our key text is Mrs Armitage and the Big Wave (link to story below). We started by listening to the story and thinking about how the author wanted us to feel. We talked about how he achieved that and which parts of the story made it funny. We made a class story map to help us retell the story in our own words. Finally, we came up with freeze frames to show different parts of the story.

Friday 3^rd February 2023 -Numbers 1-15 -Spanish

Señorita Head was so impressed with Year 2 this week. iMaravilloso!

We re-capped numbers 1-10 and we learnt 11-15 in Spanish. We noticed that 11-15 have a “th” sound at the end of the word.

We practised the numbers using different voices. The children really enjoyed this.iQué fantastico!

We listened to a Spanish number song and Señorita Head used three puppets (Pedro, Carlota, and Rocky) to help!

The children were excited to sing the CHOCOLATE song in Spanish. We also talked about Churros and that Spanish people like to dip them into CHOCOLATE. iQué delicioso!

Here are numbers 1 to 15 for children to practise at home. iVamos!

1= uno

2=dos

3=tres

4=cuatro

5=cinco

6=seis

7=siete

8=ocho

9=nueve

10=diez

11=once

12=doce

13=trece

14=catorce

15=quince

We played lots of Spanish interactive games  using Babelzone. Don’t forget you can access Babelzone at home. Children should have the username and password in their reading records.

Friday 27th January - DT 

We have been learning all about how to build wooden dens in out Writing text 'Outdoor Wonderland'. This week, we were able to put our new skills to the test and build our own mini dens! We thought carefully about how to make a stable structure and linked this to the 2d and 3d shapes we have been learning about in Maths, as well as our new knowledge about habitats from our Science learning. 

Spring Term - Week 3 - w/c 16.1.23

This week in Science, we learned about the different habitats around the world and their properties. We also learned about microhabitats and went outside into the woodland area to try and find some. We found all sorts of microhabitats - some even had minibeasts living in them!

Spring Term - Week 2 - w/c 9.1.23

This week in PE, Cormorants were learning about throwing skills. We used beanbags and tried to improve our aim whilst throwing towards a target. Have a look at the photos below to see how we got on!

Spring Term - Week 1 - w/c 2.1.23

This week in Maths, Cormorants have been learning about money. We started by exploring the value of each coin and then counted the value of a group of coins (we were very excited to use our counting in multiples skills!). We then were able to ordering amounts of money using the greater than, less than and equal to symbols. Have a look at the photos below to see us in action!

Free to be Me - Curriculum Map

Autumn Term - Week 13 - w/c 5.12.22

This week we had a music day! We spent the whole day exploring different musical instruments including drums and xylophones. We learned about low and high pitch, and even learned some new music vocabulary. We now know that lento means slow, allegro means fast, piano means quiet, mezzo forte means medium volume and forte means loud!

Autumn Term - Week 12 - w/c 28.11.22

This week Cormorants have been learning how to spell different homophones. The children have learnt homophones are words which sound the same but have different meanings. They have learnt 'be' and 'bee', 'to' 'two' and 'too' and 'blue' and 'blew'. They have practised this by putting them into sentences using the correct word. They have also had a go at some pyramid spelling where they spell the word letter by letter in the shape of a pyramid.

Autumn Term - Week 11 - w/c 21.11.22

We have a new hand writer of the week in Cormorants this week. Eden has been working hard to make sure all of her letters are the same size and that her capital letters and ascenders are bigger than the lowercase letters. Well done Eden!

Autumn Term Wk 10 w/c 14.11.22]

Every Friday afternoon, Cormorants get very excited as Senorita Head comes to teach us Spanish. We have learned basic greeting like 'hello' and 'goodbye', we have learned some colours and how to say what our names are. We are now learning to say pencil case items! Senorita Head plays lots of games to help us learn. This week, we started learning how to sing 'Let it go' in Spanish!

Autumn Term Wk 9 w/c 7.11.22

This week Cormorants enjoyed an Art day. We started by using mirrors to draw a self portrait. We then learned all about the artist Vincent Van Gogh and how he used different types of pencil line to create different textures and effects. We ended the day by having another go at our self portraits. Have a look at the photos below to see how we got on. Can you see how much more detail we included as well as the different line types?

Autumn Term Week 8 - w/c 31.10.22

What another busy week in Cormorants! Thursday was Outdoor Learning day and we really enjoyed our alfresco Spelling lesson. There were hidden words with different /ee/ graphemes for us to find and sort into groups. They were hidden really well! On Friday, we participated in a sports festival with South Devon College. We joined in with lots of different activities and enjoyed learning from our Year Six Sports Captains. 

Autumn Term Week 7 - w/c 17.10.22

This week, Cormorants made fruit kebabs in Design and Technology. We designed our kebabs and made sure that they were healthy, easy to eat and, most importantly, tasty! We then followed our designs to make the kebabs. 

Autumn Term Week 6 - w/c 10.10.22

This week we have learned lots in Computing. We used Purple Mash to create our own creatures using our mouse skills. Have a look at the pictures below to see how we got on.

Autumn Term Week 5 - w/c 3.10.22

Every Monday, Cormorants get to visit our school library. We take our time choosing a book we would like to share with people at home then scan our books out ourselves. Afterwards, we have lots of time to share our chosen books with our friends in school. Before we go back to class, Miss Durnford or Miss Willatts read us a story in the library. We really enjoy our visits to the library.

Autumn Term - Week 4 - w/c 26.09.22

This week, Key Stage One were lucky enough to be visited by Paignton Fire Service. We learned what firefighters do (when they are not fighting fires!), what is kept in a fire engine, and how to keep ourselves safe at home. We learned some helpful rhymes like 'Matches, matches never touch. They can hurt you very much' and 'Stop, drop and roll around'. Mr Wingrove even dressed up in a fire service uniform! He said it was very heavy.

Autumn Term - Week 3 - w/c 19.09.22

In Science this week, we conducted an investigation to answer the question 'Why is it important to wash our hands thoroughly for 20 seconds?' We started by using a special gel on our hands to show the germs. We then quickly rinsed our hands and checked them under UV light - they were still very dirty! Then we washed our hands with soap for 20 seconds and checked again. This time they were much cleaner. We watched this video to help us learn how to wash our hands. How to wash your hands NHS song | NHS - YouTube.

Autumn Term - Week 2 - w/c 12.09.22

This term in Dance, we are learning Zumba. This links with our Science learning which is all about how to keep ourselves active and healthy. We really enjoyed our first session and noticed the change in our heart beats from the beginning to the end. We can't wait for our next Zumba session!

Autumn Term - Week 1 - Wk. commencing 5.9.22

The brand new Cormorants have had a fantastic first week back in school. We enjoyed a PE session with Mr Leaman, a Spanish lesson with Senorita Head and lots of other learning too. In Maths, we explored the value of different numbers using the language 'tens' and 'ones'. Have a look at the photo's below to see how we got on.