Albert Einstein Class, Brian Cox Class & Marie Curie Class
Year 2’s class names are inspired by three very special people indeed, two men & one woman, scientists all.
Brian Cox is a scientist, professor, TV presenter and rock star! He has presented many shows on TV & is famous for explaining scientific stuff in a fun and interesting way. Just the way we like it! Brian also came & opened our new extension in 2015 & was very excited to discover he had a class named after him.
Albert Einstein, with his crazy hair & moustache is probably the best-known scientist in the world. His theory of relativity with the famous formula E=mc2, won him a Nobel Prize in 1921, yet he famously said: “I have no special talent; I am only passionately curious.” What a guy!
Talking of Nobel Prizes, Marie Curie won two! She was the first woman ever to win one & the first person ever to win twice. A pioneer in the fields of physics & chemistry, she was most famous for her research on radioactivity (she even made up the word ‘radioactivity’) & she did it all despite being one of very few women working in science at the time.
All three scientists help us to see how fascinating the world around us is. We reckon we can become scientists & invent something amazing or make a ground-breaking discovery too!
We start off in year 2 with a bang! Our classroom becomes a fiery furnace with lots of reds, oranges & yellows & we’ve got firefighters’ costumes & fire engines to use in our role play. We need them because there’s fire-breathing dragons around too.
Everything we learn this term has a fiery theme; we learn about fire in the stone age; we find out about the Great Fire of London & the Gunpowder Plot & how those things affected London.
In science, we learn about materials and we design & make buckets to carry water so we can put out fires! Some buckets are more successful than others and we get a little wet but we learn so much. There’s lots of singing too: we learn London’s Burning and lots of campfire songs.
For our trips and visits we go to the Museum of London to research the Great Fire & the fire brigade visit us so we know how to keep safe if there was ever a fire at home.
By the end of the first term we think we know all about fire; how amazing & useful & dangerous & beautiful it can be. We’ve written a diary like Samuel Pepys & instructions for baking bread. But, the most exciting thing we get to do is design and make 3D Tudor houses like the ones that burnt in the Great Fire!
Click on the links below to see the Autumn Knowledge Organisers:
When we return after Christmas, spring has already sprung in the classroom. The room has become a woodland filled with animals hiding, surviving and flourishing in their habitats. Some are well-camouflaged – others you can’t miss. From the very first time we set foot in the classroom in January, it becomes the wonderland that will carry us across the term’s learning. There are ponds & hidden homes; the room is dappled with bluebells.
With a scientist’s gaze, we examine closely the different creatures both big and small so that we can sort & classify them and, in maths, we learn how to gather, represent & interpret data about our discoveries.
We read Beatrix Potter’s stories about animals & we write stories of our own based on Julia Donaldson’s ‘The Snail & The Whale’. But that’s not all. Now we’re in Y2, we’re finding that there’s so much to write about. We write information pages about the animals that we find on our nature walks, using all the appropriate vocabulary & we write instructions for how to make a bird feeder … & then we make one ourselves!
In a term dominated by science, it’s still fun to learn in history & geography about the local area; about Charles Jamrach & his local menagerie & Dr Barnado who was more interested in people than in animals – & in particular about helping Poplar’s children.
By the end of term, we’re especially proud of ourselves. We were brave; we lifted that rock, we peeked under that log & we discovered what was hidden beneath.
Click on the links below for the Spring Knowledge Organisers;
It’s the final term of the year; we’re getting a bit older now & starting to think about travelling the world. Where can we go? How can we get there & what will it be like when we do? Our room becomes a travel agent’s; there are maps & globes everywhere & there’s a plane to take us to far off places. We’ve got sunglasses, suitcases to pack & lists to make before we go.
Everything we learn is set in the context of travelling the world; we do loads of problem solving in maths especially with measures such as distance, time & weight; learning about measuring temperatures is also helpful for planning a world tour!
We read short stories from other cultures in English & write an information leaflet about Africa; in science we learn how living things are suited to the habitats in which they live. In RE, we attempt to answer the question, ‘How should we care for others and the world and why does it matter?’ We discover music & instruments from other countries & cultures and we start to learn the Ukelele.
We become proficient users of atlases, learning about the continents & the oceans & how it all fits together on the globe. Our art & design is all about architecture – we take a good look at buildings on our trips around the local area – & our D&T is all about food. We learn about the food groups & how important hygiene is when we’re creating our dishes.
By the end of the term, we are seasoned travellers; we’ve done lots of travel writing & made passports. But the most exciting thing is that we’ve had the chance to plan & go on a journey together!
Click on the links below for the Summer Knowledge Organisers;
