1 Dec 2017

Year 2 Update Wk 15

Friday 8th December – Sunshine Action Day

Wednesday 13th December – Christmas Party (Letter sent home today)

Thursday 14th December – Christmas Concert 7pm

Friday 15th December – Last day of Term 1, 12pm finish

Friday 15th December – Mid-year reports go live on The Beacon. We will we reporting on our second unit of inquiry and on the children’s progress in Maths and English, so don’t forget to have a look to see how your child is developing.

Please let your class teacher know if you are planning to leave on your holidays before the end of the school term.

The weather has cooled down in HK and many of the children are coming to school dressed very warmly. Please help your child to dress in layers so that they can be removed when they are hot. The classroom is very warm with 30 children inside it and the children are often very hot after breaks, lunchtimes and PE sessions. Unfortunately, some children have very thick vests and leggings under their trousers that they are sweating and very uncomfortable in the classroom. When the weather turns colder, we have heaters in the classroom.

JUNIOR CHOIR

Five children from each Year 2 class have joined the Junior Choir. Due to the limited number of spaces the children’s names of those wishing to attend were all put into a draw. An e-notice has been sent to those in the choir about the Christmas concert. Although the children will each be offered a performers pass, accompanying family members will need to buy a ticket.

All children in Year 2 will be invited to join the choir after Christmas if they would like to participate in our Afternoon Tea Easter Concert.

SUNSHINE ACTION

I am very pleased to announce, thanks to your generosity and the hard work of our students, we raised $150,000. This is a tremendous sum and I think it shows what a special community we belong to. We can now start to purchase the food so on 8th December our students can work with Sunshine Action at school to make the food parcels for the different charities. To help our students with the food parcels we need parent volunteers, approximately 30. These parents will be working with groups of students to help them make the food parcels. If you are interested please click here.

What fantastic outfits! The children enjoyed dressing in clothes from 1960’s for the day.

The children have continued inquiring into Christmas; why it is celebrated, the features of the celebration and how people celebrate it in different ways. They have watched The Christmas Story and have listened and read Christmas poems.

The children have also started to inquire and think about another celebration of their choice to start creating a stop motion animation in Learning Technology.

During their second clay session, the children made two large pinch pots and joined them together to form the body of their candle holder. They had to join the pots carefully, ‘gluing’ them together with wet clay and smoothing down the sides and edges. The candle holder is based on a celebration of their choice.

Central idea:People recognise important events through celebration and traditions.

Lines of inquiry:

Features of traditions and celebrations (form)
Why people celebrate (causation)
Different approaches to celebrating (the same celebration) (perspective)

This week the children will finish inquiring into Christmas and will start to further their knowledge and understanding of other celebrations. They will be finding out why people celebrate, the different features of the celebrations and how people celebrate them in different ways.

In this unit of inquiry, the children are very fortunate to have Ms Cassie working with them to produce some clay work. This week the children will be decorating the body of their candle holder.

The children will be taking part in drama activities where they will concentrate on using their body language and facial expressions to create freeze frames to show different celebrations.

We would love you to send in one or two photos of your child celebrating. It could be a photo of them at a Birthday/Christmas/Easter/CNY celebration. We would like to display them so the children can talk about how their family celebrates.

Central Idea: Fractions are a way of representing part of a whole

Lines of inquiry:

Fractions of shapes
Fractions of amounts
How to make simple fractions
The language of fractions

This week the children will start to look at fractions. They will explore halves and quarters. They are learning that fractions are equal parts of a whole.

Please continue to practise number bonds to 10, 20, 30 and 40:

https://www.mathplayground.com/number_bonds_10.html

The children will be looking at ways in which people write to socialise. They will be reading and sharing some poems. The children will be creating their own poems about Christmas, thinking about the sounds, smells, tastes, feelings and sights associated with the celebration.

The children will be continuing to ask questions. They will be considering whether their questions are closed questions, or open questions which require more thinking and inquiring. The children will also be learning to determine the importance of information they find; is it relevant to their question or is it just something interesting?

In phonics we will be looking at the long a sound: oo. ew, ue and u_e

(boot, flew, glue, June)

Please continue to read with your child at home and ask them to retell the story. Please encourage your child to write down the title of the text they choose from Big Universe.

Well done to:

2K – Gavin Lo

2D – Casey Kwok

2A – Sean Sham

Mandarin – Shawn Lee (2D)

Spelling

Your child will be given a new set of words to learn!

Your child will need to learn the 4th list of words. They will be tested on these 8 words next Friday in school.

This will be the last list before the start of the new school term in January.

Your child will need to choose two activities to complete – one from a yellow box and one from a white box. They are not completing these activities in the spelling book. These activities are designed to help your child to learn their 8 words. It is up to you where your child completes these activities (they could buy a notebook or use scrap paper). When the activities are completed, please sign your child’s spelling card to let us know that they have been done.

Your child will also be doing some handwriting practise to help them learn the words. This is done in the spelling book.

Your child is only learning 8 spelling words this week, not all 32 words.

Reading

Please be reminded that in Year 2, your child will not bring home a reading book on Tuesday or Thursday they will need to read on Big Universe. Children login and select ‘My Library’ from the top of the page. At the right hand side in the ‘Filters’ section they can select the ‘Grade Level’ of books. If the children select kindergarten,grade 1 and 2 this is the most appropriate reading age for them (5-8 years).

Mandarin – All children are encouraged to take a reading book home on the days when they have Mandarin lessons.

Year 2 Update Wk 15

Communications

News

Upcoming Events