Beech Class (Year 2 and 3)
Welcome to Beech Class
Beech Class is a Year 2 and 3 class. Mrs Chapman is the class teacher and shares the asseistance of our KS1 teaching assistant Miss Gray. During afternoons when Mrs Chapman is out of the class, the class is taught by our HLTA Mrs Cessford and Miss Gray.
The children are taught in single year groups for Phonics, English and Maths Monday - Thursday mornings and PE & PSHE on a Wednesday afternoon. This is organised:
Miss Darlow - Year 1
Mrs Chapman - Year 2
Miss Conroy - Year 3
WELCOME TO BEECH CLASS
We continue to run things a little different this year to ensure all the children are kept safe due to COVID.
Our weekly routine is as follows:
- WEDNESDAY ids PE day. Year 2s come in their PE kits, where as Year 3s bring their swimming things to change at Morpeth.
- THURSDAY they all come in their PE kits for PE with Mrs Cessford
- THURSDAY Reading books are taken in and changed and reading logged for the reading ladder.
- FRIDAY Spelling test completed and new spellings issued
- FRIDAY They bring their wellies into school for our forest school session with Miss Gray and their new reading books come home.
Year 3 'Play in a day.'
Year 3 have thoroughly enjoyed a play in a day where they re-enacted the story 'The Stone Age Boy.' This is the story that Year 3 children have been learning in Literacy which will support their learning further.
Friday 24th September - European Languages Day
What a great day we have had celebrating everything Norwegian. We started by learning facts about the country and recording on our fact finders, we then learnt some words and phrases using the finger puppets to talk t each other. After break it was all things Vikings creating posters about why they came to England. Then in the afternoon we worked with an artist to do printing of 'the scream' as well as ranking and recreating Norwegian landmarks in the forest.
WB: Monday 15th November - Interfaith Week
This year the whole school has focussed on Judaism, specifically as whole classes on the Mitzvah element. This is when they have a day dedicated to good deeds. This supports their core values of perfecting the world, acts of kindness and righteousness. In beech we focussed on perfecting and repairing the world. I was super impressed at home many children used their litter pickers to tidy up the community and how well they embraced tree planting and tidying the digging area for Early Years.
WB: Monday 13th December 2021 - Christmas Play
We were delighted to be able to perform Christmas Nativity performances this year, despite them only being audiences within school.
Year 3 were part of the KS2 performance "It's a Census get me out of here!" They were brilliant wise men, angels, shepherds and Roman Soldiers.
Year 2 were the narrators for the KS1 performance "Woolly!". They did so well speaking with great volume and expression and looked super smart in their best clothing.
It was great that the Friends of Grange View arranged DVD copies for all our families to watch the Nativities at home.
Tuesday 7th December - Angel of the North Sculpture
To conclude our materials topic the children learnt about sculptural artist Michelle Reader. They then planned and worked in groups to make a model of 'The Angel of the North'. During the afternoon they explored different joining techniques, considering which recycled materials could be used for different purposes and had to evaluate their work and others. They were really prod of their creations and used the task as a vehicle for their DT instructional writing.
Friday 4th February - Numbers Day fun!
We thoroughly enjoyed Numbers Day for NSPCC, this included in Year 2 Using our weekly popcorn task to write all the facts they know about the number 25, they then reinforced multiples of 2, 5 and 10 with the bee numbers day task and finished by identifying pattern and variation whilst playing maths themed games here as the Year 3s also recorded facts for their [popcorn number. After they had a range of challenges including a number ordering challenge, who wants to be a millionaire game, hit the button and number of the day facts. WE LOVE NUMBERS DAY AND GETTING TO DRESS UP WITH REPRESENTATIONS OF NUMBERS.
Thursday 10th February - Great Fire of London News Reports
For the last five weeks the Year 2s have been learning about News Reports, finding out lots of facts about the Great Fire of London, how to structure a News Report and what the features of Non Fiction texts are. This concluded with an amazing Hot Write, reporting about the events after the Great Fire of London. They all did brilliantly, here are a couple of their green screen News Reports. Haven't they done well!
Friday 11th February - Great Fire of London reenactment
To conclude our learning about the Great Fire of London, the children had created their own model Tudor houses, considering the features such as wattle and daub, thatch and small windows. We then created our own Pudding Lane on the yard, starting a fire at Thomas Farriners house on Pudding Lane. It really helped the children understand how houses built of wood would set fire so easily and being so close together meant the fire spread fast!
Monday 14th March - STEM WEEK
We have been super busy throughout the week which included:
- Learning about the impact of women engineers and the difference you can make as a scientist
- Watching Farming LIVE session to understand the life cycles of a cow and sheep compared to a chicken or butterfly
- Handling many different animals with Zoo Lab – finding out about their class and their lifecycles
- Listening to our special visitors including Mr Laskey and how fire fighting uses many STEM skulls
- Considering what living things need to survive and designing a creature that could live n mars based on its cold habitat
- Finding out about the different worm in our environment and their use for agriculture.
Tuesday 22nd March - KS2 River Trip
It was great to join the Year 3s as they followed the river Aln from it's source in Alnham up in the cheviot mountains all the way to its end at the sea in Alnmouth. The visit really helped the children understand the different stages of the course and observe how the river starts fast, clear and thin and gradually becomes slowed, wider, deeper and dirtier. They reinforced their understanding of geographical terms and conducted a range of experiments and investigations. It certainly helped having lovely weather and finishing with a play at the beach.
Week beginning 28th March 2022- Postcard writing YEAR 2
This term we have been learning about the continents and oceans of the world and considering where we would go visit. After innovating the story of ‘Somebody Swallowed Stanley we then looked at postcards using ‘Meerkat Mail’ as our shared text. The children did really well writing their fictional postcards, a couple have recorded with green screen for you to enjoy.