Spring has come to Lower Primary 2!

It’s been a super busy Spring Term in Lower Primary 2 and the children have been learning and discovering so much.

We hit the ground running after the February break, welcoming our new friend Venia and re-organising the classroom and embedding some new class routines. All of the children were so excited to have their own roles within the class, gaining more autonomy over the arrangement of resources and up-keep of their learning environment. We’ve loved working even more as a team too, and being supportive of our friends to help us achieve our new goals of ‘class smilies’ – twenty two smiley face stickers in total for all of our collaboration! The children were so proud of themselves when we celebrated their successes with some extra playtime outside!

We started our IPC unit, ‘A Day in the Life,’ with the children thinking about the type of jobs that they already knew and using costumes and props to decide which would match with each type of profession. The class then had a fantastic time deciding what jobs they would like to have in the future and designing their very own tabards to match these professions; remembering to think carefully what their clothes would need to be like in order to allow them to complete their work safely and successfully. With the help of a green screen and their very own scripts, it was fantastic to see the class describing and acting out their professions for each other.

We also furthered our knowledge of a variety of careers through welcoming so many parent visitors into the class to tell us about their jobs. From architects to police officers, researchers to historians, there were so many different professions! A huge thank you to Magda, Jamie, Irena, Raquel and Vladimir for taking the time to come in and speak to us about their roles and their daily working life. We’ve definitely been inspired to be the best that we can be when we grow up! These wonderful visits also helped form the basis of our literacy work for this IPC unit which saw the pupils creating their own job fact-files for each of the parents. It’s been fantastic to see the children grow their literacy skills and take pride in the achievements of their written work.

Just as the work of our visiting parents was so varied, so are our own families. As part of our international tasks, we thought about the people we live with and who takes care of us. Lower Primary 2 then put their art skills to the test to create their own family portraits and made the most of their literacy skills to write a description of each member of their family. We celebrated diversity and enjoyed learning how no two families are the same, yet each is special and unique.

This term has also been good practice for our memories where we used the ‘Talking Hands’ approach to memorise a class poem called, ‘Things People Do.’ We were proud to be able to perform the poem to the whole school as part of our IPC Exit Point, along with showing them the video we made of our professions. What confidence the class showed being able to speak in front of all of their peers!

As well as our IPC, we’ve also been extremely busy with numeracy activities. Year 1s have been enhancing their Maths skills this term through work on number bonds and have been so enthusiastic about using Numicon and function machines to help them. We’re all getting much, much quicker at recalling our number bonds to 10 and 20 and using these to help us solve more and more difficult number problems. With the help of coins and Dienes rods, Year 1s have also been showing their understanding of two digit numbers and can confidently partition and build numbers with tens and units.

On top of all of that, they’ve also been learning how to make analogue and digital times to o’clock and half past and have been practising recognising fractions of shapes - phew!

Year 2s haven’t been having a rest while all of this was going on though as they’ve also been working away in numeracy. Over the course of the term, they’ve furthered their understanding of place value and used this to help them with three digit numbers. They’ve also dived into using grouping to help them with times tables and division. This has been particularly exciting for them when they got to take part in outdoor Maths lessons, using stones and pine cones as their manipulatives. On top of all that, they’ve been furthering their mental Maths skills with new strategies to help them solve larger and more complicated addition and subtraction problems.

This term has also been a busy time for birthdays which saw us celebrating Venia turning 7 and Andreu and Grant turning 8. We particularly enjoyed marking the occasions with the children being able to share their birthday experiences (and also some cake!) Another milestone has been 100 days of school! It was lovely to be able to share these festivities with Lower Primary 1, bake some bread together and celebrate being 100 days cleverer!

All of our focus and concentration has clearly paid off as we were rewarded with a visit from the Easter Bunny at the end of term. What better way to celebrate six weeks of hard work with an Easter egg hunt in the fresh air and some delicious Belgian chocolate.