Transport trip - The Entry Point to our topic!

On Friday we travelled around Toulouse on several different types of transport. How many different ones can you spot in our photos?

Programming Beebots

We have been writing algorithms to control the Beebots. We worked in pairs and used the instruction cards: forward, backward, right turn and left turn. The cards helped us think through our ideas and plan carefully. The fakebots (paper Beebots) helped us work-through our algorithm before testing with the actual Beebots. 

It was good to work with a partner to share ideas

Working out the turns was tricky

Some of us laid the cards on the digit to help our thinking

What a good idea! Copying on the digit card with the fakebot as the Beebot moved along...

Lots of turns to think through in the digit 5

Good ideas spread!

Using water colour paints

The illustrator of our Power of Reading book is called Caroline Binch. We looked at some of her paintings and then we made our own self-portraits inspired by her style.

Here is our work:

Cuisenaire Rods - so you can have a go at home

This week we have been enjoying using the cuisenaire rods to help with our maths thinking. Click here to have a go with them via the Nrich site!

Freeze frames from our Power of Reading book

We have been trying to get a better understanding of the book 'Grace and Family' through drama. We role-played some scenes from the story and then held the position as a 'freeze frame'. When Miss Ash tapped our shoulder we imagined a thought our character might have and said it aloud. It was difficult at first to talk as if we were someone else and say their thoughts but we soon got the hang of it!

Tessellating pattern blocks

In our 'Power of Reading' book - Grace and Family, Grace goes to visit her Papa in The Gambia. The illustrations show wonderful patterns and colours in the African cloth at the market and in the fabric shop. Grace and her Nana have African dresses especially made for them. In class we will be designing our own African prints. To warm-up for this, and to link with our work on 2D shapes, we created tessellations using the pattern blocks.  Do you like our patterns?

Crazy Characters

We learnt about algorithms today. Miss Ash tried out an algorithm on us. It was an algorithm for drawing a crazy character. This is how they turned out. Next lesson we will be writing our own algorithms, testing them on a friend and then thinking how we can improve them.

Here is the algorithm song if you want to listen to it again at home!

Pattern blocks

One of our tasks this week on the theme of shape has been to use the pattern blocks. We have found different ways to fit pattern blocks together to fill in pictures. Some of us made a graph showing how many of each shape we used. We learnt the names of some new shapes.
Trapezium

Diamond 

Hexagon

Here are two pictures of us working:

Giving instructions

We have been practising giving clear instructions. Firstly, Miss Ash and Mrs Dawson showed us the task. Miss Ash had made a small 3D model using the multilink cubes. The teachers sat back to back and Miss Ash had to explain to Mrs Dawson how to build the model. We noticed that it was helpful to say how many cubes to use.

With enthusiasm, we started to independently build our own models. We kept each model fairly simple by limiting ourselves to a maximum of 20 cubes. Once our model was complete we found a partner to test out our instructions on. 

We noticed that it is easier if both people use a loud, clear voice. It was helpful when the person building asked questions or simply said they were ready to hear the next stage of instructions. Saying things like 'it looks like...' seemed to make it easier for our partners to have a picture in their mind. 

Talking to each other to complete a student search

It was great to get talking to lots of different people in the whole of Year 2 as we did the student search. It was easy to find someone who likes pizza but much harder to find someone who has a family name beginning with S!

Welcome to a new group of Year 2!

Look at this enthusiasm. What great learning lies ahead!