Inspired by Neil Armstrong and his rocket blasting up in the air, Puma class tested their investigation skills. During their science sessions they designed an experiment to launch a paper rocket cone up into the air in a straight, vertical line. A very interesting range of methods were displayed and tested. Then we looked at predictions and fair testing when we looked at the question "does the size of the cone affect how high it travels". Everyone enjoyed launching the rocket cones into the air and observing how high they travelled. Can you remember which went the highest and why?
Puma class has had a busy couple of weeks look at and making fact files about all the explorers we have been studying this term. Some great knowledge was demonstrated about what fact files are and the features we need to use when writing them. Well done once again Pumas - and even some beautiful joined up handwriting!! Inspired by Neil Armstrong and his rocket blasting up in the air, Puma class tested their investigation skills. During their science sessions they designed an experiment to launch a paper rocket cone up into the air in a straight, vertical line. A very interesting range of methods were displayed and tested. Then we looked at predictions and fair testing when we looked at the question "does the size of the cone affect how high it travels". Everyone enjoyed launching the rocket cones into the air and observing how high they travelled. Can you remember which went the highest and why?
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What a week! Buddy reading in the library with Patoos, parents who came in to read and share their passion for books, a visit from Year 5 and their published books, a whole class Big Book writing project, some more work on Oliver Jeffers and our very own 'STUCK' tree story for our big Year 2 display board PLUS an imaginative selection of book characters for our Book Week Parade on Friday! What was your favourite part of the week? Our trip to the Maritime Museum was thoroughly enjoyed. Models, engines, equipment, control rooms, simulators, welding, winches, ancient maps and boats as well as a very jumpy 4D movie. So much to talk about. Lots of House Points were awarded for some excellent questions and comments about the displays and information we saw there. If only we could have had a second day there...! Puma class kicked off the week with a fact file matching game about our new author study, Oliver Jeffers. We worked in groups to read a series of questions and a series of answers before trying to match them up. We then looked at one of his books 'Lost and Found', a gorgeous story about a boy and a penguin. Puma class did some great hot seating (pretending to be a character from the story and answering questions posed to them). We also had some great discussions about the feelings of the main characters during the beginning, middle and end of the story.
This week sees the last part of our current Literacy work on traditional stories by Hans Christian Andersen. Puma class produced some absolutely brilliant endings to the story of The Little Match Girl last week after exploring emotive language and imagery used in the story. Puma class's first debate about the main character's father in the story was very interesting and everyone had some great thoughts and comments to share about him. This week children worked hard on identifying adjectives and descriptive phrases in a large selection of Hans Christian Andersen stories. We read some stories and also compiled lists of different ending types. The final piece of work this week was creating our own adventure story for Hans Christian Andersen's Tin Soldier character. As these stories travel around the world being translated in many different languages, we chose this time to focus on our third explorer who attempted to travel around the world, Amelia Earhart. We had some small group discussions about what might have happened to her over the Pacific Ocean. We traced her route and practised some great mapping skills and grid references. We also chose either Captain Cook or Zheng He and created diagrams to compare their lives and experiences from what we have learnt so far. Great job Pumas!
This week Puma Class have worked extremely hard in Literacy lessons and I have been so proud of their final pieces of work produced. An email request from a teacher in my old school in Cairo had an urgent plea: please could the Puma class help our Year 2 children with some information about Chinese New Year for our current curriculum topic? Well, say no more. Puma class sprang into action! We looked at the format of a leaflet and how they are filled with factual information. With the help of the other Year 2 teachers, students completed a rotation of activities to cover 6 different areas of Chinese New Year. Everyone made notes about them and then back in our classrooms we worked at drafting our informative sentences in sections, completing a Chinese New Year leaflet in a decorative fan design. I have scanned some of them in and will be emailing them over to Cairo! Well done Pumas!!
Puma Class have been working hard to explore interesting words and phrases to describe minibeasts. We have looked at video clips to see how they move and close up pictures of what they look like. With our fantastic word banks we then looked at a series of mini beast poems for inspiring ideas before we wrote our own 4-lined verse poems. Great job Puma Class!! Following the journey of Captain Cook, Puma class looked a variety of images related to his voyages. With our partner we had to talk about what we could see in the picture and how it linked to Captain Cook or his voyage. Ships, instruments, people, places, animals and plants. We shared some interesting ideas about what they were or how they might have been used!
Term 2 began with the welcoming of 2 new students into Puma Class: Oliver and Nathan. They were given buddies to sit next to and find out more about the daily routines and work that we do in Puma Class. Oliver made a great impression with some fantastic comments about explorers following our exciting impact session assembly on Tuesday (see the Year 2 main weebly page) and Nathan made a great start demonstrating a conscientious and hard working attitude right from the first day!
Our Literacy sessions this week have been focussing on interesting words and phrases about mini beasts. We have explored some poetry and are building up our thoughts and vocabulary about how these small creatures move, sound like and look like. We are hoping to create our own poems using all this information next week. Following a brief look at 6 famous explorers or adventurers this week (each of whom we will be looking at in more detail as the term continues) we made a list of questions we would like to find out about each of them. We took our large topic timelines and placed the birth date of Captain Cook. Friday we enjoyed getting slimy with papier-mâché, covering balloonsas we took the first steps in creating our In our final week of term we said a huge good bye to Thomas as he got ready to leave DUCKS for a new term in the UK. We had lots of laughs in our Year 2 party on the last Friday but my most memorable day was when we watched everyone in Puma class unwrap their secret Santa presents. The expressions were priceless. Here are some of the pictures. |
Welcome to Puma ClassMrs. Vivi Bian
Puma Class Learning Assistant Please note-This blog enables your child to write comments connected to their learning for discussion in class or for independent extension work. Any inappropriate comments will be removed. Archives
September 2014
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