Hedgehogs - Year 2

Welcome to Hedgehog class! On Monday and Tuesday, we are taught by Mr Lester, who has been teaching at Bedwell for 9 years and is brilliant at drama and computing. On Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays our teacher is Mrs Rose, who has been teaching at Bedwell for 12 years. She really likes science and storytelling, and is determined to make our lessons as much fun as possible!

Home learning ideas:

  • Constant practice of reading and phonics is just about the most valuable thing you can do at home. Try to read with your child as often as possible and talk to them about what they’ve read. We've put together some advice and guidance on using the books your child will bring home, here.
  • BBC Bitesize has some great learning resources at www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zv2mn39/ where you can learn more about making charts and pictograms. 
  • The core learning in our next history topic is about recognising the difference between ‘old’ and ‘new’ things and understanding that things change over time - so any discussions that link to this would be really useful. What things in your area have changed over the last few years? Did the toys that your children play with exist when you were a child? What different things did you do when you were their age?
  • Throughout the year we are exploring how our environment changes with the seasons. You could build on this at home in lots of ways - exploring the park, making maps or looking for signs of autumn and winter on the way to and from school. What do we do differently as the weather gets colder? What do animals do to prepare for the colder months ahead?

Our latest news:

  • We threw ourselves wholeheartedly into this year's Sports Week - our scootering session was a definite highlight, and it was great to see how many of our parents and carers came to support us at our Sports Day. 
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  • We had a brilliant day out at the seaside, to link in with our work on seaside environments. Having chosen Clacton-on-Sea as our destination, we enjoyed a fabulous day out, with incredible weather and lots of happy smiling faces. We built sandcastles, searched for shells and buried each other in the sand before devouring our packed lunches. In the afternoon, some of us continued building in the sand, while others got out the frisbees and beach balls for some fun games. A few of us were even brave enough to dip our toes in the sea, but as the water wasn’t very warm (and to keep everyone safe) we decided not to let the water go above our ankles. We finished off with ice cream and lollies on the seafront, before heading back to the coach. You could tell how busy our day had been by the number of us who quickly fell asleep on the way home!
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  • We followed up our trip to the seaside with a Stay and Make afternoon focussing on seaside-themed art projects.  
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  • Hedgehog class enjoyed every minute of our Science Week. We had the opportunity to get ‘hands-on’ with a friendly group of animals - we all managed to stroke a bearded dragon, hold a guinea pig and even watch an African toad eating his lunch. Later in the week we completed a senses trail, trying to work out what the sounds, smells, close-up pictures and hidden materials all belonged to. We also tackled the Knex challenge, working in teams to build a helicopter. Our class winners were Arabella and Cassie, and Aina and Grace. 
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  • We had a lovely Stay and Count session where our parents joined us to play maths games in class. We were delighted that so many of you were able to join us! 
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  • Our history topic has seen us learning about the Great Fire of London. As part of this unit, we compared firefighting in the past with firefighting in the present day, and were invited to Stevenage Firestation to meet a team of firefighters. The best part of the day was when we climbed up into the fire engine and got to use the hose!
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"Pupils are confident and have well-developed social skills… The school is a calm and orderly place in which to learn."

Ofsted report, 2022
We have been learning about... 

Maths - We started the term learning about graphs and money. We used scales to weigh small objects in grams. Then we learned to tell the time using our special TOothPASTe method! This helped us to realise whether the time was quarter-to or quarter-past the hour. At the end of the term we have been learning how to double and halve two-digit numbers, developing useful strategies to help us to do this accurately.

 

English - As part of our learning in English, we studied the text Milo Imagines with World, which is all about a little boy with a big imagination. We used the story as a starting point for our own creative writing ideas and produced some wonderful setting descriptions, diary entries and short stories, all told from the viewpoint of Milo. We were encouraged to add interest to our work by using well-chosen verbs and adjectives to describe the setting. You can see some great examples of our work below: 

Milo sat on the train. Milo saw a lady with black hair. Milo imagined that the lady was a ballerina with yellow hair and a bright pink skirt and shirt. Milo saw a cool lady. Milo imagined that the lady was a skater with long brown hair and cool pink skates. Milo saw a smart baby with black hair. Milo imagined that smart baby was teaching letters to the naughty children in school. 

By Ella Nour 

Dear Diary, Today I went with my sister to the park. I saw the birds sitting in the tall tree. I heard the people coming in to the train. I saw my mum and she had made a new friend. I showed my mum my pictures it was so lovely. I felt happy because I saw my mum so I ran to her and hugged her. I went home on the train and I saw a smart boy. 

By Stefan 

The train clattered in the track. The car horn beeped loudly. The sun shined on the river. The dog slept in the warm dog bed. The birds slept in the tall, brown tree. 

By Ryan

This term's topics

English - Our first English unit of the year is built around the story of The Frog and the Stranger by Max Velthuijs. We will explore the characters in the story and collect descriptive vocabulary. We will develop our sentence writing by adding the conjunctions and, or and but to link ideas, and will then write our own short stories to describe imaginary events. After that, we will be focussing on instructions, using How to Make Friends with a Ghost by Rebecca Green as our core text. Throughout the term, we will continue to develop our phonics knowledge through our daily Read Write Inc sessions, working in small groups to learn, decode and blend new sounds.

Maths - Our focus at the start of the year will be place value, ensuring we can order, regroup and compare numbers. We will begin with numbers to 20 and will then extend our understanding to make it all the way to 100. A key part of this learning will be to split numbers into ’tens and some more’, and we will use lots of resources (including tens frames, bead strings and base 10 blocks) to help us to cement this concept. Alongside this, we will also develop our counting skills, so that we can count on and back in ones and tens from any number to 100 (for instance, counting back in tens from 76). Finally, we will be introduced to the > and < symbols to show that numbers are greater than or less than each other.

Science - We will be learning about the four seasons, thinking about the way the world around us changes as we move from summer to autumn to winter. We will collect evidence of these changes, gathering leaves, seeds and flowers, and record our observations. We will also identify different types of weather that we associate with each season.

Humanities - We will be exploring our local area, investigating Our Changing Town. We will think about the ways in which our local area has changed since we (and our teachers) were born. We will think about ’new’ and ’old’ objects and will discuss toys and technology which exist now that didn’t exist when we were born. We will create a timeline of our own lives, and then work together to extend these to create timelines of our parents or teachers lives. We will also explore the local area first-hand, looking for evidence and examples of things that have changed since we were born.

Take a look at our curriculum map for more information on our topics.

Early Years Admissions  

If you're looking for a place in Nursery or Reception, you can find out lots more about our school in our Early Years Prospectus.

We're always keen to show potential new applicants around - just get in touch with the school office to arrange a tour. 

Once you're ready to apply, head to the admissions page to find out more about the process - we run Nursery admissions ourselves, but from Reception upwards, these need to be made via Herts County Council.