Hedgehogs - Year 2

Welcome to Hedgehog class! On Monday and Tuesday, we are taught by Mr Lester, who has been teaching at Bedwell for 8 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 11 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.
  • Practice identifying key places on maps - a globe or a big map of the world would be great, but if you haven’t got one of those, Google Maps on a tablet or laptop is just as good (and means you can start to zoom in on some of the places we’ve talked about).
  • Try planting seeds in the garden or a window box and talking about what happens to them. What do we need to do to help them grow? How do plants change as they grow?
  • BBC Bitesize has some great learning resources here, where you can learn more about coding robots and beginning to create simple programs. 

Our latest news:

  • In Year 1 and 2, we have been learning all about plants and animals this term, and to support our topic we spent a lovely day out at Whipsnade Zoo. While we were there, we got to meet lots of the animals that we have been investigating in class - everything from bears to penguins to ostriches! Whipsnade is huge, so to help us to see as much as possible, we took a trip on the zoo train to try to spot some of the animals that were hiding at the back of their enclosures! We also talked to some of the zoo keepers, who told us about the ways in which they look after their animals and try to protect endangered species. 
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  • In Year 1 and 2, we were given a challenging home-learning task this term: to make something linked to a topic that was important to us. There were no fixed rules, so some of us made posters and displays, while others built vehicles and 3d scenes. When all of our projects started to appear in class, we were all blown away by the quality of our finished pieces, and the time that had been invested in them. We had tanks that fired, penguin fact-files, mini ballet theatres, home-country posters and planes with working propellors to name but a few! Even more impressive than the things we made, however, was the way we were able to share them and talk about what we had done - it was a great chance to show-off how much we know about our hobbies, home countries and favourite things, and we were able to answer questions from the rest of our class with confidence.
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  • We’ve continued to pack in lots of parent and carer workshops throughout the term, sharing our learning, celebrating successes and giving ideas for supporting children at home. In Year 1/2, we ran a Stay and Make afternoon, which was attended by an amazing 72 families (sending staff off to round up every available table in the school!) It was great to see whole families working together to create pieces of art and sharing what they had made. Thank you to everyone who attended.
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  • We loved getting involved in this year's Sports Week - you can find out more about everything we got up to here.  
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  • Y1/2 went to Shuttleworth Museum to round-off our First Flight topic. We saw many airplanes about which he had learned, including an SE5a and an Avro once flown by Neil Armstrong! We reinforced our learning about how aircraft had developed and heard stories of famous flights. We tried on the different hats and goggles worn by pilots. We had a ride in a 100 year old vintage bus (which made a turkey sound to warn people!) One of the highlights of the day (apart from lunch, of course!) was sitting on the field and watching the real vintage planes take off and practise their manoeuvres for an air show. It was amazing to be so close and hear the roar of the engines. A Gyspy Moth like Amy Johnson’s was a particular treat. We applauded the pilots’ landings as they got out of their cockpits and many of them waved back. 
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  • We loved throwing ourselves into this year’s Science Week, building egg-drop contraptions, taking part in our sensory trail and learning about space in a giant planetarium!
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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... 

History - This term we have been learning about the history of ‘heavier than air’ flights, from the man-lifting kites of Ancient China and the balloon flights of the Montgolfier brothers, through to the first aeroplanes of the Wright brothers, and the supersonic flights of Concorde. Along the way, we also learnt about many famous pilots including Louis Bleriot and Amy Johnson.

 

Maths - We have learned to tell the time (using TOothPASTe!), multiply using arrays, use formal addition (arranging numbers vertically and carrying tens where necessary), and formal subtraction by breaking up a ten when we needed into ten ones. We have also developed methods to help us add and take away in our heads.

This term's topics

English - We will start the term by focussing on realistic stories, using the story The Lost Homework, by Richard O’Neill, as our core text. We will explore the use of apostrophes for contractions and subordinating conjunctions (like when and because), and then draw on all our skills to write our own stories about losing something important. Later in the term we will switch our focus to instructions, using How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth, by Michelle Robinson, as our main text. We will investigate the way that instructions are organised and investigate the meaning of lots of new words. We will then write our own instructions for washing a tall giraffe, a pink flamingo or even an angry crocodile.

Maths - We will be focussing on division and multiplication over the next few weeks. For multiplication, we will progress from using objects and drawings to thinking about the link between multiplication, repeated addition and arrays. We will also learn how to solve two-step problems using jottings to explain our thinking. In division, we will be developing our understanding of sharing and grouping, again beginning with objects and drawings, and working towards being able to solve problems with pencil and paper methods. Finally, we will be exploring the idea of fractions, learning to find fractions of lengths, shapes, sets of objects and quantities, including finding 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 2/4 and 3/4.

Science - We will be investigating and naming a variety of wild and garden plants and flowers. We will be planting seeds, exploring the way that different plants grow and thinking about the things that they need to stay healthy. As we make observations, we will also learn to name different parts of flowering plants, using words like leaf, root, petal and stem.

Humanities - We will be getting to grips with maps of the world this term, looking at lots of different maps (as well as globes and atlases), and locating key places. In particular, we will learn to quickly identify the five oceans and seven continents that cover our planet, as well as where we live and parts of the world where we have family connections.

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.