Class Two

Welcome to Class Two's page. Our class is made up of 11 Year 2 children, 6 Year 3 children and 11 Year 4 children. We have two class teachers, Mr Attkins and Miss Dowling and one teaching assistant, Mrs Flaherty. Our teachers describe us as happy, polite and enthusiastic learners who are kind friends to one another. We love Dalton School very much and are looking forward to our learning this year. 

Our topic this term is 'The Iron Man'. 

On our return to school this September we read 'The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse' by Charlie Mackesy. This was a wonderful book and the messages in the book have never been more relevant than at this time. We created some artwork for our classroom using two of our favourite quotes from this book. 

In Science we are learning about rocks. We began our learning by thinking about 'What is under our feet?'. We began our lesson sitting on the playground and thinking about what is beneath us. We thought there might be mud, stone, pipes, creatures and fossils. Later in the lesson we made our own 'dirt puddings' using different tasty ingredients which represented the different layers of the Earth. We took our puddings home and were able to tell our family what each layer represents. 

We are holding a 'rock' competition in our class. We have been set the challenge of bringing in a small rock and adding it to our rock table. These rocks will be used in our Science lessons over the next few weeks. 

In History we have been learning what life was like during the Stone Age. We know that a lot of the information we have about people living at that time comes from cave paintings. We have been studying these and looking at the things that people from the Stone Age painted on the walls of caves. We noticed that they drew images of people hunting, animals and often they drew hand prints. We had a go at making our own cave paintings. 

In topic we have been learning about Volcanos. We have been labelling volcanos and using scientific vocabulary to describe them. We have made our own volcanos using papier-mache. We had lots of fun getting messy with newspaper and pva glue. Once our volcanos had dried we painted them to make them look more realistic. 

We have also been learning about the Roman city of Pompeii and how this city was devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. We have been really enthusiastic about our learning and many of us have gone home and told our families about what happened in Pompeii.

Once our volcanos were finished, we had a go at building the Roman city of Pompeii using lego. We then placed our volcanos next to the 'city' we had created before we made a chemical reaction to make our volcanos erupt. It was a very exciting lesson. 

Today we have been learning about earthquakes. We have talked about tectonic plates and how the movements cause an earthquakes and how these can be measured using the Mercalli scale. We have been re-enacting an earthquake drill in class. When we heard the siren we had to get under the table and cover our head and shoulders. Later, we made structures using cocktail sticks and marshmallows placed in a tray of jelly. We tested our structures to see if they would survive an earthquake. 

We have been inspired by the artist Nick Rowland who creates his nature inspired artwork by adding layers. We used both chalk and paint to create these impressive erupting volcano paintings. Our work is proudly displayed around school. 

Today we have had lots of fun celebrating Children in Need. We held a Pudsey colouring competition, played bingo and had a dancing competition and cake. We have all helped to raise lots of money for Children in Need. 

We had a fantastic day celebrating Beatles day with our friends. We all arrived at school in 60's dress. It was so much fun seeing our friends and teachers dressed up! We have written fan letters to the Beatles, working hard on our handwriting and presentation. Next, we became song artists ourselves and changed the lyrics to one of our favourite songs, Penny Lane, to be about Dalton School. In the afternoon we filmed our singing which we have been working on for a several weeks. We finished our day with a fun disco where we danced to many hits by The Beatles and had lots of fun. We know lots of interesting facts about the 'Fab Four' and have enjoyed sharing these with our families. 

We hope you enjoy listening to our beautiful singing...

In Science, we have been learning about sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks. We used milk and white chocolate to form each of these types of rocks. This really helped us to understand how each rock is formed and what is needed to form them. At the end of the lesson we were able to enjoy eating our chocolate rocks!

On Beatles day, we became song writers just like The Beatles. We know that songs such as Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields were written about places where the members of the band spent time when they were growing up. In class, we wrote our own song lyrics about a place special to us - Dalton School. Harrison was so inspired by this lesson that he went home and wrote some more lyrics and kindly filmed his performance to share with our class. 

We have been conducting experiments on different rocks to test their properties. We have tested the rocks to see if they are permeable, float or sink, can be scratched and if they react with vinegar which is acidic. 

We have been making Christmas salt dough decorations to hang on our Christmas tree. We all used our handprint as a template and then we decorated them with different designs. Our teachers think they look really impressive and we are very proud of our creations!

This year we have chosen to sing 'War is Over' by John Lennon as we have loved learning about The Beatles so much! The lyrics, 
So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun, 

led us to think about the things we have done this year. The lyrics, 

Another year over
And a new one just begun,

led us to consider what we are looking forward to in 2021. We thought a lot about the things we have missed out on this year, which we would usually take for granted, and how we are excited to get life back to normal in the new year. 

        We hope you all enjoy our special performance and all have a very happy Christmas!

On our last day in school we had a special visit from some very funny elves sent from Santa.

On March 8th 2021 we were so excited to all be back at school together! We celebrated with a party with lots of delicious food and music and we dressed our Dalton bears in rainbow colours to help us to celebrate. We had so much fun and we are so happy to be back in school.

In Science this term we have been learning about animals and their habitats. We held an animal themed fancy dress day and held a bake sale to raise money to go towards our Gorilla workshop. 

On Wednesday 24th March we were visited by TeachRex who provided a fantastic workshop about Gorillas and their habitats. We heard about the story of Thomas the gorilla who sadly lost his family and home to poachers. We heard about how conservationists have helped Thomas and his new family to thrive in their natural habitat. We loved meeting Thomas and playing games with him. Later, we used technology to create our own videos using a green screen and a special app. This fantastic workshop enabled us to develop our Literacy skills and we cannot wait to see our finished, edited videos!

This term our new topic is called 'The Iron Man'. We began by reading the opening of our new class novel and discussing the fantastic description used by Ted Hughes. We used this description to help us to visualise the character the Iron Man. We used oil pastels to create a portrait of the Iron Man and then we used different tones of silver paper to create a collage of the Iron Man. Our work is now proudly displayed in our classroom. 

Today we were visited by Ian Bland, a children's poet. The children were so excited during his workshop. They had the opportunity to act our some of his hilarious poems and then they were given the chance to write their own Kennings poems. We are really proud of their hard work and enthusiasm. 

Today in Science we have been extracting iron from cereal as a WOW introduction to our new science unit this term. 

Today we have been using drama to explore more of our class novel, The Iron Man. Our teachers were so incredibly proud of our teamwork and our impressive drama performances. 

Today we started to learn about the different forces we need to play with our toys. We had lots of fun exploring different the different toys in class and at the end of the lesson we could use words like push, pull, spin and roll to describe their movement.

Today we had fun creating pictures of Ted Hughes' Iron Man using blocks of Lego, we used all of the different sides to make different shapes and textures for the different parts of him.

Today in science we have been investigating magnets and we used a magnet to make our own compass. We used the compass to locate treasure hidden around our school field. It was lots of fun and our teachers were so proud of our teamwork and for saying thank you for our treasure at the end of the lesson. 

Today in Science we have been investigating the invisible magnetic field around a magnet.

To begin our teeth topic in Science we were visited by Deb Hathaway who has previously worked in dentistry. Deb came to talk to us about the importance of looking after our teeth and visiting the dentist. Some of us used a disclosing tablet to highlight the plaque on our teeth. It was interesting to see where the plaque was on our teeth and Deb gave us some top tips about best brushing our teeth. 

In art we have really enjoyed our fruit topic. We cut some different fruits and vegetables in half and looked carefully at the patterns we could see. Over the last few weeks we have been sketching and painting the insides of different fruits and have produced some very impressive, detailed work. We have also used clay to sculpt a pepper. Once dry, we painted our peppers and were very pleased with our final product. We have also used papier mache to make our own fruit bowls which we will paint to look like to inside of our favourite fruits once these are dried. 

SPORTS DAY 2021

To demonstrate our impressive knowledge of the different types of teeth in the human mouth, we used plasticine to make a model mouth. We carefully used tools to mould incisor, canine and molar teeth which we accurately positioned in our mouth. Our finished models are proudly displayed in our classroom. 

In science we have been learning about the digestion system. We conducted a fun experiment to help us to learn about the journey of food through our bodies. We demonstrated our knowledge by drawing the organs of the digestion system on a t-shirt and then wearing these home to share our impressive knowledge with our families.

We have been learning about Judaism. We really enjoyed making challah bread which is a Jewish bread eaten on special celebrations. We loved baking and then eating the delicious bread.