Oak Tree Class

Oak Tree Class 

A warm welcome to parents and children from Oak Tree Class.

Thank you for visiting our class page. Here you will find lots of information about the fun and exciting things we are learning about. And as we are always very busy, please do visit our page often to see all of our wonderful and exciting adventures. 

**Oak Tree Class 2023-2024**

Sports day

We had an amazing time on our Sports Day. We showed great sportsmanship and skills.

One world week

In Oak Tree class we have been learning about Jamaica. Jamaica is an Island in the Caribbean. Its capital is Kingston. Jamaica has a population of approximately 2.7 million people. Jamaica is famous for ‘jerk’ seasoning, curried goat and lots and lots of tropical fruits. It has a tropical climate and is warm all year round! Jamaica has lots of sandy beaches which many travel to visit. Jamaica is also famous for the type of music called Reggae. We also learnt that the three colours of the flag have different meanings. The black represents strength and resilience, yellow symbolises wealth and sunshine and green represents the vegetation on the island. Some famous Jamaicans include Bob Marley, who was a musician and Usain Bolt the Olympic gold medallist. To learn about Jamaica in Oak Tree, we created their flag, did word searches, practised the national anthem, and even got to cook bread. This was the best bit because the classroom smelt delicious all day! It was a special type of bread called hard dough bread. Don’t worry it wasn’t hard! We loved learning about Jamaica!
 

History Workshop

We've had a  busy week, it started with a history workshop. We participated in a dramatic reenactment of the Great Fire of London. We learnt a lot about what happened and why it began.

Trip to the Zoo

We started our new term with a trip to the zoo. We had a fantastic time seeing all the animals. We loved seeing the sloth, gorillas and butterflies. 

DEAR:

Drop Everything And Read!

This week we started with our DEAR time. This has made us super excited about reading! It is amazing to see. DEAR can happen at any time... This week it happened during Maths and our English lessons.

As soon as our alarm goes off, we all read for 10 minutes without worrying about anything else.

Father's Day Worship:

Thank you to everyone who visited Oak tree today for us to show you how important each and every one of you are! This is the poem and the song we learnt to show each of you how important you are.

Father, I Place Into Your Hands

Bee Hunt:

In Gardening we've been learning about the bees! We got to go on a hunt for them. But while we were outside... we got soaked by the thunderstorm! We then became bees ourselves. We got to see what it is like to be pollinators! We used cheeseballs as the pollen, and we had to BUZZZ from flower to flower.

Zoo Trip:

We started our new term with a trip to the zoo. We had a fantastic time seeing all the animals. Some of our favourites were the sloth, gorillas and the butterflies. 

Bollywood Workshop

We had a fantastic workshop. We learnt a whole dance routine to a popular Bollywood song!

May Procession

In the month of May we pray to Mary. We did a Procession and prayed to Mary as a year group.

Ducks

Over the past few weeks, we have greatly enjoyed having the ducks with us. We watched them hatch from their eggs and become ducklings. It was amazing to see them grow. In just one week they went from being in an egg to swimming. We also enjoyed watching Miss Ginesta have to chase a duckling who escaped from the pool.

We were very sad to see them go but we know they'll have a great life back on the farm enjoying a much bigger pond. 

Coronation Celebration

To celebrate our new King, we dressed up as kings and queens or wore the flag's colours. It was beautiful to see so many different children dressed up. We had an assembly to celebrate the Coronation as a school. We sang our favourite Coronation song and the Anthem! Sadly, we didn’t get to enjoy our tea party outside because the weather had other plans. But we managed to have a great time inside! 

Visit from the Circus

The circus came to visit us in school! We got to learn lots of different circus acts. We spun plates, juggled, tossed flower sticks and balanced a feather while we moved around. It was amazing to see everyone join in and join the circus for a day.

Art

In art, we are getting inspired by Henri Rousseau. We used our beautiful plants from the classroom to create still-life sketches to help us plan the background of our next masterpiece.

Ramadan

We have been learning about Islam and what is important to all Muslim people. We had someone come in and talk to us about prayer and they even showed us how to use a prayer mat! We got to ask lots of questions and it was an incredible opportunity which helped us create amazing books about Islam.

Gardening in the summer

We have been working hard in our school garden. We’ve been preparing the garden for the past few weeks by weeding and turning the soil. Now that it’s ready for planting, we planted peas, beans, courgettes and lots of different herbs as a class.

After all of our hard work, we enjoyed the beautiful garden and sunshine!

About a week later we came down with clipboards and measure the plants and used magnifying glasses to see how our plants were doing.

Easter

We have had a great last day of term celebrating Easter. We all looked fantastic in our handmade bonnets! We also had a visit from a special visitor who brought us a treat. 

Thank you to all the parents and carers who supported us this term.

Mother's Day Worship

We had a wonderful Mother's Day Worship assembly. We worked really hard to prepare some songs, prayers and a poem. It was amazing seeing so many mothers and loved ones in the classroom. We gave them our gifts, the daffodils we planted in gardening, our handmade cards and paper bookmarks! We all absolutely loved it!

Science week

We had an incredible workshop where we got to create our own city in the hall. We used different building blocks to build towers, bridges, cars, and we even got to make an octopus! We also learnt about Maggie Aderin-Pocock, she was a scientist from London who loves learning about the stars and space.

We also got to become scientists and show our experiments to the class. We had volcano eruptions, colour mixing and lava lamps!

Paper Making

We have been cooking up a surprise for Mother's Day, shhhh! We made our own recycled paper. We collected unwanted and used paper around the school and ripped it into small pieces. Then we had to leave it soaking in warm water for days... it was a little gross. Once it was all nice and mushy we put all the paper in a blender! We used this paper pulp to make our own paper bookmarks! The best bit was getting to decorate them when they were done!

Shapes, Line of Symmetry and Fractions

We have been very busy in Maths this term. We have learnt all about 2D and 3D shapes. We became mathematicians by practising all our new shape vocabulary (edges, vertices, faces and sides). We then looked at symmetry. Our favourite activity was trying to see if we had symmetrical faces! 

Now we are learning about factions!

World Book Day

We celebrated World Book Day by dressing up as our favourite storybook characters. We had a parade and got to show off our amazing costumes to parents and other classes!

Wind in the Willows

A theatre company came to visit us! They performed Wind in the Willows. We helped in the performance by learning the songs and 8 children in the year group were lucky enough to join the actors on stage!

Ash Wednesday

As we come into the Lenten season, we gathered in the chapel to get our blessing and cross for Ash Wednesday. Then we also spent some time coming up with promises for Lent.  

Solidarity - Catholic Social Teaching

For our class Assembly, we focused on the Catholic Social Teaching of Solidarity. In Oak Tree Class we have been learning about how we can show Jesus’ teachings in our everyday lives. Shristi the Sun Bear has been helping us. We challenge you to try and reach out to someone different, ask them if they would like to play with you or if they want to sit with you. Aim to use all of the school’s learning behaviours, for example, being a team player, being responsible and being confident. And help our school work together to make it a place for everyone. Also at home see if there’s anything you can do to help others around you. 

Number Day:

Number day gives the children the opportunity to apply their maths skills to everyday scenarios, whilst raising money for such a fantastic cause, the NSPCC. As a class we had to solve different problems to come up with a seven-digit code, so we could escape the forest. We also sang our favourite number raps and practised our times tables!

Birdwatch week:

We started off bird watch week by going on a garden walk to count the birds that visit our garden. We also got to see the bird food we made in action, attracting lots of local birds to our garden.  We were then visited by Falconry UK, who showed us some of their amazing birds and told us a bit about them. We loved seeing all the different owls and learning about their eye colours.

Gardening:

In gardening, to begin our bird week, we made bird food for our bird feeders. We used lard and different bird seeds to create bird food.

Then we planted some new vegetables in our garden! We started off with lettuce.

Science:

We have started a new science study unit looking at materials. We made tents to test different materials to see which is best suited to the job. We also tested the different materials to see which would let in the least light.

Computing:

In computing this term we are looking at algorithms. We have been fixing bugs in software and creating our own sets of instructions to reach an outcome.

We used BeeBots to create an algorithm to get the BeeBots to knock over the tower.

Art:

In art this term we are looking at Alexander Calder and Antony Gormely. We created our own trees out of tin foil to create our very own tin forest!

Nativity Trip:

We got to go to Lambeth Palace to take a journey to Bethlehem.

We met:

• Zechariah who got a visit form Angel Gabriel
• The Shepherd looking for his friends who left for Bethlehem
• Mary while she was getting ready for her new baby
• The Wise Man with all of his gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh
• The Traveller and the donkeys

Everyone got to keep a souvenir from each of our nativity characters. Everyone loved getting to see what we have been learning about in RE in real life. Getting to ask each of the characters questions about how they felt and what they might be worried about.

In science we are starting our new topic, materials. We were classifying different materials to design a tent.

Advent

To start the Advent month we had an assembly. In the assembly we lit the first advent candle, which represents Hope.

Queen Victoria Workshop

We travelled back to the Victorian times. We got to role play as servants in Queen Victoria's household. We played games to practice our skills and learned how to properly greet a King, Queen or princess and prince. We even got to explore with some of the new inventions from the Victorian times.

We became art critiques!

Anti-Bullying Assembly and Workshop:

We talked about the importance of being kind to one another and making sure we help each other. We learnt about four different superpowers talking, kindness, bravery and calm thinking. 

In our workshop we roleplayed two different scenarios, Sally being made fun of for her voice and what she wears and Tommy for being too tall and looking different. Everyone helped out the different scenarios and then found ways to resolve them and help Sally and Tommy.
 

Saints Assembly:

Gardening:

We talked about what kind of vegetables and plants can grow in the winter. We used different popsicle sticks that were marked to help us measure how deep each seed needed to go. We used them to plant garlic and onions.

Then we helped weed the garden. Removing all the unhealthy plants from the garden so we could begin to plant new ones that can grow in the winter.

Halloween

Everyone dressed up in amazing costumes for Halloween. We went down to the Hall for a Halloween parade and got to show off all our costumes. The school counsellors, eco warriors and minivinnies voted for the best costumes in every class. Oak Tree Class' winner was Lucas.

"I liked seeing everyone's costumes!" - Maya

"Halloween was fun and later I am going trick or treating" - Gabriel

During our lesson we spotted a RAINBOW!

Gardening:

We explored using magnifying glasses today! The whole class loved becoming scientists with their clipboards and magnifying glasses. We were spotting healthy and unhealthy leaves/plants and discussing what makes them that way. 

"I can see mildew on the leaves, so it is unhealthy" - Louie
"The leaves are unhealthy because it is not green" -Sophia

RE:

We have learnt about the Creation Story and today we acted it out!

" God created humans, so I am being a human" -Angel
"On day seven, God rested" -Yasmien 
 

Well-being Day:

"I loved the day because we got to cook and do lots of fun things" -Miguel

On Well-being Day, we cooked granola bars using oats, jam, honey and bananas. Everyone really enjoyed eating them afterwards. We created bookmarks and drew sunflowers using crayons and colour pencils to practice using mixed media for art. We even took a trip to the library and got to explore all the different books we have!

"I love reading in the library!" -Aline

We learnt how to create a voting poll as a class and then took turns answering the questions we created. We were all very interested in how everyone gets to school!

Geography:

We created posters using factfiles about each of the continents. As groups, we sorted each continent's human features and physical featers. Then used what we learned to create posters as a class.

Meet our school councillors:

Blake and Miguel.
 

They were chosen by the class by doing a silent vote. We all covered our eyes and voted for our different applicants. We talked about how it is important to have our opinion heard and have our say. We also talked about being supportive with each other as sadly not everyone can have their option chosen.

PSHE:

We had a wrokshop from SCARF (Safety, Caring, Achievement, Resilience, Friendship) to talk about our feelings.

"I really liked seeing the body parts being put into the body and talking about our feelings" -Hannah
"I liked watching the birthday party" - Maya

Maths:

We have started a new topic, addition and subtraction. We have used numicons to explore number bonds and familiarise ourselves with addition and subtraction. 
 

Gardening:

We have been exploring and clasifying living, never been alive and dead objects around the school. Then we investigated compostable and non-compostable items. We divided them up and put them in two different holes in our garden. In 6 weeks we are going to dig them up and see if we can spot any changes to the items.

Our WOW wall this month!

These are some of the children’s amazing work this month. They created prayers for the Queen, acrostic poems and prayers for our International Peace Day, and acrostic poems in English about sunflowers. They have all been working really hard and making sure to edit their writing to help make it more interesting to the readers.

Recycling Workshop:

The children had a wonderful workshop about recycling and they created their own little notebooks out of recycled paper and cardboard.

“I liked using different maps to make the covers; I think it was from the Unites States!” –Baz

In Computing since the beginning of September we have been focusing on Online Safely. Everyone in class worked together to create different posters to illustrate the importance of staying safe when using the internet.

Useful Links for Online Safety:

Religious Education:

In RE we have been focusing on the first book of the Old Testament, Genesis. We have been looking at the creation story and the 7 different days of creation.

We have created prayers for Queen Elizabeth II and her family and helped the children understand the changes that will come.

We also celebrated International Peace Day and created our own prayers illustrating what peace means to each of us.

Art:

In art we have been learning all about Vinvent Van Gogh. We have began researching his artwork and about his life. We have focused on The Starry Night and the Sunflower painting.
 

Topic:

Our topic this term is continents and oceans. We have been putting the map together and labeling it. 

Maths:

This term we have been focusing on place value and starting to write our numbers into number sentences. We have been using our partitioning skills to separate numbers into tens and one. Then writing them out as an equation.

Science:

In Science this term we are learning about living things and their habitats. The children have been exploring the different micro-habitats and habitats they can find in school. 

Our Reading Corner:

The author we are focusing on is Anthony Browne. We have been reading some of his books every week and the children are exploring some of his stories on their own. 
 

Oak Tree Class Rules:
On the first day, on of school we all created class rules and each child signed their name to say they would try their best to follow them.

End of Oak Tree Class 2021-2022

Summer Term

 Leavers Mass

Year 2 

2021/2022

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON- STORY TELLING WORKSHOP

Today, we were taken back to 1666 when we met Mrs Wellbake, cook to Mr Samuel Pepys.

We heard her first hand account of the Great Fire of London and she tried very hard to ensure that this tragedy would never happen again.

With the help of the audience, using artefacts, props and costume, she and the children re-enacted the drama of the fire and helped to plan a fire-free future for the city of London.

While engaging with this fascinating historical episode, the children had lots of fun and were fired with enthusiasm to learn even more about this significant event in our history.

GREEN UP YOUR ACT

To enhance learning in Science and PSHE, the children took part in a workshop focusing on green issues and recycling at home, school and in a global context. They learned how to turn discarded materials into useful products to reduce waste and help protect the environment.

Celebrating the Queen's Jubilee

Oak Tree Class was like Buckingham Palace when we all dressed up as royalty to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee! We had a garden party were we enjoyed some delicious snacks! It was a lovely way to end the half term.

Rock 'n' Roll!

As part of our Platinum Jubilee Celebrations, Lil J from the Pineapple dance Studios taught us a dance from the 50s. We learned how to do the hand jive with a little bit of the twist as well! 

Our First School Trip

On Wednesday we travelled by coach to London Zoo! We saw so many amazing animals and really enjoyed seeing the rainforest animals because we had learned about them during our geography lessons. We took part in a work shop and investigated animals that are scaly, furry and feathered. We put our skills to the test to figure out which animals had which skin covering!! We also were entertained by the penguins. They are such great swimmers and divers. The penguin keeper told us lots of information about penguins and also how important it is to save our oceans and stop plastic pollution! It was an unforgettable day!

Spring Term