Towers, Tunnels and Turrets
After Christmas our new topic will be Towers, Tunnels and Turrets. We are going to have a theatre company in
on Tuesday 12th January 2016 to teach us about life in a castle. The children will have the opportunity to try on
costumes, learn how to make butter by hand and find out what it was like to live in a castle.
In English we will be making a leaflet about defending and attacking castles and writing about castle life, writing
diary entries based on the story ‘Rapunzel’, writing our own adventure story based on the book ‘The Tunnel’ by
Anthony Brown and writing a letter of complaint from ‘The Three Billy Goats’.
In our Maths lessons we will continue to work on number and place value, we will also be solving problems
involving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. We will continue to count forwards and backwards
in 1’s, 2’s, 3’s, 5’s and 10’s. We will practise telling the time using o’clock, half past, quarter to and quarter past
and moving on to 5 minutes past the hour. We will also practise making amounts using the fewest possible
coins and begin to work out change.
During Geography we will be learning about famous towers, bridges and tunnels in the world such as the Eiffel
Tower in France, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, the Channel Tunnel in Kent, Laerdal Tunnel in Norway, the
Golden Gate Bridge in America and Tower Bridge in London. We will also locate these places on a World map.
We will be learning about castle life in History and who lived in castles, what castles were like, how people
defended and attacked castles, different types of castles and their features.
In Computing we are going to become photographers! We are going to learn how to hold a camera or device,
how to zoom in and out and how to take a good picture. We will then upload our pictures onto the computer
and edit them using photo editing software.
During Design and Technology we are going to be working as a group to create a castle, making a tower for
Rapunzel with construction material, using natural materials to create a tunnel and using spaghetti and
marshmallows and working as a team to see who can create the strongest bridge!
In RE lessons this half term we are going to be learning about Christianity and listening to stories from the
Old Testament and the New Testament.
During Science we will continue to observe habitats around the school and investigate materials. We will look
at a range of materials to find which one is the stretchiest, which material is the best for blocking a hole in a
bucket and finding out which material lets the most light through.
Please can you send in:
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A range of junk modelling (boxes) for our castle models
Clean, plastic washing up bottles, salad cream bottles, ketchup bottles, shower gel bottles or
squeezy water bottles for a science experiment.
We will be going on a range of local walks for this topic so please make sure your child has sensible foot
wear and a coat in case of rain every day.
If you would like to do an optional project over the Christmas holidays here are some ideas below.
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Find out about some famous engineers and find out about their work. Can you find any
pictures of their work?
Play a tumbling tower game such as Jenga with your family. What are the best ways of keeping
the tower upright? See if you can take some action shots or videos of the tower falling!
Go on a bridge hunt with a grown-up around the local area and take photos to show the class.
What types of bridges did you see?
Draw a detailed picture of a castle and label it.
Find out some interesting facts about castles and write them down.
Find some pictures of castles from the UK or around the world and label them and print them
out.
Make your own model of a castle.
Make an information book about castles, bridges or tunnels. Include downloaded images,
pictures, diagrams or drawings. What fascinating facts can you find out?
Design and create a model of a famous structure from around the world, using junk modelling
found at home. E.g. London Bridge, Leaning Tower of Pisa etc.
Find on a world map or plot on a globe, all the famous landmarks you would like to visit. Which
continents are they in? How would you get there?
Design a fantastic new landmark for your local area! What material would you use and what
special features would it have?
Look and see if you can find any rhymes or poems about castles, towers or bridges.
Make an acrostic poem about castles, bridges or towers.
Find out about the tallest bridge, longest tunnel or oldest castle and bring in some information
to share.
If you have been to any famous landmarks bring in some pictures to share.
You can choose a project from above or you can create your own project.
Bring your project to school in January as we love to see them and display them.
There will be a year 2 writing workshop in January so look out for the letter.
Enjoy your Christmas and have lots of fun and get plenty of rest. We look forward to seeing you in January.
Year 2 Team