Descriptive writing
Over the past few weeks, Year 2 have been working really hard on their descriptive writing. The stimulus for our writing was a famous piece of art by Leonardo da Vinci called ‘The Last Supper’.
Children were tasked with writing sentences using adjectives and expanded noun phrases to describe The Last Supper.
Here are a few examples of the descriptive sentences we wrote in our writing:
The men are eating boring, tasteless food.
In the dark room, the bearded men all look serious.
They are wearing old-fashioned clothes.
Jesus is wearing a blue and orange gown.
On the long table, there is a white tablecloth.
Skipping ropes for sale
This year we are continuing to work with Skipping School to develop the children’s skipping skills. Skipping School ropes (KS1 ropes and longer KS2 ropes) are now available to buy from the office.
Girls rugby opportunity
Leos Junior Rugby Club are hosting a girls only training session, open to all girls in Reception to Year 6, on Sunday 28th November, with the aim of setting up a girls only rugby team in the area. Please see below for more information.
Living and Learning: Anti-bullying week
We have continued to have an anti-bullying theme to our learning this week.
One Kind Word has been this years’ key message and we created our own kindness wall to spread this message.
Our fluency text this week, which we read daily, is based on our child friendly anti-bullying policy. As part of these sessions, we discuss the vocabulary used in the text. We often use word hippo to check any definitions or to find synonyms for words to help us to understand their meaning.
Another reading activity involved understanding word definitions where the children had to sort the words into bullying and anti-bullying words.
This reading activity is called a RIC where the children answer questions about the text – some answers may be in the text (retrieval questions), others may need some more thought and interpretation.
Alongside discussing what bullying is, we considered how someone might feel if they were being bullied and how it would affect their mental health. The children generated a great list of emotions when thinking about this.
Finally, we reinforced the importance of the STOP message in our school.
STOP stands for two things:
- the definition of bullying: Several Times On Purpose
- the solution for bullying: Start Telling Other People
Well done Year 2 – you have showed great understanding around the subject of bullying.
Living and Learning: Odd socks day
It was great to see so many odd socks today – thank you for supporting this start to anti-bullying week.
Odd socks day is a great way to celebrate what makes us all unique! Odd Socks Day is held in partnership with Andy and the Odd Socks. Have a listen to their song for this year.
The theme for this year’s anti-bullying week is One Kind Word. One kind word can lead to another and today we sent a wave of kindness through the class by giving compliments to each other. We saw how kindness fuels kindness. We also made some kindness pledges.
Look back tomorrow for more learning about how to STOP bullying.
Art Gallery Trip
Today, we enjoyed a wonderful visit to Leeds Art Gallery. The visit links well with our Art topic this half term. All the children behaved impeccably and represented our school really well. We hope you have enjoyed talking about our trip at home.
At the gallery, we used shapes as inspiration to create our very own abstract art. Using view finders we found our favourite part and described what we could see. What shapes can you see? What does it remind you of?
We also looked at some of the wonderful pieces of art in the gallery. We used our bodies to make shapes that represent the art.
We enjoyed looking at different pieces of abstract art and discussing the colours, shapes and lines in each piece.
We also looked at some figurative art. We then drew round our bodies (in poses like those in the art) to add even more lines and shapes to our whole class abstract art piece.
Odd socks day
Next week is Anti-Bullying Week.
This year’s theme is ‘One Kind Word’ and we will be taking part in Odd Socks Day on Monday 15 November.
Odd socks day is to raise awareness of our differences, individuality and personal choice. Come to school wearing your odd socks to celebrate what makes us all unique.
This year, the Junior Leadership Team have requested a voluntary donation of £1 on the day to raise money for our school charity, Dog’s Trust.
Thank you for your support.
Bonfire safety
Today, two PCSO officers came into school. Year 2 thoroughly enjoyed listening to them both and asking lots of questions. The officers came into school to discuss the importance of staying safe this bonfire weekend. We hope you all have a wonderful weekend watching fireworks, holding sparklers and visiting bonfires but make sure you stay safe by following the advise from today.
Living and Learning: mental health
Our recent Living and Learning focus has been all about mental health. Teaching about mental health and emotional wellbeing is now statutory as part of Health Education.
In Year 2, our learning has included:
- we all have feelings
- solving friendship problems
- managing difficult emotions
Emotions are feelings. They can change all the time. We all experience a whole range of emotions, from anger to happiness to fear. We even managed to create an A-Z of emotions.
Feelings can be shown on people’s faces and bodies. For example:
• Can you show a happy face?
• What does an angry face look like?
• How do we look when we are excited?
• Can you show a happy body?
• What does an angry body look like?
• How does our body look when we are excited?
We discussed which feelings these characters might be experiencing and whether they might need help with their feelings.
Next, we thought about a story about friends using a ball of string as the friendship chain.
The friendship chain is passed between friends to show how the friendship could have started. One day, there might be an argument between the friends (the string would get tangled). The argument got worse and the friends fell out (the string was cut between the friends). The friends decided to try and make the friendship again (tie a knot in the string).
This was a very visual way of looking at friendships. The children thought about what sort of things can cause friendships to break and what can make friendships stronger.
Self care techniques can also help us to look after our own mental health.
Here’s a reminder of the wellbeing bingo we looked at in Year 1. These are all great ways to support our mental health and hopefully some of these can be ticked off during half term.
Finally, further information about mental health can be found on the Public Health England (PHE) ‘Every Mind Matters’ website providing NHS-endorsed tips and advice to help children and young people’s mental wellbeing and equip parents and carers with knowledge to support them.
Rugby roadshow
As part of our partnership with White Rose Rugby and Moortown Rugby Club, here is an invite to a free rugby event, just for our pupils, taking place after half term on Wednesday 3rd November. White Rose Rugby have been working with classes for curriculum PE and also delivering the Thursday after-school club.
We hope you can take up this opportunity for a fun evening at Moortown Rugby Club.
