Term 3 Week 6
This Week in Owls Class – Children’s Mental Health Week
This week marked the final week of this half term and also Children’s Mental Health Week, giving us a valuable opportunity to focus on the importance of children’s emotional wellbeing alongside our learning.
We began the week by sharing the story Ruby’s Worry by Tom Percival, using a read aloud video to introduce the text. This story helped the children understand how worries can start small but grow when they are kept inside. Through thoughtful discussion, the children explored how Ruby felt, what her worry represented and how talking about worries can help them feel more manageable. Many children were able to reflect on their own experiences and suggest ways people can seek support.
Our next text was Black Dog by Levi Pinfold. Using an extract from the story, we focused on how emotions can sometimes feel overwhelming and difficult to explain. The children were particularly engaged by the powerful illustrations and how they represented feelings such as fear and anxiety. This led to meaningful conversations about recognising emotions and understanding that difficult feelings do not last forever.
To support this learning further, we also watched the trailer for Inside Out, which helped bring the idea of emotions to life in a relatable and accessible way. The children enjoyed identifying different emotions and discussing how they influence our thoughts and behaviour. Watching the trailer supported rich discussion before the children moved on to comprehension activities linked to recognising emotions, worries and strategies for managing them.
Throughout the week, these carefully chosen texts and activities reinforced the importance of children’s mental health, helping the children to build emotional awareness, empathy and confidence in talking about their feelings. The children showed maturity, kindness and respect during discussions, creating a safe and supportive environment for everyone.
English – Diary Writing
In English this week, the children completed their diary entries written in the role of Thomas Snoop. They worked really hard to include the key features of a diary entry, including writing in the first person, using the past tense, organising events in order and sharing personal thoughts and reflections.
A key focus for this piece of writing was using show not tell to describe the character’s feelings. Instead of simply naming emotions, the children chose actions, reactions and descriptive details to help the reader understand how Thomas Snoop was feeling at different moments. This led to some thoughtful and engaging writing, with clear evidence of the children thinking carefully about character and emotion.
The finished diary entries show just how far the children have come as writers. They successfully combined structure, character voice and emotional detail, and we are very proud of the effort and creativity they showed. Their work is shared below.
Art – Self Portraits
In Art, we continued our work on self portraits, linking this closely to our Tudor history topic. Previously, children explored portraits created during Tudor times, looking carefully at how people were represented and what portraits can tell us about status, clothing and identity. This helped the children understand how art can be used as a historical source, not just a creative one.
We then focused on developing sketching skills, practising a range of techniques including shading, hatching, cross hatching and stippling. The children experimented with these techniques to create tone, texture and depth, learning how different marks can be used to achieve different effects.
This week, the children brought these skills together to create their own self portraits. They worked carefully and patiently, applying the techniques they had practised and paying close attention to detail.The children showed great focus, creativity and growing confidence in their drawing as they worked through the process of creating their self portraits. The photographs below show the children carefully sketching and applying the techniques they have learnt. The finished self portraits will be shared once they are complete.
We would like to wish all our children and families a lovely half term break. We hope everyone enjoys a well deserved rest, and we look forward to welcoming the children back refreshed and ready for the next half term.