Year 2 write play scripts based on our Take One Picture

This week has been a completely extraordinary week as it’s been Gateway’s Take One Picture week. Following on from the big reveal three weeks ago, the children are excited to finally start the work they had inspired and helped plan. Without giving too much away we have had an extremely busy time completing activities based on the picture of The Battle of San Romano. The children have been off timetable with only lessons taught by specialist teachers following the usual routine. Instead of English, Maths, Humanities and phonics being part of our everyday lessons, the children spent much longer sessions following one chosen element.

We started with ‘playing’ with knights and horses, using white boards to record the imaginative language they used. They then worked in groups to write a play script based on the picture. This was a new skill which required collaboration, cooperation and compromise! We recorded the playscripts they had written and used Stop Motion and Book Creator to bring the plays to life. Stop Motion is a program which allows the children to photograph models such as knights and horses or puppets. They can then reposition the models and create the next scene. Book Creator allows the children to import photos or images and then add text. Working like this really captured their imagination!

One of the concepts behind the National Portrait gallery Take One Picture is that the children lead the creative ideas. During Maths this has meant identifying and naming two and three dimensional shapes and describing their properties. The Battle of San Romano has lots of detail and we could make and interpret tally charts and pictograms using the picture. The photos illustrate how the children have persevered and the high standard of work they have created! We spent a morning learning a new skill of decoupage and how thin layers and a small amount of glue works better and looks more effective than large pieces of soggy paper! The end results look amazing and will be on display on Friday 6 March from 3-6 pm. Thank goodness it's time for half term!