North Independent Secondary School of the Year 2020 North Independent Secondary School of the Year 2021 North Independent Secondary School of the Year 2021

News

Archives

Word gets out about minibeasts at Rose Court

Monday 15 May 2017

Year 2 pupils were buzzing with excitement when writer Anneliese Emmans Dean visited Rose Court to help out with their minibeast topic.

Poet, performer and lyricist Anneliese takes inspiration from the natural world, often from within her own back garden, with a view to enhancing learning through laughter, rhythm and rhyme. Her first book, Buzzing! Discover the poetry in garden minibeasts, is illustrated by her own photos, and her new book, Flying High – discover the poetry in British birds, is published next month.

The day with Anneliese started with Buzzing, a performance of her humorous but factual minibeast poems which, set to a backdrop of minibeast photos from her own garden, provided an engaging learning experience for the children.

Then each Year 2 class spent a session outdoors with Anneliese, where they went on a minibeast hunt and learned to observe at close quarters the rich variety of creatures making the school field their home. The children got into character acting as Billy and Milly the millipedes and made up their own poem about millipedes, ladybirds, butterflies, spiders and more.

In the ‘rhyme-time ramble’, they explored the field, stopping now and then to hear one of Anneliese’s own minibeast poems. A green woodpecker stole the show, a rare sighting for Anneliese who told the children it chose their field because its favourite food was here – it can eat 2,000 ants a day!

Anneliese said: “The exciting thing about nature is you never know what you are going to see. If you look there are masses of minibeasts. My activities aim to inspire knowledge, enthusiasm and a passion for the natural world, and the children were already very knowledgeable.”

Year 2 teacher Mrs O’Dwyer said: “This has been a great introduction to the topic and fits in perfectly with what we are doing in class.”

« All stories

Or, if you prefer to chat to someone please call our admissions team. For Senior School call 0113 228 5121 and for Primary School call 0113 228 5113.