Book Talk

23rd January 2025Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill have LOVED reading this week and it has been so good to see their positive attitudes and active participation during reading. We began by looking at a book that is linked to our current expedition: Black and British. We looked at the cover of the book, as well as the blurb, and had an excellent discussion on what we thought the book might be about, what genre it was and what the purpose of it was. We were excited to learn that it contained lots of real life stories about Black people in Britain and how this had changed the world we live in today. Following this, we focused on one of the stories – Black Americans in Britain – and learned all about 4 amazing Americans who have come to Britain and influenced life for the better. Our favourite was Henry ‘Box’ Brown who mailed himself in a small, wooden box in order to escape slavery! We have worked really hard this week on our automaticity in reading which has tested our ability to read words automatically, without the need for sounding out. We have also focused on our words per minute and have challenged ourselves to hit the Year 6 target of 185 words per minute! Finally, we were split into two groups – one working with Miss Hamill and the other working independently in pairs – to answer some retrieval questions about the book. Miss Hamill was really impressed at our ability to do this accurately!

Compare Mixed Numbers

23rd January 2025Laura Hamill

To help consolidate our understanding of mixed numbers (a number with a whole and a fraction), Crew Hamill worked with cubes to build each of our numbers so that we had visual representations that we could then compare. We found the visual very helpful and this helped us to access our demonstration element of our lesson in which we completed sheets relating to the comparison of mixed numbers in our maths books.

Rosa Park

21st January 2025Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill already had some knowledge of Rosa Parks prior to this lesson as we had looked at her briefly during hook week and also came across her name during our lessons on Martin Luther King Jr. We knew already that he had helped her when she had been arrested but this lesson allowed us to find out in more detail exactly why she had been arrested and why this was so important. We worked together to become experts on Rosa Parks, looking at four different sources of evidence: a newspaper article, a story, some direct quotes and the police report from her arrest. We worked in pairs to analyse these sources of evidence and pull out as much information as we could, adding it to our BBK. We then came together as a full crew and shared this information to create chotting sheets for our class display.

I Have a Dream

21st January 2025Laura Hamill

We began this lesson by watching a video of Martin Luther King Jr’s speech, “I Have a Dream”, discussing how it made us feel and any notices we made about it. We then spent some time looking at some of the key vocabulary from the speech that we might have needed some support understanding: manacle, stripped, selfhood, quicksand, injustice, sweltering, oppression. Once we had more of an understanding of these words, we looked at a selection of quotes from MLK’s speech that included this vocabulary and we worked as a crew to pull them apart. This allowed us to really understand some of the key messages Martin Luther King Jr. was trying to get across in his speech.

Martin Luther King Jr.

21st January 2025Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill have absolutely loved learning about Martin Luther King Jr. over the last few weeks. Having looked at him briefly in hook week, we have learned a little more about him during our reading lessons by focusing on a story of his life. Because of this, we already had some knowledge of who he is and why he is so important to our expedition and this set us in good stead for our expedition lessons in which we have built our background knowledge ever further. We have worked in mini crews to highlight chunks of information, pulling out the facts about Martin Luther King Jr. We have also watched a video clip on the story of his life which allowed us to make more notes on our chotting paper. After this, we then brought all of our information together as a crew to create a class chotting sheet for our display, drawing our attention to the key dates which we can then add to our class timeline. 

Sneek a Peek

21st January 2025Tracy Haddock

So again we could not get out into our forest area but that didn’t stop us from doing some team building activities. The children got split into 3 teams and then they sent 1 person from each team to come and have a look at what I had built under my blanket using cubes and blocks. After 10 Seconds they had to go back to their team and describe what it looked like and then try and build what they could remember. They had lots of fun doing this and had some brilliant communication skills with their team. Well done Crew Hamill!

Xp Outdoors(Turtles)

14th January 2025Tracy Haddock

So the weather was really bad in our forest area so we were unable to in there but it didn’t stop us from doing what we normal do in there. We made our very own turtles, using wool, lollipop sticks and felt tip pens.

Christmas Art

16th December 2024Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill continued their Christmas art today by practicing some art skills required for their final piece whilst also producing their first drafts. We used outlines of heads which had been split into segments to practice our small brush strokes and our accuracy. We weren’t allowed to go over the lines and we had to make sure we used small brush strokes which will be required for our final piece.

Once we had done this, we then drew some circles that mimic the shape of our final piece and produced a step by step draft of the design we will be painting on to our Christmas baubles. This gave us multiple attempts at perfecting our brush strokes and making sure we were happy with the shape and design.