Dodgeball

Crew Hamill have been developing their dodgeball skills over the last few weeks, focusing on the basic skills needed in order to successfully play a game of dodgeball in two teams. Today, we developed our skills further by working on our deflection – using one dodgeball to block a second that is being thrown towards us. We began by working in 3s with one person throwing the ball to a second person who was to deflect it towards the third person. We then put these skills to the test during some mini games. One person in each team had a ‘golden ball’ which they were not allowed to drop. Their role was to deflect any balls that came towards them. BUT, they had to be really careful because if they dropped their golden ball, they were OUT! We cannot wait to develop these skills further in our next PE session!

Collective and Partitive Nouns

Today, Crew Hamill took part in a range of activities in mini crews to consolidate our learning on collective nouns (that are used for a group) and partitive nouns (that are used to tell us how much of something we have). We began by playing one of our favourite games – corners – in which we went to a side of the room depending on whether the noun we were showed was collective or partitive. Following this, we worked in mini crews to organise a list of nouns into groups – one group of collective nouns and one group of partitive nouns. Our next activity was to match up the collective or partitive noun to the single noun it belonged to (e.g. flock of -> sheep). We then completed a kahoot! quiz which assessed our learning and completed an exit ticket to independently demonstrate what we had learned and could remember.

Common and Proper Nouns

To consolidate our learning on common and proper nouns, Crew Hamill took part in a practical grammar lesson. We began by playing corners. Miss Hamill showed us a selection of nouns on the board and we had to decide whether they were a common (general) noun or a proper (specific) noun that needed a capital letter. Once we had done this, we recapped looking at these nouns within a sentence and how we would decide which was which. Miss Hamill had disguised the capital letters to make it that little bit more tricky for us but we were able to work in mini crews to underline proper nouns and circle common nouns within the same sentence. We then took part in a kahoot! quiz to assess how much we had remembered.

Estimating numbers to 10000

To consolidate our learning, Crew Hamill took part in a practical lesson in which we became a number line to 10,000 in order to deepen our understanding on how to estimate numbers on a number line. We began by each being a different number, starting with our start and end numbers (0 and 10,000) and adding in the interval half way (5000) and half way again (2500 and 7500). Remaining children were then given a number between 0 and 10,000 and had to decide where they would place themselves along the line, thinking carefully about which of our interval numbers they would stand between and which one they would be closer to based on the value of their number. Once we had done this, we then worked in mini crews to mark on different interval values on number lines to 10,000 and placed a range of numbers where we estimated they belonged onto each line.

Are you cut out for space?

On Monday, Crew Hamill began focusing on a new text which was an extra from An Astronaut’s Handbook. Our extract focused on what an astronaut was and where they travel to – space. We started our session by watching a video of Richard Branson and his team travelling into space, allowing us to see what it would be like to launch into space in a rocket. We then travelled to the blue room to immerse ourselves into a similar situation – a confined, dark space with the lights of the milky way and stars. We then listened as Miss Hamill read through the text for the first time, pulling out different vocabulary words and ensuring we understood what we were reading. Following this, we went back to class and skimmed and scanned the text for words, phrases and sentences that we felt comfortable reading. We then re-read the text as a whole crew with everyone joining in when they reached a highlighted word, phrase or sentence. Finally, we text marked our extract, underlining and defining key vocabulary, starring the key information and drawing an exclamation mark when we thought there was an important fact.

UKS2 Family Learning

Thank you to all the parents who joined us for our first family learning session of the term. It was lovely to see so many children and parents taking part in the space quiz and having some lighthearted fun along the way blind tasting the space-themed named sweet treats. Well done to our winning team who got to take home a bar of galaxy!

xp outdoors

Crew Hamill was amazing today in xp outdoors. We did a bit of bug hunting where we found loads of amazing creatures and then we climbed some trees before ending our session with playing a game of 123 where are you?

Strengthening Crew

This week, our Crew Guiding Question was: How can crew be strengthened through acts of service?

We discussed what it meant to be part of a crew and how we could make this stronger by doing an act of service for others – something that would make them smile! 🙂 Following this, we decided that we were going to bake a tasty treat and create positive postcards to hand out to people around school that have done something kind that we are thankful for. This included the ladies in the office who work tirelessly to keep the school running, the ladies in the kitchen who prepare all our meals and some of the teachers who we feel helped us on a personal level.

We certainly felt like a solidified, happy crew once we had finished!