Identifying the subject

23rd October 2024Laura Hamill

During the last week of half term, Crew Hamill have worked hard to identify the subject of a sentence. The subject is who or what is doing the action within the sentence. To help us do this, we followed a script in which we identified the first verb (action word) and then asked ourselves who or what did that action. To consolidate this learning, we were given jumbled up sentences. Our first job was to structure our sentences. We knew they began with a capital letter and ended with a full stop so these were the first cards we placed. Then we organised the rest of the words until we had a fully independent clause that made sense. Once we’d done this, we identified the verb and subject.

What are the effects of friction?

16th October 2024Laura Hamill

To begin part one of our lesson on friction, we recapped some of our prior knowledge and looked at the scientific vocabulary that we needed for the lesson. We then looked at what friction is and watched a video that detailed what life would be like without friction. Once we’d had some more knowledge of friction, we began part two of our lesson which focused on an investigation in which we looked at the effects of friction on a toy car. Before we began our investigation, we discussed as a crew what we thought might happen and came up with a crew hypothesis. We then conducted the experiment to see if our hypothesis would be correct. We used a wooden ramp and 4 different materials to test how far the car would travel on the different surfaces. We were happy to conclude that our hypothesis was correct! We found out that a rougher surface would produce more friction, meaning the car would travel a shorter distance and that with a smoother surface it would travel further as there is less friction.

Irregular Verb Phrases

14th October 2024Laura Hamill

Our final lesson on verbs began with a game of charades! We circled up, one person chose a verb card and then they had to act out their verb for the rest of the crew to guess. We had a giggle when Jenson started dancing! Following this, we looked at irregular verbs in the past tense and identified what happened when these formed verb phrases. We then had to identify which verb phrases had been formed correctly and correct any which had the past tense verb wrong.

Multiply and divide by 10, 100 and 1000

14th October 2024Laura Hamill

To help us understand what happens to numbers when we multiply and divide by 10, 100 and 1000, we became a human number. We looked at columns and were introduced to the decimal point. Ellie-May was a great decimal point and took her role very seriously, making sure she didn’t move! We then looked at what would happen to our number if we multiplied or divided by 10, 100 and 1000 and how our number would move one, two or three places on our place value chart.

What is gravity and how does it work?

11th October 2024Laura Hamill

This week, we kick started Case Study 2, physics, by looking at the force of gravity. We discussed what a force was and identified that most of the crew already knew that gravity was the reason why we ‘stick to the floor’ and do not float. We then built up our background knowledge by watching a few videos that provided more information on gravity. Each time we watched a new video, we added extra information to our chotting sheet, changing colour each time. We then read a text on Isaac Newton, the scientist that discovered gravity when an apple fell down from a tree, and added even more information.

Once we had our background knowledge secure, we looked at Newton Metres which are used to measure the effect of gravity on an object. We had a go at measuring objects from around the classroom which we really enjoyed. We then worked in mini crews to use what we knew about gravity to create marble runs! We knew that gravity would bring the marble down to the floor so came up with some creative ways of making the marble move.

Irregular Verbs

11th October 2024Laura Hamill

Once we were secure in our knowledge of regular verbs and regular verb phrases, we moved on to looking at irregular verbs. These are verbs in which the root word changes when you turn them into past tense. For example, run -> ran. We activated our learning by playing a game of stand up, sit down. We were shown a number of verbs and had to stand up if we believed they were an irregular verb or stay sat down if we believed they were a regular verb. Following this, we looked at a selection of verbs and had to identify the odd one out. We worked in mini crews and were able to identify that 3 out of 4 of our verbs were regular and the odd one out was an irregular verb. We then had a go at turning irregular verbs into past tense – fly -> flew, throw -> threw etc. We ended the lesson by completing an exit ticket to consolidate our learning, showing that we could write irregular verbs in past, present and future tense.

Regular Verb Phrases

11th October 2024Laura Hamill

We continued our PVPG journey this week by starting with regular verb phrases. We activated our learning with a consolidation of our to be and to have verbs, organising them into two groups. We then had a quick recap of modal verbs and had a go at writing some simple sentences that included these. Once we had done this, we looked again at verb phrases, refreshing our memory from the previous lesson. We then identified regular verb phrases within sentences and completed our exit ticket to consolidate our learning.

Thrive/Team building

8th October 2024Tracy Haddock

Crew Hamill worked really well today. They supported each other when working together to complete the challenge. They did the amazing shrinking blanket, bucket challenge, getting the ball from one end of the hall to the other using their crew mates but without no hands! Then we used our skills to remember what action the person infront did and then passed it down the line to the last person.. But we didnt alway manage this and this is something we need to work on.

Regular Verbs – Doubling the Consonant

4th October 2024Laura Hamill

To activate our learning today, we looked at a picture of ‘Where’s Wally?’ Our job wasn’t to find Wally though! We had to see what was happening in the picture and identify as many verbs as we could – swim, laugh, sunbathe, burn, throw, sail, float etc. Then, we continued looking at regular verbs and discussed turning them into past tense verbs by adding the -ed suffix. However, we soon noticed that we couldn’t just add -ed on the end to all regular verbs, some of them required you to double the end consonant before you did. For example, the word march can be turned into past tense by simply adding -ed -> marched. However, the word wrap would need the final consonant (the p) doubling before we added -ed -> wrapped. We identified that any regular verb that has a short vowel sound (a, e, i, o or u) followed by a single consonant would need the final consonant doubling. However, regular verbs with a longer vowel sounds (ay, ee, ie etc.) would just need -ed adding to the end.