Single-clause sentences – Leftovers

8th November 2024Laura Hamill

Towards the end of this week, we have taken our knowledge of single-clause sentences to the next step by working with ‘leftovers’ – extra information in the sentence that is neither a subject nor a verb. We still had to follow our script in order to identify our verb, followed by our subject but we realised that once we had done this, there was extra words that we hadn’t labelled. We then had to decide which clause these ‘leftovers’ belonged to. Once we’d done this, we could ask ourselves when our subject had stopped doing or being in order to identify the end of the clause. Once we knew we’d got a full, independent clause with a subject and a verb, we were able to add our full stops and capital letters.

After we had done this, we then looked at what these types of single-clause sentences would look like with ‘to be’ verbs, instead of action verbs and repeated the same steps as before.

Reading in Crew Hamill

8th November 2024Laura Hamill

After having a heavy focus on retrieval skills during Autumn 1, Crew Hamill have shifted their focus this half term and begun looking at inference skills – using clues from the text in order to provide an appropriate answer that is backed up with evidence from the text. To help us with this, we began by taking part in a hot seating activity in which we worked in mini crews to create questions that we would like to ask the main character of our story. One person then pretended to be this character and attempted to answer the questions, using what they knew from the text as support.

Following this, we then looked at some demonstration comprehension questions that we again focused on our inference skills. After working through how to answer this style of question with Miss Hamill on the board, we were given three questions of our own and three matching answers. We had to work in mini crews to match the question to it’s correct answer, using what we knew from the text to support us with this.

Single-clause sentences – Pronouns

8th November 2024Laura Hamill

Following our success of identifying single clause sentences, we moved on to look at what these may look like with pronouns. We worked in pairs to identify repeated words within two sentences that follow on from each other, discussing which pronouns we could use instead, to avoid repetition. We then used this knowledge to follow our script in order to identify verbs and subjects and then add in full stops and capital letters once we were sure we had two full, independent clauses with a subject and a verb.

Air Resistance – Parachutes

7th November 2024Laura Hamill

This week, Crew Hamill have continued their expedition lessons by focusing on another force – air resistance. We looked at what air resistance is – a type of friction between air and another material – and looked at the impact this had on objects when they fell to the ground. We tested it out by dropping two pieces of paper (one flat and one screwed into a ball) and discussed which one would fall to the ground first. We then discussed why this might have happened. Together, we predicted the ball of paper would fall fastest as it was more dense and had a smaller surface area. We were then introduced to our mission from the National Space Station:

Using our design brief, we worked in pairs to design and create a parachute that could be tested for air resistance. We worked in mini crews to create these and then came together as a whole crew to test them out. We began by ordering the parachutes from biggest to smallest in order to test whether our prediction (that larger parachutes will take longer to fall to the floor as there will be more air resistance) was correct. We found that we were correct – the larger the canopy on the parachute, the longer it took to fall to the ground. However, there was one anomaly with a parachute that had been made with a thicker canopy and this effected the results slightly.

We loved conducting a fair test to investigate! Raza made an excellent scientist by being our constant variable and being the only one to drop each of the parachutes!

Single-Clause Sentences

7th November 2024Laura Hamill

On Monday, Crew Hamill moved their grammar to the next stage as they began looking at single-clause sentences. We looked at what a clause was (a group of words that include a subject and a verb) and then used our prior knowledge of identifying subjects and verbs to figure out where our single clause sentences were. We followed our script, identifying the first verb in the sentence. One we had this, we identified the subject of that verb. We repeated this until all our of verbs and subjects had been identified and then asked ourselves when the verb ended so that we could put a full stop as we had a full, independent clause with a subject and a verb. We could the go back and add in capital letters.

XP Outdoors

6th November 2024Tracy Haddock

Crew Hamill were working on their team building skills today where they did loop de loop and lilly pads. In loop de loop they all joined hands in a circle and then they had to get the hola hoop round the circle without breaking hands. Then in lilly pad they were split into 2 teams where they had 6 rubber spots and they had to get their team from one side to the other without falling off.

End of Half Term Treat

23rd October 2024Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill LOVED our bouncy castle treat at the end of this half term! We also managed to convince Miss Hamill to finally make us all a cup of tea! Miss Hamill made a deal with Jenson that if his howls improved as the half term went on, she would make him a cup of tea as he’d been asking for one all half term. We supported Jenson in this so Miss Hamill made one for everyone! Well done, Jenson 🙂 and to the rest of Crew Hamill for your support!

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.