Activating our inference skills

12th November 2024Laura Hamill

Today, we continued to activate our inference skills by looking at a poem. We were introduced to the poem yesterday and worked hard to pull the text apart, identifying key vocabulary and labelling the text with key information and notes that we felt were helpful in our mission to understand poetry and what they poem was actually about. We then used these notes today to delve deeper into inferring the feelings of the characters. We began by working as a crew to identify the key points in the text for the first character, Chloe, and discussed how we thought she was feeling at each of these points. We used evidence from the text to support our ideas (E.g. she was happy at the beginning because she was looking out into space with open eyes). We then created a line graph to detail our findings. Following this, we worked in pairs to do the same for the second character, Max. Once we’d done this, we brought both graphs together to compare their feelings throughout the poem. We identified that Max was a much happier, more positive character, whilst Chloe was much less positive as she worried a lot and was scared by the idea of adventure.

Investigating Water Reisistance

12th November 2024Laura Hamill

We moved on from air resistance to start looking at another type of friction – water resistance. We built our background knowledge by watching a few informative videos and reading some key information to help us understand that water resistance is a type of force that uses friction to slow things down that are moving through water. Once we’d learned that the shape of an object in water can impact on the amount of water resistance, we tested our hypothesis that thinner, more streamlined shapes, would travel quicker through the water than wider shapes with a larger surface area. We worked in pairs to create two different shapes using plasticine and then conducted an experiment in which we dropped each shape, at the same time, into a jar that contained the same amount of water. We tested these shapes a few times before recording our results and concluding whether or not our hypothesis was correct. We were pleased to discover that we were correct!

Identifying ‘leftovers’

12th November 2024Laura Hamill

We continued to identify leftovers (parts of our clause that are not a subject or a verb) during our grammar lesson on Monday. However, we discussed how the sequence we had been spotting during the last few lessons (subject, verb, leftovers) doesn’t always apply and it will not be like that in every single clause we write. As such, we looked at a few examples of where the positioning of these differed. We made sure we followed our script which required us to identify the verb first, then the subject, then the leftovers in order to label these accurately.

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!