Last Friday, Crew Shields had an amazing time at the glow in the dark dodgeball. They showed some great sportsmanship and had fun while doing it.
Glow in the dark dodgeball
Category : Crew Shields Y4 (23/24)
Book Talk – predictions
Our do now activity was a prediction about where we thought the tunnel led. We discussed the importance of giving full answers using because to explain why we thought that.
One of our predictions was thinking the bunny was about to enter Easter Egg Island which is a direct link to our current reading text about chocolate. We also had predictions about the bunny going to a fair because these are happy and bright places.
Once we’d given our predictions, we discussed how this could link to emotions and how currently the bunny is feeling upset but something is happening that will start to change his mood.
Our fluency focus was pausing and we are becoming more confident with pausing in the correct places to help our comprehension.
Finally, we went through the text and highlighted any vocabulary that we were unfamiliar with and text marked the definition.
Crew Shields – Music
We warmed up our voices by singing the ‘Cowboy song’, a call-and-response song that uses the pentatonic scale C-D-E-G-A.
We then watched a video of Bobby McFerrin. The performance showcased the power of the pentatonic scale and allowed for us to see how the pitch can move higher and lower, ascending and descending in scale. We talked about how moving between notes can also mean moving in and out of order, as long as the notes used are within the correct pentatonic scale.
To put this knowledge into practise, we began to improvise melodies within the pentatonic scale C-D-E-G-A on the glockenspiel. Working with a partner, we identified how the shape of the pitch moved up and down. We then played a game of ‘copy me’ where one partner had to create a short pattern using the notes from the pentatonic scale, the other partner had to listen and the repeat the pattern back before swapping.
Crew Shields – Music
We began our new unit of music ‘Global Pentatonics’ by warming up our voices with a call-and-response song that uses the pentatonic scale G-A-B-D-E.
After discussing what a pentatonic scale is, we listened to a number of pieces of music that contain elements of a pentatonic scale (Skye boat song, Om Namah Shivaya, Busy weaving, Desert blues). We discussed each piece, listening to information about the background behind it and then compared the musical features of each piece.
We then used glockenspiels to identify the pentatonic scale C-D-E-G-A and practised playing these notes as a scale ascending and then descending. We tried hard to play in time with the rest of our crew.
Applying editing and redrafting
After having some time to edit and redraft other people’s work, it was time to apply these skills to our own work. We were given time to start working through our plot point so we could uplevel it. This is a skill we’ve been working hard on this year and still find it a little tricky especially as we feel we did a good job the first time round. However, we know there is always room for improvement.
Is it fair or unfair?
As we came towards the end of our history case study last week, we consolidated out learning on the process taken to make chocolate. Then we had an opportunity to look at the working conditions before fair trade and after fair trade. We then worked together to sort a range of statements into fair and unfair. We were surprised to see there were a lot more unfair than fair. Finally, we conducted a conscious alley, where we were asked to debate a side of the argument. We really enjoyed this activity.
Editing and Redrafting
Last week, we spent some time revisiting editing and redrafting out writing. We were shown examples of work from books and then we worked together to edit for things like punctuation and sense. Once we were happy we had completed the editing, we worked together to redraft which could have considered of added a fronted adverbial, conjunction or adding further description.
Coding – Scratch
On Friday afternoon, we moved on to the next unit of computing which is about coding. We had some time to tinker with scratch before working through some activities. One of these activities was to create a loop of code which basically means that the sprite will continually do an action (on a loop). We really enjoyed being able to tinker with and explore scratch and look forward to exploring this more in future computing lessons.
How do we edit?
Now that we’ve finished our plot points, it’s time to edit and redraft some of our writing. In our writing lesson on Friday, we were shown some examples of writing from children’s books and we were shown how to edit a piece of work. Then we had an opportunity to work through some sentences and share our thoughts with the rest of the class. Next, we’ll look at redrafting and have time to redraft our own writing so we can uplevel it.
Book Talk – Retrieval
In our second book talk session, we have been focusing heavily on the skills needed to answer fact and retrieval questions. This ended up lasting 2 lessons because we had some good discussions about the skills we need to use. We had some questions modelled and then we had an opportunity to apply these skills. In addition, we have still be drip feeding inference questions as we continue to develop our written answers to these type of questions.
