I Have a Dream

21st January 2025Laura Hamill

We began this lesson by watching a video of Martin Luther King Jr’s speech, “I Have a Dream”, discussing how it made us feel and any notices we made about it. We then spent some time looking at some of the key vocabulary from the speech that we might have needed some support understanding: manacle, stripped, selfhood, quicksand, injustice, sweltering, oppression. Once we had more of an understanding of these words, we looked at a selection of quotes from MLK’s speech that included this vocabulary and we worked as a crew to pull them apart. This allowed us to really understand some of the key messages Martin Luther King Jr. was trying to get across in his speech.

Martin Luther King Jr.

21st January 2025Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill have absolutely loved learning about Martin Luther King Jr. over the last few weeks. Having looked at him briefly in hook week, we have learned a little more about him during our reading lessons by focusing on a story of his life. Because of this, we already had some knowledge of who he is and why he is so important to our expedition and this set us in good stead for our expedition lessons in which we have built our background knowledge ever further. We have worked in mini crews to highlight chunks of information, pulling out the facts about Martin Luther King Jr. We have also watched a video clip on the story of his life which allowed us to make more notes on our chotting paper. After this, we then brought all of our information together as a crew to create a class chotting sheet for our display, drawing our attention to the key dates which we can then add to our class timeline. 

Exploring vocabulary in reading

21st January 2025Stacey McClare

Today we really focussed on some of the vocabulary in our text. We looked at synonyms, finding and copying a word that means the same. We have become much more confident with this skill. Again we used a range of strategies to read the text, some of these being echo read, partner reading and independent reading. When reading with our partner, we focussed again on fluency and expression, giving a praise and wonder after our partner had read. We also tried to use the punctuation a little better when reading. Our reasons to read focussed more on our inference skills and we used APE to support our thoughts and answers.

Sneek a Peek

21st January 2025Tracy Haddock

So again we could not get out into our forest area but that didn’t stop us from doing some team building activities. The children got split into 3 teams and then they sent 1 person from each team to come and have a look at what I had built under my blanket using cubes and blocks. After 10 Seconds they had to go back to their team and describe what it looked like and then try and build what they could remember. They had lots of fun doing this and had some brilliant communication skills with their team. Well done Crew Hamill!

Text marking in MI

20th January 2025Stacey McClare

When reading our text today, we had 3 things to focus on when text marking. We used and recorded the symbols well then shared our thoughts and ideas in mini crews and with the whole crew. We are getting much more confident with text marking 🙂

Grouping animals in MI

20th January 2025Stacey McClare

Our expeditionary learning today allowed us to recognise that living things can be grouped in a variety of different ways. First of all we looked at a variety of objects and thought about how we may group them. We worked well in mini crews to do this. We then moved onto looking at similarities and differences between certain living things and animals. We thought back to our previous lessons on food chains and skeletons to help us with this task. We then moved onto sorting animals into groups using similarities and differences to help us. We thought more about how animals can be grouped including through habitat, physical features and through diet. We discussed the term classify in more detail and related this to ‘taxonomy’. Again, there were lots of reading opportunities where we used fastest finger first to find answers. From here we worked in mini crews to find as many different ways as we could to sort a variety of animal pictures. There was some great collaborative working which was fantastic to see. Our debrief then allowed us to share our groups with the whole crew.

Equity & Equality

20th January 2025Gordon Wilkinson

As part of our ‘Fight For Our Rights’ expedition, we considered the differences between equality and equity and how that looks in the real world. We looked at how everyone has equal opportunities in life but some may require support for a multitude of reasons and ran a race with this in mind. In mini crews, we then honed in on examples of equality and equity within school and their home lives. Have a look at the examples that we came up with as a crew!

Expert Music Visitor

17th January 2025Nicola Robson

We were very lucky to have a visit today from a music expert. Mr Hull brought along more than 10 instruments which he entertained us with. We listened to different types of guitars, drums, wood wind instruments and even a harmonica!

We are very grateful that he took time out of his day to come and visit us. Hopefully he has inspired some children to take up an instrument!