Book Talk

23rd January 2025Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill have LOVED reading this week and it has been so good to see their positive attitudes and active participation during reading. We began by looking at a book that is linked to our current expedition: Black and British. We looked at the cover of the book, as well as the blurb, and had an excellent discussion on what we thought the book might be about, what genre it was and what the purpose of it was. We were excited to learn that it contained lots of real life stories about Black people in Britain and how this had changed the world we live in today. Following this, we focused on one of the stories – Black Americans in Britain – and learned all about 4 amazing Americans who have come to Britain and influenced life for the better. Our favourite was Henry ‘Box’ Brown who mailed himself in a small, wooden box in order to escape slavery! We have worked really hard this week on our automaticity in reading which has tested our ability to read words automatically, without the need for sounding out. We have also focused on our words per minute and have challenged ourselves to hit the Year 6 target of 185 words per minute! Finally, we were split into two groups – one working with Miss Hamill and the other working independently in pairs – to answer some retrieval questions about the book. Miss Hamill was really impressed at our ability to do this accurately!

Compare Mixed Numbers

23rd January 2025Laura Hamill

To help consolidate our understanding of mixed numbers (a number with a whole and a fraction), Crew Hamill worked with cubes to build each of our numbers so that we had visual representations that we could then compare. We found the visual very helpful and this helped us to access our demonstration element of our lesson in which we completed sheets relating to the comparison of mixed numbers in our maths books.

Counting 2

22nd January 2025Sarah Mcglone

Our new friend number 2 needed our help! He wanted the boys and girls in nursery to help him do his food shopping but before we could, he reminded us that he only liked to buy things in twos. We had to look carefully at the food and make sure that we counted out 2 of the items he had asked for, before putting them into the shopping trolley.

We were all really supportive of each other, and we helped our friends check that they had accurately counted out 2 food items.

Subitising 2

22nd January 2025Sarah Mcglone

This week in maths, our focus has been the number 2. We started off by talking about what 2 looks like represented as spots and objects arranged as a dice pattern, different patterns and different sizes. We talked about how it was different to 1 because 1 was always by itself whereas 2 was 1 and another 1.

We used this learning to help us create a path for a little kitten who wanted to get from the red counter to the yellow counter. However, the path could only include stepping stones that showed 2! We used our subitising skills to work as a group to decide which stepping stones we could use to create a safe path for the kitten to use to get from one counter to the other.

Expeditionary learning continues in MI…

22nd January 2025Stacey McClare

Our expedition lesson today continued to look at grouping living things. First, we recapped our previous learning on vertebrates and invertebrates, working with our partner to sort a variety of animals.

From here we started to classify vertebrates into 5 groups and watched a video clip to help us build background knowledge. We noted down facts and then shared these with the whole crew. We then explored a variety of texts, building further information on mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish. We played fastest finger to further assess our understanding. There were lots of reading opportunities again today, reading with a partner and echo read to name a few.

From here we worked in mini crews to demonstrate our understanding. We read a variety of facts and put these facts in the correct group.

We then took part in a quiz to test our understanding further! We are really enjoying our expeditionary lessons 🙂

Rosa Park

21st January 2025Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill already had some knowledge of Rosa Parks prior to this lesson as we had looked at her briefly during hook week and also came across her name during our lessons on Martin Luther King Jr. We knew already that he had helped her when she had been arrested but this lesson allowed us to find out in more detail exactly why she had been arrested and why this was so important. We worked together to become experts on Rosa Parks, looking at four different sources of evidence: a newspaper article, a story, some direct quotes and the police report from her arrest. We worked in pairs to analyse these sources of evidence and pull out as much information as we could, adding it to our BBK. We then came together as a full crew and shared this information to create chotting sheets for our class display.

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!