Building our own castles

We became designers in our expedition lesson. We followed Miss Marsh’s instructions carefully to make our castles, then once they were finished we tested their strength using tennis balls.

We came to the conclusion that paper is not a suitable material for a castle and that stone is better because it is much stronger to withstand an attack from an enemy.

Demo comprehension in MI

Our entry ticket allowed us to get into role as Lenny and write a short letter back home to either mum or dad. We wrote about all the things that had happened so far and this really allowed us to recap events from the story. We enjoyed reading our letters in mini crews and then to the whole crew. We even tried to read them in role. When reading the next part of the story, we used a chorus read, partner read and independent read. We discussed language as we read and thought about Lenny and Mick’s characters in more detail. We used the text during our demonstration comprehension, skimming and scanning for words to support our answers. We worked in mini crews to find evidence from the text, text marking then sharing with our partner. Our exit ticket allowed us to reflect on what we had read thinking about what Lenny and Mick may be saying to each other as they left the garden. We also thought about Lenny’s thoughts and how these had changed.

We are designers

Yesterday in our expedition lessons we became design technologists. We started by looking at different buildings around the world and shared our notices, praises and wonders. We then learnt about the architect James of St George who designed lots of castles in Wales.

Today we had a go at being an architect and designing our own castle wall. We decided it must have battlements, arrow slits and a small door so enemies will find it difficult to attack.

Tomorrow we are going to build and test our designs